The BBC continues its war against the ‘Tory led Coalition’ with yet more invented crises of ‘NHS privatisation’ or specious connections to disasters in the NHS and government ‘cuts’.
The first example is from R4’s ‘You and Yours’ with Winifred Robinson demanding to know if NHS nurses, sponsored by medical manufacturers, are making unnecessary prescriptions to meet the sponsoring company’s targets making NHS costs shoot up.
Unfortunately either the BBC failed to do its research or its determination to dig some dirt on the Government blinded it to the truth.
You can hear that Robinson is absolutely willing the blame to be put onto the private companies but as you hear a senior nurse explaining what is happening it turns out that there aren’t targets, that hospitals are visited by the sponsoring company’s, and others, sales reps, who of course attempt to sell their product but do not have any power to pressure nursing staff into prescribing more….for one thing the prescribing is done by GPs not nurses (ChrisH in comments advises some nurses can prescribe…my mistake…I listened at 23 mins 30 sec where mentions nurses only advise GP on patient needs and GP then prescribes….not the whole picture obviously)
The story of stealth privatisation and rising costs was almost entirely fabricated by the BBC.
A second story conflates two different things in an attempt to damn the government.
A recent survey of hospital staff says many would not recommend the hospitals in which they work to their own relatives to be treated in.
The BBC happily makes the connection between that and low staff morale with mythical Tory led ‘cuts’ in the NHS.
Firstly there are no ‘cuts’ in the NHS…there is a rebalancing of the budget with resources reallocated to different parts of the NHS to ensure high priority commitments are met…but the budget remains the same.
Labour spent £100 billion on the NHS…..and yet thousands died as a result of bad treatment and neglect…..was that a result of ‘cuts’?
Here Tony Livesey, (52 mins in ) sitting in for Shelagh Fogarty, claims that the survey is an ‘absolutely damning indictment’ of the NHS (under the Tories)…before bringing in a health union spokeswoman to give us her considered opinion. No need to wonder what the line was.…a massively pressured financial situation…staff shortages due to cuts.
Unfortunately, for the BBC’s agenda, Livesey unwittingly brought on a patient, Dan Sencier, who had cancer and had been badly treated by the NHS which, in his own health area, seemed determined not to treat him losing his notes, not replying to letters and emails and removing him from their patient list when he wrote to complain. He was diagnosed with cancer on the 8th June 2010.…hmmmm…those Tory led ‘cuts’ had a pretty quick effect no?
Eventually he came up with a solution…to ‘shop around’ for the best NHS service available to him.…..when he said this Livesey jumped in and diverted away.…why might he do that?
Shopping around is of course the Tory led Government’s policy for freedom of choice in the NHS enabling you to assess which hospital can give you the best treatment and allowing you to go there.
And that’s exactly what happened…..this is nothing to do with budget or nursing….just poor admin and NHS bureaucracy……but that doesn’t make for much of a story for the BBC……and look how old Dan Sencier’s story is…..the Daily Mail reported it in 2011…so why has the BBC dug up his story now to illustrate the current state of the NHS? Are there no more recent stories?
The BBC’s two stories……. no more than Labour Party propaganda dressed up as journalism.
It does seem Dan Sencier is unlucky with admin….his cancer may be gone but this has got to hurt:
‘I continue at University, now in my third year, but not without problems. Due to a cock up in the admin I was missed out of the students who are allowed access to the main media web site. This meant that I’ve completed 2 years without key information that was available to all other students in my year group. The enquiry is still ongoing, but it looks like I will be doing a fourth year (fully funded) to complete the media module. I don’t mind too much, I love it there and the people are great, so what’s another year? ‘
I trust that the second party’s proposals for eliminating NHS non-jobs, banning health tourism, and reimposing the matron system will now get an airing. There’s more to UKIP than immigration and the EU.
Couldn’t resist this. (“Directorships” presumably includes top BBC jobs.)
“Mental health problems no longer a bar to becoming an MP…..ban on jury service and directorships will also go as Commons hears moving personal accounts of mental illnesses”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/14/mental-health-bars-mp-removed
Who is responsible for the greatest act of privatization of the NHS in its history? Step forward Tony Blair!
When the National Institute for Clinical Excellence was established it began to limit certain medications to thousands of patients who had no choice but to pay for them themselves i.e. privately.
I’m sure I can recall at the time Paxogob from the highly impartial, independent BBC screaming at Tony Blair in an interview: ‘But Mr Blair, what you propose is the greatest privatization in the history of the NHS! What have you got to say about that?’
I did hear that didn’t I?
Didn’t I? Or maybe I’m just hearing things….
The real story is that the NHS staff survey now gives the highest rating* for quality of treatment and clearly staff feel the NHS is better for patients under this government than previously: the opposite of the bBBC lies!
The data from the annual NHS surveys are published for anyone to see http://nhsstaffsurveys.com/cms/. The survey has run from 2003 but tellingly, until 2009 there was no question about patients and treatment. The 36 questions were all about staff. You could say OK, it’s a staff survey, but this indicates the way the NHS is run, for the benefit of the staff.
* The score for ‘whether staff would recommend their trust as a place to work or receive treatment’, on a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (good), was 3.51 (2009), 3.50 (2010), 3.46 (2011) and 3.57 (2012).
Nevertheless, with 37% of staff not wanting a friend or relative to be treated in their own hospital, this shows just how dreadful is our Nationalised Health Service, and indicates the scale of the task that government has to drag the ‘envy of the world’ up towards the standard of other countries.
‘either the BBC failed to do its research or its determination to dig some dirt on the Government blinded it to the truth.’
So, post McAlpine and Pollard, the increase in senior staff already having the desired effect?
‘…losing his notes, not replying to letters and emails and removing him from their patient list when he wrote to complain. “
Why the BBC would side with the NHS in such behaviour is a mystery.
Just a quick correction Alan, Nurses can prescribe if they have the appropriate qualifications. (I know this because I do!) But we are under very strict rules that govern our precribing such as having to prescribe the generic term instead of the brand name for instance I would prescribe paracetamol suspension instead of calpol. Of course I cant speak for all nurses everywhere but just for myself and my colleagues. Drug reps could come and see me as much as they want and I will be interested in what they say and what developments are out there but I cannot and will not accept any gifts or hospitality and I cannot and will not prescribe their drugs instead of the generic name. Its not worth my job and registration! PS if I can help with any info on this subject anyone only need ask. Cheers, Chris
ChrisH …Thanks for that….I listened at 23 mins 30 sec where mentions nurses only advise GP on patient needs and GP then prescribes….not the whole picture obviously.
No problem, more than happy to help support this site in whatever way I can! If ever you need input you only need ask!
And I note that Don Valley has been placed on the “Sheffield Care Respite Alternative Pathway”.
Apparently Blunketts Socialist Fantasy whilst in charge of the “vision” for the 1991 Student Games will cost the (perpetually) Labour Council £25 million for the next 15 years…over 20 years after Clive Betts MP(then leader of Sheffield Council) decided the Games were a wondrous thing.
So…Labour through and through…Blunkett, Betts and Clegg..stands for BBC eh?
And yet-as we all held a minutes silence to reflect on the death of the Jessie Ennis FunPalace as dreamed of….not a peep from Sheffields MPs as named above.
Just some dyed tired smoke dried blondes of Orgreave telling us that Don is to be packed off to Dignitas…not even the option for a Roma Processing Centre for the next influx of Eastern European Students due next year…oh the fun and games we`ll now have to play out on the streets without Father Blunketts caring hands to guide us.
So the Pop Museum has gone up there, the Don Valley…my God the BBCs false gods are a tumbling eh?
Where will we ever get our next Sheffield runners?…ah, well Seb Coe just needed a dad and some safe streets to run along.
Oh dear-neither desired by Labour luvvies and leeches in Sheffield…seems like we`re stuffed for a while then!
Blunketts Mausoleum anybody?
Aside from the people that work in it, every single aspect of the NHS is effectively private. Every brick, every inch of cement, every drug, every layer of paint and every machine within it is supplied by private enterprise.
One of the main cutbacks to the NHS comes via the QIPP initiative and whilst the BBC (and others) like to park it at the door of the Tories, QIPP is actually a Labour invention that was put together whilst they were still in power. My point being that had they won the election, this would have to be in place.
Then we have two other things that have also drained the NHS dry. PFI, the policy of that financial whizzkid Gordon which has left trusts hocked up to the eyeballs for many times the worth of theactual building it produced and also the creeping socialist policy that the NHS should be all things to all men (and women). Everything became an illness to be cured and A&E began to stand for Anything & Everything.
It’s not creeping privatisation that is responsible for the funding collapse. There are other things at play here.
I heard a rumour that at one PFI’d hospital it cost 90 quid to replace a light bulb.
Not heard it on the BBC, though, so it must have been made up.
PFI “drained the NHS dry”? Another fact-free zone. Its very convenient to “blame Labour PFI” for current problems. As much as I detest Labour its a false accusation. Every PFI scheme had to pass “affordability tests” before it could be approved. NHS Trusts were NOT allowed to enter into a scheme which its revenue stream could not support. I have seen personally a 1,000 page Full Business Case for one hospital PFI, proving affordability, for a Trust now bleating it can’t afford its PFI payments – because it is overspending on its general clinical staffing and running costs. Most of the cost of the PFI build was covered by massive sale of its surplus NHS land to commercial housing developers.
PFI is simply a mortgage. Yes, of course its cheaper to buy your house outright. So did you buy your house outright, for cash? Perhaps you did what everyone else does. Take out a mortgage., spread the funding over thirty years, which is what most PFI schemes do.
The NHS is an organisational that suffers from Institutional Lying.
Three Reports these last few weeks.
1. Francis-mid-Staffs
2. Pollard-Savile-less Sir James style BBC.
3. Leveson..hang Murdoch, more Coogan/Grant type-BBC.
Now I`m no Craig…but if anybody would like to see which reports get BBC stories, references and namechecks…and which ones don`t get the !helium” of publicity after the usual gestures( lessons will be learned, time to reflect…redaction pen pronto!)…do let me know.
Heard Leveson named yet again on the BBC earlier…they`ll not let it lie with they?
I`d guess that Leveson still gets 10 times as many references as either Francis or Pollard…any thoughts why?
No mid-Staffs heads rolling?..no comment from the political elites and the f***in BBC please!
It’s not just mid-Staffs.
NHS failings cause 1,600 child deaths every year … no mention on the bBBC.
Leveson and the BBC are agents for the EU’s censorship campaign. Savile and Stafford are therefore fairly irrelevant.
http://britain-today.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/european-censorship.html
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2007-08/791
The power of the BBC is immense and their control of the news and current affairs agenda almost total. Their ability to smooth the way, or to bar it, to any government policy must never be underestimated. In fact i think it true to say that the BBC’s virulent anti Tory stance in the 80s and 90s caused the Tories to move leftwards in an attempt to ‘detoxify’ their party image. I don’t think that the public would have been so pro New Labour and anti Tory but for the BBC’c relentless demonisation of all things Tory. The consequence of this decades long bias is that we now have a Tory party trying to occupy more or less the same political ground as Labour and losing much of its core vote to UKIP which espouses ‘old fashioned’ Tory values , which of course many people want to see.
The BBC has successfully caused a schism on the right of British politics and ensured that the liberal/left will become the establishment of the country for quite some time. The current coalition more or less goes downs paths that the BBC approves of. An exception might be education but even their they have to make many concessions towards what the BBC and their union chums will accept.
I suppose that the Tories must have realised what the BBC was up to long ago but felt that the political capital of opposing the BBC and cutting it down to size was so great in the short term that it was not just not worth trying.
So in affect British governments can only act in so far as the BBC is willing to support their policies. In short we are run by an unelected elite who are paid by the state, control most of the media in the country and who are beyond the control of democratically elected politicians.
Whatever happened to democracy in this country?
You have to factor in the ‘ice cream van effect’ – if at a beach (length AB) a n ice cream vendor arrives and finds a rival seller parked one third of the way from A to B, he doesn’t go and park a third of the way from B to A. He parks, on the B side, as close as possible to his rival so that the people on the two thirds of the beach between him and B will reach his van first. The same effect often occurs with a two party system, where left and right are substituted for A and B. This is why Cameron acts like such a Conservative-lite politician – he sees himself as manoeuvring for this centre ground.
The Beeb culture pushes the centre ground to the left as far as they think they can get away with (not provoke a licence payer revolt or an administration that finds it imperative to cut them down to size) by turning as much length as possible of the beach between the vans and B into a no-go area and the Conservative leader sees little choice but to follow.
I’m sorry, but the BBC was absolutely spot on with the nurse prescribing story.
I work in an acute hospital trust and have a vague recollection of seeing a drug rep at an educational meeting about 2 years ago. Doctors are taught to regard with deep suspicion (over their 6 year undergraduate and 10yr postgrad training) drug company bumph. The equivalent “nurse prescriber” (also being extended to physios, ambulance crew, pharmacists) course can be done in 6 weeks. Peripherals such as dressings, catheters and accessories, incontinence devices, inhalers, stoma bags etc are often prescribed by nurses or a doctor is at least heavily guided by a “specialist nurse” in that area. According to pharmaceutical friends, reps are now targeting nursing staff because of the huge profits to be made.
“Huge Profits”? Since when was profit a dirty word? Profit is the engine of wealth creation, it is why we are not yet living in a Socialist sh*ihole (give it time!). Investment in research, patent expiry dates, are all about making something that is wanted and deserves it’s return on investment. You want drug companies to be loss makers – really? Well stick with leeches.
Ahh its about “health”, where profit isn’t allowed, is evil. Hospitals have prescribing advisors and protocols about first line treatments and cost-efficacy. Too much bullsh*t is peddled about big bad drug companies. Nonsense. It’s caveat emptor as everything in life, no exceptions for poor little doctors and nurses.
I have no issue with profits, but it is very easy to spend someone else’s money.
Balls, ideological balls. The privitisation of the NHS is driven by MP’s with shares in Private Health care, who enjoy spreading lies. Any rader of Private Eye knows that PFI is a complete sham. But the devout have never bothered with facts.
‘A’ wrote ‘ The equivalent “nurse prescriber” (also being extended to physios, ambulance crew, pharmacists) course can be done in 6 weeks’
I wish I had known this as mine took over 4 months with exams in law, pharmacology and numeracy. Also to compare the years a doctor trains with the nurse doing it in 6 weeks is insulting to be honest. To get to this point most nurses will have completed 4 or 5 years pre registration then many years post registration in practice. Personally I have 13 years post registration and my prescribing was part of my Masters course so please dont imply that nurses simply complete a 6 week course and can then prescribe.
presumably mardell will be on gurning now about Obamacutz in the US
no?
ok then