Posts Tagged NHS

Whittington Accident and Emergency under threat

21 November, 2009 at 8:37 am · Filed under Campaigns, Health, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Shocking news this week that NHS managers are considering downgrading Islington’s Whittington Hospital, closing its Accident & Emergency department.

Changing the Whittington to a ‘local’ hospital would mean 24 hour emergency surgery would instead be handled by ‘a wider clinical network’.

Some of us remember the same story played out with Barts. We must not let it happen again. Our local Liberal Democrats are taking a stand against the plans.

If Whittington A&E closes, patients will be directed to the Royal Free in Hampstead instead, as the two hospitals are already considering merging into one. Anyone who has tried to drive from Islington to Hampstead will know it’s a nightmare.

From Islington homes to the Whittington, it’s a straight run up the Holloway Road; but routes to the Royal Free mean taking residential streets through Kentish Town, or navigating Chetwynd Road – neither recommended in an emergency.

The sorts of emergencies that need urgent surgery – like injuries from road accidents or assaults – often happen outside ‘office hours’. That’s why 24 hour cover is essential.

And of course, Islington’s population is growing, with thousands of new homes already around the Arsenal development alone.

It’s madness to close our local A&E. So much for the NHS being safe in Labour’s hands.

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Packing more bags

12 September, 2009 at 10:14 am · Filed under Campaigns, Consumer ·Tagged , , ,

I blogged before about the UK citizenship test, that many UK citizens would fail.

Since then I came across this piece, on Labour Home of all places, describing the realities of the test process for would-be citizens. (I should add that it was the test’s location in Islington, not the article’s location on Labour Home, that led me to this!)

It’s a long piece, but well worth reading in full. Julia Svetlichnaja is a highly-educated woman who has lived here for 15 years, but she ‘failed’.

The applicants are treated in a degrading way – no privacy, no loo breaks, rude staff – as if trying to put the would-be citizens off from the start. Do the agency have targets for how many people pass? or how few?

Then there’s the questions. As Ms Svetlichnaja says, the test is “all about how to navigate through endless policies and rules, clauses and exemptions, it was all very instrumental; questions did not seek any understanding of what society is about, only how to obey the rules.”

As I blogged before, I failed the sample citizenship test and it sounds as if I would fail the real one too. Take this question:

The guidebook repeatedly assures the reader that medical treatment is free, courtesy of the NHS. An innocuous clause states: “Your GP can also refer you for specialist treatment if you have specialist needs.” When asked in the Test if specialist treatment was free, I answered yes. The answer is no.

Well then the answer is wrong. Or is this a sneak preview of future NHS policy?

Even if the results of the test are a ‘fail’ there is no need to make the experience so awful. Courtesy costs nothing (and the applicants are paying each time). The guide to citizenship makes much of Britain’s tradition of tolerance and respect. How shaming that our newest potential citizens experience the opposite.

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We love the NHS

23 August, 2009 at 10:43 am · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , , , , ,

It’s a couple of weeks now since the Republican right in the USA dragged the NHS into their own arguments over healthcare, with a series of bizarre lies about our NHS, such as that people over 60 don’t get treatment.

This has not been helped by leading Conservative Daniel Hannan telling Fox TV his views on the NHS: “we’ve lived through this mistake for 60 years now…. The reality is it hasn’t worked- it has made people iller… We have very few doctors- we disincentivise people from practicing medicine in this country… because there’s no market”.

Ever since, people have been falling over themselves (in the case of Brits, safe in the knowledge that A&E is there for us…) to put the record straight.

The Twitter feed #welovethenhs has produced facts, figures and feelings galore. It’s really quite moving to see so many people sharing their life-changing and life-saving experiences of the NHS. Particularly interesting comments have come from people who’ve lived in both the UK and the USA, including Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer who commented dryly “Lived 18 yrs in USA including having 2 children. Give me the NHS anyday.”

Another interesting piece comes from Graham Gudgin, an Englishman in New Jersey, who sensibly summarises the case: “In the UK, if you can afford it, you can take out insurance and be treated privately. However, if you cannot afford to do this, you’re still covered. This is what’s being proposed in the US. In fact people will have more choice, not less“.

My family relies on the NHS for our health care. In fact, you could probably construct at least one person from all the various body parts and functions we’ve had fixed by the NHS, and I’m sure other families have similar tales to tell. And even people with private healthcare have the NHS there for them if they have an accident, a heart attack or if a private procedure goes wrong.

My mother remembers life before the NHS: a poorer mum caught stealing the medicine my grandma had just bought. And a friend from church was reminiscing about families calculating how sick someone could get before they risked consulting the doctor.

One of my constituents, Peter, a respected business consultant, emailed me, pointing out that “two key indicators of the success of health policy are infant mortality rate and life expectancy“, and attaching stats, sourced from that subversive anti-American organisation, the CIA.

Peter goes on to ask, “If the US system is so good and the NHS so bad, why does the UK have a better infant mortality rate and life expectancy, even though expenditure per capita is much high in the USA? And Cuba, hardly a model of development, has a better infant mortality rate than the USA. Most other developed countries in fact do better than the USA.” He points out that the UK, Canada, France and Cuba are “four diverse countries with public health provision which, apart from life expectancy in Cuba, do better than the USA. This does not speak volumes for the US approach.”

At the time of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, one of the newspapers did a survey on what made people proud to be British: the NHS came top of the list. The USA may have rejected the monarchy but perhaps in the NHS we have an institution from which they can learn.

Our NHS may not be under threat from Republican politicians in the USA, but we cannot be complacent.
As Norman Lamb has highlighted, under Labour the NHS is experiencing massive bureaucracy and creeping privatisation to commercial healthcare providers, many of them US-owned, and a democratic deficit, where the public have no say in how our largest public service is run.

Ironically, the one area where market forces might have been appropriate, providing IT services, has been crushed by a huge and hugely-expensive national NHS IT scheme that is still not operational.

Small wonder that a nurse I canvassed this week is the latest convert from Labour to Lib Dem in Islington.

The NHS, brainchild of a Liberal, William Beveridge, is not the property of any one political party. And the outpouring of support for our NHS should give UK as well as US politicians pause for thought in considering future health policies.

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Thank you for sharing

23 March, 2009 at 8:58 am · Filed under Campaigns, Health ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

NHS cervical cancer screening is one of those rights I’m keen women should have, less keen to exercise myself.

But when my latest reminder arrived, I phoned within minutes and had my checkup within the week. Why? Well partly because of Jade Goody. Her openness about her terminal illness showed better than any public health campaign that cervical cancer is real and can kill if you don’t get checked regularly.

Choosing to share information about your health can help others: but sharing people’s health information without their permission can do the opposite. A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has found that women are not seeking help for post-natal depression from their GPs, because they are afraid the information will be shared with social services and they will be labelled bad mothers.

Talking of labelling, I’m now apparently a terrorist suspect because as a non-meat eater, I order vegetarian meals when I fly. (Vegetarian not vegan: I had one particularly grim airline breakfast of a rice cracker and some nauseating soya milk, while Richard tucked into egg, bacon and yoghurt next to me). Doubly-suspicious if you are born abroad, which makes Joanna Lumley public enemy number 1.

If you agree with me that this is barmy, there’s a Facebook group you can join here.

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MP’s crocodile tears for Finsbury Health Centre

18 January, 2009 at 1:21 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Health, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , ,

Crocodile tears from Islington South & Finsbury’s MP Emily Thornberry as she adds her voice to the thousands of local people who don’t want to see Finsbury Health Centre close.

It is of course her Government’s policies that are directly responsible.

Labour are disrupting popular, well-established GPs to force through polyclinics. The PFI finance rules – Gordon Brown’s baby – apparently make it uneconomic for Islington PCT to refurbish Finsbury Health Centre (ironically one of the first polyclinics).

And instead of local democratic control of health services, we have appointed Primary Care Trust boards, who are accountable only to Whitehall.

Labour have no plans to change any of these policies. So much as Ms Thornberry may protest her love for Finsbury Health Centre, these are empty words when it’s Labour policies that are closing it.

Liberal Democrat campaigners have been clear from the start that we want Finsbury’s local health services to stay local. After all, as the recent Cripplegate report found, while health is a top concern for the area’s poorest residents, so is the sense of community.

Why does Labour force Finsbury to choose between them?

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Health and wealth

12 January, 2009 at 10:48 pm · Filed under Health ·Tagged , , , , ,

The relationship between celebrities and health can be a lucrative one.

While some celebs lead obviously unhealthy lifestyles, others make money from sharing their own health regimes. There’s an annual surge in new year diet, exercise or lifestyle guides; and the magazines you read in the doctor’s waiting room often have health stories from the famous – like Jade Goody’s cancer treatment.

Other celebs do fundraising work for specific health charities or give their time to speak up for health causes because they want to make a difference. So you think the NHS could get celebrities to front public health campaigns for free. Especially when public services need every penny they can get.

But the Mail on Sunday has uncovered payments totalling almost £90k made by the Department of Health to celebrities to front public health campaigns. Lib Dem shadow health secretary, Norman Lamb, has written to the current Health Secretary Alan Johnson, asking him to reveal the total amount.

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PFI and Finsbury Health Centre

22 November, 2008 at 1:26 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , ,

The Islington Tribune has published my letter on the problems that Gordon Brown’s PFI obsession is causing our local NHS.

Under PFI, clinics are built with private money and leased back to the NHS, which has to pay back the cost over future years. If the PFI works, money drains from the NHS to the private sector.

If the PFI collapses, the taxpayer has to pick up the bill. The Primary Care Trust says PFI rules make it impossible to keep Finsbury Health Centre in its historic building. That’s not good enough for local people.

Meanwhile, London’s primary care trusts are being forced to invest in new polyclinics. This threatens the GPs and health centres that are already working well for local people. The local NHS will not get the money to improve existing buildings, because the government wants to impose polyclinics instead. It’s crazy that we risk losing Finsbury Health Centre, a pioneering polyclinic, as a result.

This is about more than a building. It is about keeping Finsbury’s health services where local people need them.

Liberal Democrats believe that money set aside in Whitehall for new polyclinics should be given to the local NHS now. Our doctors and our community should choose how to spend it in our area.

Back in June, opposition MPs held a parliamentary debate on polyclinics. Lib Dem MPs pointed out that Labour government plans to impose polyclinics could lead to the closure of up to 1,700 GP surgeries across the country.

Despite Finsbury Health Centre being under threat, MP Emily Thornberry did not bother to speak in the debate, and she voted the motion down.

It is useless having an MP who claims to support Finsbury Health Centre when she does nothing about it in Parliament.

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NHS database is costing us dear

13 November, 2008 at 9:57 pm · Filed under Health ·Tagged , , , ,

If you had £7.2m to improve services at your local hospital, how would you spend it?

There’s lots of good causes out there. For example, Guys has just spent £1.3m on a new centre for treating children with allergies, asthma and eczema.
Meanwhile the Royal Free has been lumbered with £7.2m expense from the failures of the latest NHS IT system.

And it’s not the first problem with the NHS database to affect local hospitals. Back in September, Barts and the London NHS Trust also admitted they were struggling, with at least £2.5M extra expense to make up for computer problems. That’s £2.5M less for patient care.

The driver behind the NHS national database is the Labour Government’s obsession with targets and the data to support them. As a software professional, I know well-designed, sensibly-implemented databases can really improve services. But the larger and more complex the system, the greater the room for error. And the greater the distraction from the main purpose of the NHS – caring for patients and promoting public health.

If Labour is forcing the NHS to spend billions of public money on national databases instead of nurses and doctors, then they have a duty to get it right. That’s not happening at the moment. The £12.7bn scheme is years behind schedule and it still doesn’t work.

And even if it did ever work, there are risks, as the people’s prophet, Vince Cable, pointed out a year ago.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A cheaper, less disruptive, and more sustainable solution would be for the NHS to adopt a common set of standards – and then let individual hospitals and GPs develop their own systems within them.

Scrapping the NHS National IT programme – as the Lib Dems propose – would release those billions to spend on frontline health care.

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Finsbury Health Centre latest

7 August, 2008 at 11:33 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Health ·Tagged , ,

FHC
There’s growing interest in our campaign to keep Finsbury health services local.

As I blogged earlier this year, Finsbury Health Centre is under threat of closure by Islington PCT. Both the Islington Tribune and the Evening Standard have picked up on the irony of closing this health centre while promoting new polyclinics elsewhere.

The good news is that the GP clinics are set to stay local, with new buildings provided close to the existing health centre. But the wide range of other community health services are set to be dispersed across Islington – bad news for the Finsbury community who have been served by this pioneering health centre since the 1930s.

The Centre’s historic significance is one of the reasons the PCT wants to move. A listed building is a challenge for any owner, and keeping Lubetkin’s masterpiece up to scratch costs money the PCT would rather spend on health care. I certainly don’t want Finsbury residents to have less than 21st century health care. But dragging sick children or pensioners in pain to the other end of the borough won’t be an improvement.

Part of the problem is the way the Government directs funding for public services. As we’ve seen with schools and hospitals, the Government puts more value into shiny new buildings – complete with a PFI timebomb for future budgets – than on the duller but more sustainable investment in maintaining older buildings. I think Islington’s new school buildings are great: but they should be developed by the choice of the local community, not central government dictat.

And that’s the other problem. Primary Care Trusts all over the country are accountable not to their communities but to the man (or woman) in Whitehall.

Meanwhile as far as Finsbury Health Centre is concerned, the local councillors & I have these demands:
– that the GPs stay local;
– that Finsbury residents retain easy access to other community health services;
– that there is full and meaningful consultation with local people;
– and that the PCT is funded properly to provide services where they are needed.

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Guardian blog 23 July

23 July, 2008 at 12:44 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , , ,

My latest Guardian blog is now online, covering ‘Make it Happen’, Finsbury Health Centre, and the Kings Cross access campaign.

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