Patients And Prisoners of Pain Petition In The NHS Archipeligo -

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Dog Island NHS In The Performance Shark Seas

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uploaded by Art de Rivers

More news evolves in the UK NHS but always from the tragic trail of those before .

Its a case in the UK over time there are system failures and the NHS sadly has been put through so many rapid changes that have not been monitored properly at several levels.

Failures are happening not least because Labour constructed the shifting sand policies of scrutiny and the double cross checking of that scrutiny. The Isle of Scrutiny Command was partly deserted and is up for grabs  as you will see shortly . 

Labour got rid of the Patient and Public Forum network in March 2008 and lay scrutiny has not recovered nationally since with the new Local Involvement Network (LINks).

Duplication in scrutiny terms equals a better chance of picking up serious and death causing mistakes  in a very large system like the NHS . 

That point appears to have  recently missed by Monitor (the new NHS Foundation Trust (FT) Performance Watchdog) when it suggested recently it should take over collecting data about clinical failures and death rate figures .

The apalling NHS Mid Staffordshire Trust story (400, and even up to 1200 extra deaths) showed Monitor up and the dash for Foundation Trusts over-performing status too. It embarrassed others too like the then dwindling  Healthcare Commision and the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority - they all failed people at Mid Staffs ..

There's a conflict of interest in Monitor having the right to collect that information about death rates at FT's .  Monitor already needs the FT's to work,  its whole raison d'etre - its wages it future are tied up with that . But it has not declared that interest in its arguments.

Dave West on the Health Service Journal led on this story : 

The Telegraph  (July 4th ) has caught the trend now of patient's fighting back . The Telegraph (not known for its sympathy with Labour) has generated over 4950 petitioners to "Heal Our Hospitals" . It has also catalogued failures...

No-one has to take the Telegraph's take at face value because a Parliamentary Committee on Patient Safety has issued its report and its very interesting to see that the almost invisible Commissioners of NHS Services  ( The Purchasers)  the Primary Care Trusts (PCT's) are now being critiqued and are coming into view from the shadows of  "who are they?"

Yes "WHO ARE THEY" indeed ..

The PCT's are not just supposed to commission NHS services, define their terms contractually ,  and purchase them.  They are supposed to performance monitor the contracts they set up with NHS Trusts (the supply side after purchase)

Its doubtful they can do this in reality since Labour has pared away local monitoring functions at lay level and any meaningful PCT internal overview scrutiny level - the impression you get if you try to make headway in viewing into PCT functions in the UK is chaos,  together with shifting and shifty staff who often make sure by various means you cannot get any information of any worth

Its even difficult with the Freedom of Information Act,  the spirit of which is ignored or batted away on the back of "excemptions" or other tricks  so much indeed in the NHS field, that the NHS Confederation ( a charity representing NHS interests) has issued membership guidance on getting more information out to the public domain ..

The Patient Safety Report  from the UK  Parliament states : 

Commissioning, performance management and regulation:

"A key role for Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in commissioning services is to ensure thequality and safety of those services.   We have grave doubts as to whether all PCTs areactually doing so."

Health politics is turbulent at the moment and the main problem is the floating islands of provision which are man made have had their anchors too quickly detached in favour of being driven by often ambitions bureaucrats who are performance led in their outlook .. The patient dies in that context sometimes . Whoops there's goes another hand sliding into the deeps .

However the pressure behind them is the Labour Gov't which has largely ignored the deeper consumer dynamics of "Patient Choice" and piloting it sooner in recovery led purchasing . That is where significant impacts could have been made sooner in some surgery, and  social care and mental health .

But the NHS is too sacred in the UK and supply sides are monopolised by it at levels where private provision could take over more ..

In mental health recovery the UK Govt with its questionable quality of supply sides dominates patients and dilutes "Patient Choice" into virtual meaninglessness .

Thus is more disability hidden, poorly dealt with ,  and perpetuated,  and now more latterly netted into UK  "Workfare" as the private job seeker trawlers go out to net disabled fish  with new rules for the size of the netting .. It was all US inspired by Blair and Brown 's visit to Wisconsin in the late 1990's .

The "Workless" too are mixed up in the NHS equations and that is where we are likely to see some mental health patient drownings as they too swim in the uncertain seas with floating NHS provision islands that are piloted to performance recede when approached . Believe it  , it is happening -  but drownings are often slow in the mental health field where non-acute patients are in the island community of anonymity  - on the grinding shores of sharp rocks ...