Health service can't remain a sacred cow
Happy children in pyjamas, bouncing on spotless hospital beds… smiling, dedicated nurses, dancing attendance on their patients’ every need…
In his exuberant Olympic opening ceremony last year, Danny Boyle presented a picture of the NHS as the soul of compassion, the pride of Britain and envy of the world.
Just how far removed that vision was from reality became clearer than ever yesterday, as another horrifying official review laid bare the deep failings in the health service.
In his exuberant Olympic opening ceremony last year, Danny Boyle presented a picture of the NHS as the soul of compassion, the pride of Britain and envy of the world
Indeed, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh’s report should mark the end of our self-delusion over the NHS, shared by every major party for 65 years – and the beginning of a serious debate about how to organise our healthcare better.
As this paper has always acknowledged, some of the world’s finest doctors and most dedicated nurses work for the monolith founded by Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1948.
Up to 1,200 people died unnecessarily at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2009, but it appears that this scandal was not a one-off
But painfully clear is that NHS failings extend far beyond the odd rogue
Trust such as Mid-Staffordshire or the 14 death-traps examined by Sir Bruce, where thousands have died since 2005 through basic blunders, neglect, bad hygiene and inadequate care.
Indeed, the fault lies in the very ethos of an NHS that has come to see meeting targets as more important than caring for patients – while politicians’ first reaction to evidence of appalling inhumanity has been to cover it up.
A report published yesterday by Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of NHS England, delivered damning verdicts on the standards of care and mortality rates of 14 NHS trusts
We saw this on Monday, when Lady Neuberger’s harrowing report on the Liverpool Care Pathway vindicated the Mail’s campaign highlighting how the officially-approved guidelines on end-of-life care were being routinely abused.
Let’s not mince words. In the rush to free up beds, the LCP has been treated as a licence to kill off patients by thirst, hunger and drug overdoses.
What kind of ethos allows that?
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This same ruthless neglect can be seen in the out-of-hours care crisis, which means we are almost 30 per cent more likely to die if we fall ill on a Saturday than on a Monday, as doctors abandon their patients in the evenings and at weekends.
And now Sir Bruce finds failure or mediocrity ‘deeply entrenched’ at some of the 14 Trusts he examined – despite the fact that the Care Quality Commission, under shocking pressure from the Labour government, had given more than half of them a clean bill of health.
Isn’t it increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that the NHS has simply grown too big to be properly managed?
What is crystal clear is that throwing more money at the problem is no answer. When Labour tripled health spending over its last spell in office, the NHS bureaucracy ballooned and staff grew richer, while outcomes for patients improved only marginally.
Indeed, this is the week when spinning, spendthrift Labour has come crashing down from the moral high ground on the NHS.
But the real lesson of the Keogh report is that the NHS, funded from general taxation and free at the point of delivery, can no longer be treated as a sacred cow – by any political party.
Sacred cow (2)
The welfare state has traditionally been seen as another of those sacred cows that MPs threaten only at their electoral peril.
The latest poll says otherwise.
For in the week when Iain Duncan Smith imposed his £26,000 cap on benefits – while daring to proclaim that the welfare state is a cause of misery and social injustice – the Tories have soared by a remarkable seven points, to draw level with Labour.
Indeed, so warmly has the Work and Pensions Secretary’s move been received that the Tories now speak of lowering the cap to £20,000 and limiting child-related benefits for the jobless to two children.
At last, ministers are coming to realise that far from dreading ‘Tory cuts’, voters are fed up with seeing their earnings lavished on the workshy – or treated as ‘funny money’ to squander on vast bonuses and payoffs for failed civil servants, quangocrats and BBC bigwigs.
