Tuesday 26 October 2010

Cuts, cuts and more cuts

I have no problem with the reality of a recession and belts being tightened, this is just an inevitability and part of life. One thing I do resent is the fact that the last government spent so recklessly off the balance sheet in the form of various PFI schemes.

Numerous NHS Trusts around the country are now paying for the government's errors, they are having to service these PFI contracts and a disproportionate amount of money has to be fenced off to do this. These costs cannot be trimmed, the contracts were set in stone years ago, it is as if the government sold its soul and we are now paying the price, there is no going back.

So while essential services are cut, while patients suffer as PCTs restrict access to essential operations and medicines, it is ridiculous that there is no risk to the income of the private firms who have their hands in the NHS' till. These private firms and guaranteed their profit, they will get their money come what may. The system is all wrong, how can this be right when the blind old man with cataracts is not guaranteed a fix, or the limping old lady with a painful hip is not guaranteed a reasonably speedy operation?

Cuts to local government budgets for social care are going to compound this problem. We are already massively short of beds as it is, so with winter coming and money short, as well as our increasingly aged population, there are some very stormy times ahead.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Spot on!

I speak to lots of clinicians, from across specialities & across the land. It always fascinates me how they seek to rationalise things, insisting that their trust should be OK. Maybe they are fool enough to believe this, I dont know. One of the most frequently used rationalisations is "Oh but I say old boy, they couldnt possibly close us old boy, we're a PFI, so our jobs are secure haw haw haw" Piffle. Foundation trusts will be landed with massive PFI debts, at just the time that "commissioners" but their income. The FTs will be forced to cut staff & that means the pompous prostatomegalic patricians, who thought their jobs were secure, will be in for a very rude awakening. "Ah yes, Old Sausage, they could get rid of some of those anaesthetists, but they couldnt get rid of me, I'm deputy chair of the Transfusion Committee, last year I joined the Drugs & Therapuetics Committee, and next year, it'll be my turn to be Secretary of the Medical Staff Committee, what/ what? haw haw haw" With blithering idiots like this, the future of UK medicine is at risk.