Your Life In Their Hands: But Whose Hands?

 ©2010 Am Ang Zhang

Farewell                      Wang Wei (701-761)
Dismounting, let me share your farewell wine
Where, friend are you heading now?
Choking, fate has not been kind to me
Will retire to the southern slopes to seek rest

Enquire no more when I am gone 
Till the end of clouds, endless white clouds!

 Gustav Mahler    Das Lied von der Erde

You can't sack me! I am going!

Sir Roger Boyle: 'It is horrific that the NHS's future is threatened'

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Complete baloney:

The heart czar had given a speech in which he described Lansley’s claim that the NHS was over managed as “complete baloney”. He had critcised the NHS reform strategy of throwing out the old and bringing in the new “without even looking at things that have worked well,” and had warned about the dangers of dismantling relationships nurtured over years and destroying “corporate memory.”

Knuckles rapped:

Lansley was not pleased. Boyle described what happened. “Miraculously, I found myself in his office. His aides were debating whether they could sack me before they discovered I was going anyway. Lansley said he was disappointed I had gone public without telling him. Which is fair dos except he could have found out if he had bothered to see me. It was a short meeting. I had my knuckles rapped.”

Waste:

It is a pity Lansley had not made more effort to find out what Boyle was up to because he would have learnt some important lessons about the NHS and what it had achieved without the benefit of the market revolution being ushered in under the NHS reforms.

The success story: lives

During his 11 years in post - Boyle retired on Friday - the death rate from heart disease has halved. Waiting times for treatment have been slashed. There are more surgeons, more patients on drugs (for blood pressure and cholesterol), better equipped units, and around 60,000 lives saved each year - half from changes in lifestyle (such as reduced smoking) and half from improvements in treatment. Not a bad record on which to bow out.

Keeping quiet:

But Lansley was not keen to trumpet this success. And Boyle thinks he knows why - it does not play to the Health Secretary’s agenda which is to dismiss everything done before his time in order to bolster support for the revolution he has meticulously planned to open up the NHS market and subject it to more competition.

Collaboration not competition:

“All the improvements in cardiovascular care have come from collaboration and leadership. Where is the evidence that competiton between commercial providers makes a blind bit of difference to cost efficiency and quality? The competition I want to see is between clinicians vying with each other over whose service is the best. If you try and improve care by getting United Health to provide the service that would be crazy.”

“I absolutely think the NHS is the best public service in the world. It is horrific that its future is threatened.”

Jobbing Doctor: Speaking up:

He has finally blown the whistle, now he is safe from recriminations from the executive. He has had his knuckles rapped by Mr Lansley, and will not get a seat in the House of Lords (probably didn't want that, anyway).

What he says about Mr Lansley and the New NHS bill will make grim reading for the few zealots who still believe that the New Bill is a good idea.

NHS : Andrew Lansley, his Doctors and MPs.

7/26/11 4:23 PM