As the sun sets.............
©2012 Am Ang Zhang
The NHS faces the greatest scandal regarding CQC; it became clear that the idea of putting a non-doctor as its regulator is akin to getting a butcher to check on a top passenger aircraft. The Cockroach Catcher is of the opinion that despite the rhetoric, no SoS would put a doctor there.
Why? A doctor might, just might have a heart.
A coroner has criticised hospital staff in Cumbria
Joshua Titcombe died at nine days old from a common infection that could have been cured by antibiotics after medical staff repeatedly ignored his parents' fears for his health and told them "not to worry".
Ian Smith, the Cumbria
They included failing to recognise the symptoms of an infection, failure to act on those symptoms, failure to listen to the couple's concerns, inaccuracies in records made by staff, a lack of record keeping, an absence of continuity of care and a lack of special training for midwives on the postnatal ward.
The coroner also found a "strained and dysfunctional" relationship between midwives and paediatricians.
Smith said he believed 11 midwives at the hospital - all of whom gave evidence at the inquest - had colluded to cover up knowledge that low temperature is a common sign of infection. He said "incriminating" notes containing observations about baby Joshua's condition may have been deliberately destroyed.
The inquest heard there was an 80% chance Joshua would have survived if antibiotics had been administered in the hours after he was delivered. He was transferred by air for emergency care after he became seriously ill at Furness hospital in Barrow, and died in November 2008.
Joshua's father, James Titcombe, said he and his wife, Hoa, had urged staff at the hospital to treat their son with antibiotics, but were told he seemed well and did not need to see a doctor. He said they were told a paediatrician was "too busy" to deal with them.
Titcombe said: "The day after he was born I had come to take my wife and baby home when they found him not breathing well. It was a horrific shock. They told us he had a problem with his heart, then with his oesophagus. All the time I just suspected he had the same infection as his mother."
The baby was transferred to a paediatric centre in Manchester Newcastle
Allyson Pollock: CQC
We now know that England's healthcare regulator, the Care Quality Commission, tried to cover up an investigation into a hospital trust where babies were dying. This appalling tale has been spun to be about the "rotten culture" at the heart of the NHS. The true story of the Morecambe Bay cover-up, however – just like Mid Staffs, where hundreds of patients died – is one of market failure.
Two questions in particular have not been properly addressed. Why would the CQC be complicit in the cover-up of poor performance? And why was the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust so desperate not to expose the failings at its Furness hospital? The answer to both questions lies with the new market system that brought the CQC into being, a system introduced by New Labour and implemented by the Tories.
.....The CQC is has a legal imperative to get the market up and running by developing the systems to register more than 22,000 health and social care providers. The real story of the CQC scandal is that market-led changes are creating deficits and poor quality of care, which managers must seek to conceal in order to survive. Central to the government's NHS reforms is the concept of a well-regulated market. Behind the CQC controversy is an assumption that if a commercially run hospital is failing it has simply not been well enough regulated. But experience from the US shows that effective regulation of large healthcare corporations is impossible: we cannot afford it, or get the data necessary to carry it out. That is why the NHS had direct management in the first place.
One should perhaps ask the question: who put the head of CQC there and who is there now. Certainly not a doctor.
In the new world of doctoring, money comes into it and with that many doctors are losing their hearts. But we did have the infra structure to preserve it.
It would be such an irony if the new SoS be drawn in and become the unlikely and perhaps unwilling hero that Bevan used to save his NHS: a sort of reverse curse.
The Guardian:
Jeremy Hunt has said the Care Quality Commission's alleged cover-up of failings at a Cumbria hospital are shocking, and he will back appropriate action against those responsible "absolutely to the hilt". The health secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "These are very, very serious allegations and they should have very, very serious consequences if they are proved. "I know the CQC are looking into disciplinary procedures and what can be done: what sanctions are available; whether you can have forfeiture of pensions, all those things. There has to be due process, but … it is totally appalling that this kind of thing should happen." Hunt said such failings damaged the NHS and undermined "the millions of doctors and nurses who do an amazing job day in, day out". The health secretary also acknowledged serious systemic flaws with how the CQC was set up in 2009, saying it was wrong to have the same regulator charged with both identifying and rectifying problems. He said the CQC's "generalist" system meant that the same inspector would visit such different facilities as a dental practice, a GP surgery, a hospital and a care home.
Cousin of Virginia Bottomley: Secretary of State for Health 1992-95
So there’s Jeremy newly installed as Health Secretary after just seven short years as an MP. This is a summary of his meteoric rise:
He made a fortune at the taxpayers’ expense as monopoly supplier to a notorious quango where, by happy coincidence, his cousin sat on the Board. He became MP for SW Surrey where, by happy coincidence, his cousin had been MP previously. He became Minister in charge of Media & Culture where, by happy coincidence, he wound up steering his pals at Newscorp in the right direction. And he became Health Secretary partly because, by happy coincidence, his cousin is a lobbyist for the private health sector.
As I listened to the Ring Cycle (Solti), I am reminded of the genius of Wagner who warned us about the Ruling Class years ago.
Soon they will start selling off the famous hospitals.
The NHS (England) as we know it will soon disappear.
Wagner’s opera will always be there: The Ring: Child Psychiatry & Human Behaviour
A culture of corruption pervades the links between government and business,
fuelled by and fuelling privatisation.
These relationships are – a conspiracy against the public interest.
Adam Smith
There is no end, it seems, to the fiasco of rail privatisation. For the second time in three years, the holder of the coveted east coast franchise has walked away from a contract it can no longer afford. Not only that, but it turns out that National Express – whose chief executive, Richard Bowker, has decamped to the Gulf in a hurry – has protected itself from the vast bulk of the £1.4bn it owes the government by insulating its subsidiary, Fred Goodwin style, as a "special purpose vehicle".
But far from slinking off into the corporate undergrowth, National Express is now threatening to sue the government if it also takes over the company's two other profitable franchises. Once again, we are in the world of the Metronet consortium, whose collapse finally discredited Gordon Brown's disastrous public-private partnership for the London underground: where instead of transferring risk to the private sector, the government ends up subsidising private profit and picking up the bill when the music stops.
For all its rise in passenger numbers, Britain
Now NHS:
As we are ourselves experiencing the worst from our ruling class over the NHS and its so called reform, Wagner’s opera is an uncomfortable reminder that we should never have trusted the ruling class.
Even before the new Bill was passed, changes were in place in the NHS that made it impossible to go back. Now it looks as though the changes were much worse than first thought. Doctor leaders were hoping that there is still decency in our ruling class.
Well, unfortunately many of us will be dismayed, disgusted & disappointed!
Please do not get me wrong, it is not a simple privatisation. We are not really following the US. They regulate insurers where we do not. If we were required to get insurance Obama Style it might have been better. No, basically even if you get the top insurance there will be conditions that will be left to your friendly NHS hospitals. Just check your policy if you do not believe me.
No it is under the guise of COMPETITION.
It is allowing Any Qualified Provider (privateer if you must know) to cream off. But it is not as simple as that. Recent PIP private clinics not only refused to remove the implants but went into administration to avoid paying compensation. There is as yet not legislation to guarantee NHS patients. Even travellers seem better protected.
In health care, DEATH is irreversible.
The NHS has been by and large highly efficient as it has avoided the pitfall of internal market system until recent years.
The crazy bonus system, internal market and Pavlovian style reward system skewed the efficient NHS to breaking point.
A once fairly integrated health care system where many doctors and nurses contributed free extra hours became a scandal ridden system where OOH fight not to see patients and not let A & E see them either. Or else OOH are run by so few doctors that patients suffered or died.
But it could be worse as the new AQPs do not seem to be liable:
The Guardian:
The family of a young woman is suing the country's biggest out-of-hours GP provider and one of its nurses, whose failures meant her fatal condition was not diagnosed, because neither will accept liability in a test case over legal responsibility in a privatised NHS.
Clare Secker, 19, died of bronchopneumonia in December 2008 after a nurse working for the privately-run telephone service told her parents to give her paracetamol and fluids.
Earlier this year the nurse admitted through her lawyers that she had been "in breach of her duty by failing to arrange for [Secker] to be seen by a doctor". If the young mother, who died when her son Tyler was less than a year old, had been prescribed antibiotics she would have recovered fully.
Despite this neither the firm, which was part of the Harmoni out-of-hours service until it was bought by Care UK
The nurse claims she does not need to pay out as her employment contract specifically states that the company had insurance in place "to indemnify … for any claim arising from any wrongful act committed by … any employee while carrying out their contractual obligations". But Harmoni says its insurance excludes responsibility for negligence by nurses.
With the Health and Social Care Act 2012 leading to more NHS contracts going to private providers, lawyers are concerned that the fragmented system will lead to a loss of accountability.
"It cannot be right that patients no longer know who is actually providing their care, or for those who are harmed to have the additional stress of providers trying to dodge responsibility by pointing to a clause in a contract or insurance policy. Until something disastrous happens we, the public, think we are still within the safety net of the NHS and increasingly that's just not the case. There is little transparency or protection, it seems to me."
"It cannot be right that patients no longer know who is actually providing their care, or for those who are harmed to have the additional stress of providers trying to dodge responsibility by pointing to a clause in a contract or insurance policy. Until something disastrous happens we, the public, think we are still within the safety net of the NHS and increasingly that's just not the case. There is little transparency or protection, it seems to me."
Hospitals now fight other hospitals and the failed ones will be handed over to privateers. Some of these have the highest mortality rates. I am surprised that they are not sold off for just a single pound.
The more failed hospitals, the better for the government. Once they washed their hands off, it is not their problem. If the privately run hospital failed, they change CEO, change ownership and continue.
The GMC has been quiet about them as they have with the Breast Implant ones and many other plastic surgery private hospitals.
Yet, right now the NHS picked up the mess of the PIP implants. The private companies pocketed the money. Lots of money.
Perhaps most damaging for private investors drawn by the potential profits to be made from the state has been the probing of their affairs by tax inspectors. The industry has been under scrutiny since 2007, when a spate of high-profile deals, including the buyout of Capio, led to investigations into financiers.
The charge is that private equity firms siphon profits out of the state's coffers while avoiding their fair share of taxes. Berglund, of Capio, says: "It is always thrown about that we are not paying taxes but it is not true."
Swedish tax authorities are, however, taking some companies to court because pay in private equity groups is often linked to the profits made on deals and has been incorrectly taxed, it is said, for years at rates lower than that required for income in Sweden
Earlier this month one of Capio's owners, a private equity firm called Nordic Capital, lost a court case against the Swedish tax agency, leaving it with a bill of 672m Swedish krona (£63m). The authorities, it is reported, will also slap a tax bill collectively of 2.6bn krona on another 34 individuals.
"There has been a strong reaction in Sweden
If they are not RULING, where are they?
Virginia Bottomley: Secretary of State for Health 1992-95 now with BUPA. Cousin of Jeremy Hunt.
The Slog
So there’s Jeremy newly installed as Health Secretary after just seven short years as an MP. This is a summary of his meteoric rise:
He made a fortune at the taxpayers’ expense as monopoly supplier to a notorious quango where, by happy coincidence, his cousin sat on the Board. He became MP for SW Surrey where, by happy coincidence, his cousin had been MP previously. He became Minister in charge of Media & Culture where, by happy coincidence, he wound up steering his pals at Newscorp in the right direction. And he became Health Secretary partly because, by happy coincidence, his cousin is a lobbyist for the private health sector.
“Interestingly, former health ministers have done particularly well. The ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt earns more than £100,000 as a consultant for Alliance Boots and Cinven, a private equity group that bought 25 private hospitals from Bupa. After leaving the department, her predecessor, Alan Milburn, worked for Bridgepoint Capital, which successfully bid for NHS contracts, and now boasts a striking portfolio of jobs with private health companies.”
Alan Milburn
Following his resignation as Secretary of State for Health (to spend more time with his family, his partner is a hospital doctor), Milburn took a post for £30,000 a year as an advisor to Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm heavily involved in financing private health care firms moving into the NHS, including Alliance Medical, Match Group, Medica and the Robinia Care Group. He has been Member of Advisory Board of Pepsico since April 2007. Wikipedia
Alan Milburn now also holds a place on the board of PepsiCo as an advisor. Wikipedia
Alan Milburn
Following his resignation as Secretary of State for Health (to spend more time with his family, his partner is a hospital doctor), Milburn took a post for £30,000 a year as an advisor to Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm heavily involved in financing private health care firms moving into the NHS, including Alliance Medical, Match Group, Medica and the Robinia Care Group. He has been Member of Advisory Board of Pepsico since April 2007. Wikipedia
Patricia Hewitt
In January 2008, it was announced that Hewitt had been appointed "special consultant" to the world's largest chemists, Alliance Boots. Such an appointment was controversial given Hewitt's former role as Health Minister, resulting in objections to her appointment by members of a Parliamentary committee. Hewitt will also become the "special adviser" to private equity company Cinven, which paid £1.4 billion for Bupa's UK
In March 2008, it was announced that Hewitt will join the BT Group board as a non-executive director.[40] She joined the group on 24 March 2008. In July 2009, Patricia Hewitt joined the UK India Business Council as its Chair.
In May 2009 The Daily Telegraph reported that Hewitt claimed £920 in legal fees when she moved out of a flat in her constituency, stayed in hotels and then rented another flat inLeicester . Claimed for furniture including £194 for blinds delivered to her London
Simon Stevens: now with UnitedHealth
The 21st century power brokers -- less stable, less visible, more peripatetic, and more global in reach than their elite forebears -- are potentially more insidious and dangerous to democracy. Their manoeuvrings are largely beyond the reach of traditional monitors. Unlike the rest of us, these players are virtually immune to accountability to voters or government or corporate overseers, because the full range of their activities and their true agendas are more difficult to detect.
Janinie R. Wedel
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