Thursday, April 14, 2016

CCGs or FTs: Fighting for Money!

I have written before that A&E is the one thing that upset planners, accountants and most importantly the new CCGs. There is a belief, rightly or wrongly that A&Es still have real DOCTORS, and not someone flown in from Germany or further east. Nor are they like OOH or NHS111 where the concern is about money than your survival. As I was drafting this post another hospital is being overwhelmed by high A&E attendances.

What is most worrying is that A&E will lead to more hospital admissions: perhaps unnecessary ones or god forbid, absolutely essential ones.

Now! It is quite simple really!!!                                                                                                                                   

It is very much like  giving children the mortgage and meal money and that they buy primarily from mother, food, washing and accommodation. But then, there is no restriction on buying food from AQPs: other mothers, fish & chip shops, supermarkets and even McDonalds. What if the children sleep over at friends: is rent deducted.

They just cannot see it, can they?

  ©Am Ang Zhang 2013
It is indeed very sad to see how modern perverse incentives that were used in other institutions were used in our NHS hospitals in one part of the United Kingdom: England.

The figures are there for all to see and it is hard to believe that the very smart people that are currently running the country did not know.

In the brave new world, English Hospitals (or their managers) need to perversely increase activity to survive (or collect a good bonus before moving on or going off sick). GP Commissioners (CCGs)need to reduce hospital referrals in order to achieve government imposed savings or if it is run by privateers to find profits for shareholders.

Hospitals will fail and be bought up and the privateers will be so smart that they will only run the profitable parts.

Government will be left still running the loss making services or they could be sold out to the likes of Southern Cross .


Attempts to cull hospitals are happening in various guises and sometimes such failed. Fortunately for the government, since Les Misérables, the people may march and wave banners but they don’t do revolutions anymore. So instead of culling and closing A&Es, they downgrade them. It s a bit like, we do stomach pain but not myocardial infarcts.                                                                                                                

In the unholy war between CCGs that hold the money and the Hospitals that needed the money patients may either be denied treatments that were needed or perversely given investigations and treatments that were not. 

But wait, they dream up something new: patient must get better or hospitals will not get paid. They called it:

Outcomes based commissioning

So plan B then, from now on admit only well patients. Or those we know that will get better. Just remember that Clinton picked the hospital with poor mortality for his bypass. Why?

So mother is now not going to be paid unless the kids get As.

But, hang on some patient will die; and not every child will get As unless we fine the schools too.

Perhaps that too.

Suddenly, there is going to be some killing and surprise, surprise; it is not what you think: no, not patients. 

That would be too simple.

From the BMJ:
Kill the QOF

The QOF simply hasn’t worked. It is a bureaucratic disaster, measuring the measurable but eroding the all important immeasurable, and squandering our time, effort, and money. It has made patients of us all and turned skilled clinicians into bean counters. Incentives and centralised targets are under scrutiny throughout the public sector because targets just lead to gaming. It’s time to look away from the screen and at the patient once again. Turn off the financial life support and let this failed intervention die.

What happened? £10bn


We are entering the 10th year of the world’s largest public health experiment in EBM—the target driven QOF (Quality and Outcomes Framework). It has cost £10bn in direct payments to general practitioners, but this is just the tip of an expensive iceberg.

From 2004 to 2011 prescriptions for statins doubled, for angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and diabetic drugs near doubled, for antidepressants rose 60%, and for steroid inhalers rose 30%.  Polypharmacy is the norm not the exception, and research evidence validates this approach.

Statins & others:
Yet statins, for instance, are supposed to reduce heart disease by 30% within a few years. The QOF has created three million new statin users, so why has there been no demonstrable effect on heart disease trends? Also we might reasonably expect within a decade to see a change in the trajectory of UK life expectancy, but we have not. Likewise the QOF was designed to improve chronic disease management in general practice, but instead outpatient referrals have risen 5% annually, with similar rates in acute hospital admissions.

This is leading to unsustainable pressure and costs throughout the NHS. Perhaps assessing the impact of QOF is impossible because there is no control group. But we can compare UK trends with other similar countries, and there is no evidence that UK healthcare is outpacing these countries.

The problem with the NHS Reform is the NHS itself. Because it is still to be funded by Taxpayers, there is much money to be made.

It would be different if we separate out Private Health Care and State provided one.

That the management consultants found out a long time ago.

No! No! No! Let Private Providers make money from the so called NHS.

Soon the government will discover that money would drain from the state to Privateers with no improvement in the actual care delivered.

The master plan is simple: a fixed amount of money is now given to CCGs who will be responsible for the delivery of health care.


Well, from now on blame the CCGs. Ha Ha Ha.


Hospitals are now in a risky position and that means 5% of you who might be seriously ill are too. CCGs may not want to fund the treatment you need or within the time frame that you will need. A once wonderful training ground for doctors may no longer be so wonderful. There will probably be fewer functioning hospitals and soon the once prestigious world famous hospitals will just be bitter sweet memories of a few of us.

KILLED.

Now can you see it?

 ©Am Ang Zhang 2013

Monday, April 11, 2016

Anorexia Nervosa: Cello & Bach!!!



Cape Floristic Region (CFR) of South Africa
 ©Am Ang Zhang 2005
South Africa reminds me of my Anorexia Nervosa patient.

In The Cockroach Catcher I got my Anorectic patient to play the cello that was banned by the “weight gain contract”:
 


                 Jane got on well with me.

          She had to, as nobody understood that to her achieving was not a hardship but something she secretly enjoyed. She was no longer allowed to pick up her books as she had not put on any weight since her admission.
         
          Cello would be banned too, if her nurse was to have her way.

          For the unit to function the nurse must have her way. After all I was not there all the time to watch her. To watch if she was eating, vomiting, exercising or whatever else they did to avoid gaining weight.
          But I was determined that it would be the first privilege she would get if she put on half a gram.  Or any excuse I could think of.
          Brutal confrontation is often what happened in many adolescent units dealing with Anorexia Nervosa. The brutality is not physical.
          But these patients are intelligent and have such strong will power that confrontation generally fails and the failure can be a miserable one.  Yet it is the kind of condition that hurts. It hurts those trying to help. It hurts because these patients deserve better for themselves. It hurts because they are not drop-outs of society. 
          Was it too hard for Jane to keep at the top academically? Someone offered that as an explanation. Perhaps she should be moved to a state school.
          The idea horrified me.
          A fourteen year old non-smoking, non-drinking, non-drug taking, intelligent Audrey Hepburn look alike virgin turning up at your local comprehensive.  It sounded like a major disaster to me.
          I had to take the matter into my own hands. She did put on some weight and at the earliest opportunity I decided she should get back to the cello which had always been by her bed at the unit.

          She missed the cello, the only thing she could use to shut out her worries.
 

          Fourteen and carrying the burden of the world.
 

          Then she started playing.
 

          “Ah. The Bach G-major!”

 
          “So you know it.”
 

           Of course I do. The hours I spent listening to Yo Yo Ma and it was such amazing music, melancholic and uplifting at the same time.

          For a moment I forgot that I was her psychiatrist and she forgot she was my patient.
 

          “My grandma gave me Casals.”
 
          I knew Casals was even more emotional than Ma, but Ma is Chinese and he was less affecting, allowing the listener to tune in to his own mood.
 
She played from memory. What talent! What went wrong?”
 

          “I wish my dad could hear me.”

          It was the first time she could talk about her father. They had a very comfortable life in South Africa when father was alive. It was very difficult to imagine what he would have looked like. It was never clear what he did but he was involved in a number of ventures. The plantation Jane’s grandfather ran was sold when apartheid came to an end. He was involved in some private reserve and he was a photographer of sorts but my junior told me that mum started to cry when she talked about him so she did not pursue too deeply.


Read more:


Email: cockroachcatcher (at) gmail (dot) com.



A Brief History of Time: Anorexia Nervosa



Bach - Cello Suites:  Yo Yo Ma

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Best Views & Advice:FREE!










All photos©Am Ang Zhang 2016

The best advice is often free. Yet our government would prefer to spend millions (or was it billions) to buy them from people whose only motive is to get the easiest money they can lay their hands on: government money. Just look at Greece. Here in the UK, despite the fact that we have failures like Metronet, we still have other PPP/PFI projects.

We might get new hospitals that look like airport lounges but what about the doctors and nurses when we cannot afford them. Or are these places only there to house the ever increasing numbers of managers. What about the patients? Patients, did you say?

One Professor of Medicine was giving out his free advice in the Times: 
The internal market has been a costly disaster. Let the professionals manage medicine
This may sound familiar to those of us that were brought up the old fashion way in Medicine:

“……When I started in medicine, the hospital was run by about three people. Things were so much more simple when doctors and nurses treated patients, doing their best without the guidance of guidelines and targets, doing their best ... yes ... to make the patients better. How did we manage without forms to fill and waiting times compliance? Quite well actually. The medical director ran the medical side of things while matron and the accountant handled the rest.”

“It wasn’t much of a business then: it didn’t have to be, because there was no internal market to manage.”

“The internal market ……..has wreaked havoc. It has spawned a nation of administrators, here today and gone to another post tomorrow — while doing nothing to bring costs under control.”

“There are savings to be made. It is alleged that there are just 75,000 administrators at work in the NHS but this figure is laughably mythological. Doctors and nurses know that there are many more than this. They look around and see the numbers increasing.”

“One report by the Centre for Policy Studies published in 2003 indicated that there were 250,000 administrative staff employed in the NHS: at least one administrator for every nurse. In recent times the rate of increase of admin staff within the NHS has exceeded that of nursing staff.”

“……The principle of care for all from cradle to grave is worthy and wonderful. But the current reality is a cradle rocked by accountants who are incapable of even counting the number of times that they have rocked it……..” These are the very same people we pay market rate or they will go elsewhere!!!

“……Over the years politicians have made dramatic changes to the way that the NHS has been run. Recent changes have caused fragmentation and not led to any cost saving……”

“Moving patients from one place to another does not save the nation’s money, though it might save a local hospital some dosh.”

I have personally experienced a Trust buying a house for a family to move them to a neighbouring Trust.

It is still the same NHS paying for the care but the CEO of one trust will get more bonus.

“……So the internal market has failed because it does not consider the health of the nation as a whole, merely the finances of a single hospital department, a local hospital or GP practice…….”

Here is the advice:

“……Let us go back to the old discipline of the NHS. Let the professionals manage medicine, empower the professionals, the doctors and nurses and shove the internal market in the bin and screw down the lid…….”

Professor Jonathan Waxman is a consultant oncologist and he is unlikely to be joining Lord Mandelson.


Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Anorexia Nervosa: Let Her Die!



A reprint:

©2016 Am Ang Zhang 

Can a patient be allowed to die? 
Can a seventeen year old patient be allowed to die?
Can a seventeen year old Anorexia Nervosa patient be allowed to die?

Are we not supposed to save lives?

Could doctors be held to ransom? By?

Here is a Play: Let Her Die!

The Players:

The parents:
Father used to run a business security agency specialising in industrial counter espionage. Or was it espionage? I cannot be sure.

Too often there is this bizarre desire by some parents to make sure that if they cannot do it, no one else should either. We need to recognise it early enough. We are doomed otherwise, and so is the patient.

The patient: Nicola
It was really quite painful to sit there and talk to someone who looked worse than the worst they showed from Auswitz. Why could Nicola not realise that if she wanted any man to like her she would need to look a lot better, which involved doubling her weight for starters.

The Doctors:
Dr Hillman:

This was a family given up even by Dr Hillman, my most fervent supporter of family therapy. Father used to run a business security agency specialising in industrial counter espionage. Or was it espionage? I cannot be sure.

The Consultant:
        I did not go round looking like a hippie or pretending that I liked the music the teenagers listened to. I told them to me it was trash. I did not pierce my ear or have a tattoo. I certainly did not wear trainers to work.
       
        In short, you do not have to gain respect by becoming like them or worse, by pretending that you are like them.

The Experts:
I spent one session with them and agreed with Dr Hillman. They were good. We looked like a bunch of amateurs dealing with professionals. None of the family therapy tricks work, Minuchin or Haley.
        Impenetrable!

The NHS Trust & GMC

To me, suspension on full pay is a risk every doctor takes nowadays, as the basis is no longer limited to bad practice. It is no longer a reflection on whether you are good or bad clinically. Many psychiatrists are no longer prepared to use techniques that might upset their patients or parents of their patients.

The Main Action:

A family meeting was called and it lasted only a few minutes.
          I was in top form.

          “Nicola has been eating but after two months has not put on any weight. I cannot see any reason for her to continue to stay here. She might as well do the eating at home. She can then sort out for herself why she is not gaining weight without the pressure from us.”
          I tried to put it in the calmest way possible.
          “You mean you will let her die?” Father sounded a bit annoyed.

        With that father got up and left the room without saying another word.

          “What do I do now? You have upset him!” said mother.
          Good, something got to him at last, but I did not say it.
         
Nicola gave a wry smile to me as if to say, “You found me out.”
          She turned to mum, “Let’s pack and leave this dump.”
          We all kept still.
         
Six months later, one of the nurses bumped into Nicola in a nearby town. She was kicked out by father and moved in with another ex-anorectic. She was with a boy friend. More importantly she was wearing a very sexy dress to show off her then very good figure.
          She did not die.

                                           Based on an extract from my book The Cockroach Catcher
The Cockroach Catcher on Amazon Kindle UK, Amazon Kindle US

2 comments:

Dr No said...
CC - Dr No rather suspected that if you didn't turn up and comment on badmed, then you were probably doing a post of your own!

Dr No reads the moral of your post as less is more, ie the more doctors try to control patients (admission, section, forced feeding), the more the patient resists. Do the opposite (patient can go home, even die if the want to) and the patient still resists - in Nicola's case by gaining weight...even if she did do so rather rapidly...and, of course, having a spook for a dad is enough to put anyone on edge...

E's case (the one recently in the news) is very different. She was almost twice N's age, very different family by the sound of things, significant co-morbdities and a long history of failed forced feeding attempts (albeit with one early success). She was, if such a concept is meaningful, in end-stage anorexia nervosa.

Can a patient be allowed to die? Yes - we do it all the time.

Can a seventeen year old patient be allowed to die? Yes - we reluctantly and with great sadness do it from time to time.

Can a seventeen year old Anorexia Nervosa patient be allowed to die? Not if we can possibly help it. But anorexia nervosa is truly pernicious illness, and sometimes it defeats us all - although usually a bit later in the patient's life.

Would Dr No have discharged Nicola as you did? Almost certainly, and probably for the same reasons! 
Cockroach Catcher said...
It is perhaps The Cockroach Catcher's own experience with young Anorexia Nervosa Patients that has coloured his views. There is in him a genuine feeling that doctors should be allowed to doctor pure and simple and in that sense he feels that psychiatrists should be doctors too, real doctors.

Remember the early days of treating phobia when bus loads of phobic patient from none other than the Maudsley were taken to Piccadilly Circus and dumped there. It was known as implosion therapy. then later suicidal patients were given the sharpest razor blades so that they can get on with it.

In Psychiatry, the best treatment is without doubt Placebos. But placebos only works if neither the patient nor the parents knew.

In reading DN's blog I reposted my patient where I let her die.

Well, did I or was that part of Haley/Minuchin treatment? You can decide.

No the early day psychiatrists did not mean harm to come to the Picadilly or Razor patients, but when non-doctors are involved, good luck to the said patients.

Perhaps DN;s patients was of Millennium Trilogy quality and ooops, what was the state doing?

Please let the real doctors or better still the real psychiatrist get on with their real work, if only they are allowed to remember how to give all the guidelines floating around.

The Cockroach Catcher retired partly because he sensed he would not be allowed to carry on his own doctoring ways.