excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Oct 27, 2017 8:58:06 GMT
Interesting chat with an audiologist at the PFI hospital I visited yesterday. I asked about what the hell was going on that I had been referred to Specsavers rather than them, and was told a local commissioning group had been trying to close them down for ages. Unfortunately, they are efficient and can do the job a lot cheaper than the commercial outfits which have to turn a profit, and at least one of the commercial outfits has found it impossible to compete. Presumably, that's why I was referred to Specsavers.
Despite this, work is still being directed to the commercial outfit, and the NHS people have been told that they are not allowed to take on any new patients. However, it seems that patient choice overcomes this, as happened in my case. I asked why this had happened and suggested that perhaps brown envelopes were involved. The reply was "You may think that. I couldn't possibly comment!" Whatever one makes of this, the opportunity for corruption is certainly there, and I expect there are people who will take advantage of it.
So if you want to keep the NHS, perhaps its worth asking your doctor to keep you within the NHS if he refers you somewhere else. You can still choose, apparently, at least until they close this loophole or shut down the NHS facilities so there is no choice anyway.
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jean
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Post by jean on Oct 27, 2017 9:34:40 GMT
Did you remember also to ask her what she thought about PFI?
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Oct 27, 2017 10:47:48 GMT
No. It is your obsession, not mine.
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jean
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Post by jean on Oct 27, 2017 15:39:08 GMT
Did you remember also to ask her what she thought about PFI? No... What a shame! For whatever you think of the costs of the rent to the private company that owns the building, that's only part of the story. Indeed, you yourself mentioned the fact that the company maintains the building, too. You thought this was an advantage of the arrangement. But to know how it works in practice, you really should talk to the people who have to function in this environment. Don't forget to ask on your next visit!
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jean
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Post by jean on Oct 27, 2017 16:00:34 GMT
Another strange blind spot of yours prevents you from seeing the connexion between PFI and the examples of creepng privatisation of the NHS you are aware of. So if you want to keep the NHS, perhaps its worth asking your doctor to keep you within the NHS if he refers you somewhere else. You can still choose, apparently, at least until they close this loophole or shut down the NHS facilities so there is no choice anyway. Here's Felicity Lawrence, writing back in 2002: ...PFIs have usually been put in place where you can also introduce user charges - tolls for new roads or bridges, higher train fares for tube investment. Where will that money come from in the health service? The inexorable logic of PFI - which pushes trusts to find new sources of income - leads to foundation hospitals. PFI is a way of handing new hospitals over to the private sector. Foundation hospitals are a new form of privatisation. Tony Blair and Alan Milburn propose to free the best-performing hospitals from top-down hierarchical planning. Foundation hospitals will have independence from central government control and the power to borrow on the capital markets.
How will they pay for this borrowing? The details remain remarkably sketchy. If most of the favoured hospitals' extra income comes from government, as they start drawing in more NHS patients and the money that goes with them, it can only be at the expense of other hospitals. Remember opt-out schools - centres of excellence which left sink schools around them?
Who will be the losers this time? If foundation hospitals are attracting extra money through government funding and government budgets are capped, keeping Gordon Brown happy, what they win has to be at the expense of other NHS trusts. Unless, of course, it is at the expense of users in the form of charges.
Is this the hidden agenda? Perhaps the creeping privatisation that foundation hospitals will facilitate has just not been thought through. Charging is no doubt too politically explosive to handle in one leap. But the steps leading towards it are in place...
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Oct 27, 2017 17:32:56 GMT
I think - having locked themselves into a 'pay anyway' agreement - that there might be a certain reluctance to shut down the operation it houses.
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Post by aubrey on Dec 4, 2017 11:04:29 GMT
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Dec 4, 2017 11:31:56 GMT
Well, they are 'considering' axing it.
Personally, I'd be delighted if they did so. PFI seems to have been entirely inappropriately used in this particular case and the sooner it is stopped the better.
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Post by aqua on Dec 4, 2017 11:33:53 GMT
^ ^ ^
" This site can’t be reached "
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Post by aubrey on Dec 4, 2017 11:46:00 GMT
^ ^ ^ " This site can’t be reached " Your settings maybe, Aqua. It worked for me just now. It's a link to The Yorkshire Post, in case you can't see.
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Dec 4, 2017 11:48:50 GMT
Try "open in a new tab". It worked for me.
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jean
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Post by jean on Dec 4, 2017 12:40:31 GMT
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Dec 4, 2017 12:49:14 GMT
Oh yes there is!
It's BEHIND you!!!
It's only inappropriate if the cost is excessive. When you are dealing with human life - as you are in the case of hospitals - you need to put a figure on the value of a human life and the number of lives saved before you can make such an idiotic claim, Jean.
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jean
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Post by jean on Dec 4, 2017 12:58:21 GMT
Sententious nonsense, exco.
More lives can be saved at less cost if the money is borrowed directly - as Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust eventually discovered.
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excoriator
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Post by excoriator on Dec 4, 2017 17:36:20 GMT
Sententious nonsense, exco. More lives can be saved at less cost if the money is borrowed directly - as Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust eventually discovered. How do you know? Without knowing the comparative costs you are expressing an opinion, not a fact. In the real world - the one most of us exist within - we couldn't borrow it directly, so I can't see the point of your comparison anyway. Pointless, like many of your posts.
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