Chapter 3...................
CLEANER HOSPITALS. SHORTER WAITING LISTS. LESS BUREAUCRACY. DOCTORS FREE FROM WHITEHALL INTERFERENCE. MORE CHOICE FOR PATIENTS. SUPPORT FOR FAMILY DOCTORS. HELP FOR PEOPLE WITH LONG TERM CONDITIONS.
Eight years after Mr Blair promised to save the NHS, Labour are spending record amounts of taxpayers’ money on healthcare. Yet a million people are waiting for treatment, and average waiting times have increased. More people are dying each year from infections they pick up in dirty hospitals than the number who die on our roads.
I found this statistic hard to believe ut it is true. We spend millions of traffic calming and yet more people die from MRSA than die in traffic accidents.
There is a common themes running through these polcies of "freedom to do your job". This is something we all cry out for when constained by the limits of our brief.
Regular readers of this blog will know about my frustration with the health service on the occsions I have used it. The story we hear that Kingston hosiptal has run out of money and stopped peforming routine surgery is a disgrace that out MP should be doing something about.
Figures have shown that the last Conservative Government increased Kingston Hospitals budget by an average of 5.4% per year, yet since 2000, despite massive tax hikes and spending increasing in the NHS of 10.7%, Kingston Hospitals budget has gone up by 6.9%!
Kingston Hospital is clearly not getting its fair share of health spending. We have paid our taxes but where is our service?
8 comments:
Under the last Conservative Govt, Kingston Hospital NHS Trust started with a budget of £45m in 1992 and this rose to £54m in 1997.
Since 1997, the budget of Kingston Hospital NHS Trust has risen from £54m to £139m for financial year 2003-04 - IOW, it's more than doubled.
You have made the mistake of taking Ed Davey's figures at face value (i.e. after he has fiddled them) instead of reading them at source:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/ukparl_hl?DB=ukparl&STEMMER=en&WORDS=J0davei+kingston+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE=s&URL=/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050124/text/50124w50.htm#50124w50.html_wqn0
As ever, there are lies, damned lies and Liberal Democrat statistics. We expect better from the Conservatives though!
Thanks for this. Actually I did take them at source from the answer he receiuved from the minister. Inbstead of arguing %'s it is easier just to print them and let readers make their own judgement. Remember theese are in cash terms and not real terms.
The figures also take in to account of the changes of function from the closure of St. Mary's so are not strictly comparable. My real problem is that even with this the hosiptal has run out of money. Something is going wrong somewhere and if it is not money that is at the root of the Government's problems then it must be lack of reform of the NHS.
Yet again of course our MP did not get anyhting for Kingston from the Government, yet another example of his innefectiveness. Not often I agree with John Reid but when Mr. davey asked John Reid a questions and Reid replied "No doubt while he is complaining about that here, he will claim the credit for it back in his constituency." he got it about right.
Apologies for typing in last post. Laptop balanced on lap maybe where its name suggests it should be but it is not easy to type that way.
£139M a year for Kingston hospital. And how much money is spent on traffic calming eh? How many more people run down on Kingston's roads is acceptable to you then - just so that cash is not spent on traffic calming. Oh, but then the casualties would end up in hospital and would need still more money spent there.
Shouldn't you agree that prevention is better than cure?
I knew I should have doubted your 'statistics'.
From New Scientist:"Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) caused 51 deaths in England and Wales in 1993, but by 2002, the figure had soared to 800."
In England and Wales in 2003 3,177 were killed in road collisions.
3,177 >> 800
Sorry I made you do the work on the figures but my first comment is correct and my second incorrect. "More people die from hosiptal infections than are killed on our roads." MRSA is one of those infections.
As for the earlier anonymous there is no relation between hospital funding and road deaths - the compariosn is between hposiptal infections and road deaths. Perhaps you could tell me how much money Kingston Hospital spends on infection control and how much nationally is spent on traffic calming. We could then have a sensible debate about which money is better spent saving lives.
"There is no relation between hospital funding and road deaths". That's as maybe - but then again if hospitals didn't have funding for Intensive Care, then a lot of people wouldn't pull through serious injuries from road collisions and would be dead. Where do the 300,000 people per year in this country who are run down, injured, maimed in road collisions end up? Hospital. I wish they didn't have to so that people with illnesses could get treatment.
You tell me how much Kingston Hospital spends on infection control. You're the one intimating that it isn't enough compared to that spent on road safety measures. Washing one's hands is 'infection control' isn't it, but which bean counter is going to tot-up the cost of people at the hospital washing their hands? Sounds like another nice job for people in pin-stripes.
It is quite obvious that it is now more difficult to run a hospital successfully under Labour, due to the massive amount of beaurocracy and unneccessary entanglements that engulf the New Labour NHS. If Tony Blair thinks that matrons are all it takes to solve the problem he is wrong and the figures will prove that.
I agree with the decentralisation of the NHS in so much as local health authorities can be given the power to decide on many decisions for themselves, as it is they who know their own situation best. Yet it was the Tories who introduced a more decentralised NHS budgeting system, something which was opposed by Labour. Instead, Labour have done nothing but throw money at an NHS, instead of changing the Service's structure and finding ways to make it more efficient like those of our European counterparts.
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