999 Emergency!

Spokes and I caught the train over to Manchester today to join the ‘Save Our NHS’ march and demonstrate outside the Conservative party conference alongside 50,000 other people of all backgrounds from all corners of the British Isles.

As someone who has spent the past 6 years working to ensure that patient voices are heard by those who commission and provide health and social care services, I’m all too aware of the damage that the current coalition government has inflicted on one of this country’s greatest achievements. And, in a personal capacity as a tax payer and user of NHS services, I don’t feel I can stay quiet about the creeping privatisation of health services.

I’m reminded of Arachne's blip a year ago this month which sums up the unique value of the NHS clearly, movingly and succinctly.

But, if you need further reasons, Britain’s biggest union, Unite, says:

“The Health and Social Care Act (2012) has unleashed chaos into the health service. A full competitive market is trampling on cooperation and fragmenting service delivery, paving the way for private companies to cherry pick the most profitable treatments.

The government’s multi million pound shake up, coupled with an unprecedented £20 billion of so-called efficiency savings are putting our NHS at grave risk. Patient satisfaction has plummeted from an all time high to of 70 per cent to just 58 per cent in a year. Waiting queues are soaring and our A&Es are in crisis.
In just three years £7 billion of new NHS contracts have flooded the private health care market– a figure set to soar to £20 billion in the next few years.
· 106 companies have been licensed to provide NHS community services
· 358 GP surgeries are run by Virgin Care
· Virgin Care runs more than 100 services across the country, including sexual health services in Oldham, a £120 million contract to run Devon children's integrated health and social care community services, and a £500 million contract to run community health services in Surrey
· Serco has won a £140 million contract to run community healthcare in Suffolk and a £32 million contract to run out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall
· Sainbury's - the supermarket giant - now has over 250 pharmacies across the UK, dispensing medicines behind the NHS logo to outpatients and Healthcare at Home for South Tees Hospitals NHS foundation Trust
· Based on the tax haven of island of Guernsey, Specsavers - the optometrists and eye wear specialists - has bagged more than 30 NHS contracts to supply hearing aids and community audiology services on high streets across the country. It is one of several private firms approved to provide NHS services under the government's 'any qualified provider' scheme
· 313,000 patients waited for four hours or longer in hospital accident and emergency departments, the highest level since 2004
· More than 220 operations a day were cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice during the first three months of 2013
· 24 per cent rise in the number of hospitals turning away patients in need of emergency care”

I certainly wasn’t the only blipper there yesterday – check out lookseeclick's blip as evidence – (sorry I didn’t run into you lookseeclick!) but there’s been a distinct lack of coverage from the BBC and other media sources. Indeed, the Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, has written to Lord Patten (Chair of the BBC Trust) to ask why the BBC gave such cursory coverage to this major news story.

At a time when US government services are on the brink of shutdown over plans to introduce the so-called Obamacare initiative, it’s not too late to turn things around and save one of the greatest things the UK has ever produced from becoming a depressing carbon copy of the very US healthcare system to which Obama is attempting to make some much-needed and, from my perspective, really very modest reforms…

People Have The Power!