Other costs of the NHS

We are familiar with the financial costs of the NHS, which spends over £100 billion, or about £1,600 each year for every man, woman and child. (Much of this goes on salaries for caring professionals, medicines and provisions, and expensive equipment.) Few would object, but most would suspect that there is waste in some areas.

There are, however, other costs, - often in suffering, disease and death.

Much of this is put down to a culture of target control from Whitehall.

There are allegations of seriously ill patients kept for hours in ambulances outside A & E departments, or sent on journeys across country, to ensure the departments meet the government target of treating patients within four hours of admission. Sometimes the doors are locked an ambulance drivers have to try to find somewhere else.

Analogously to the police turning a blind eye to offences which will take too much time, some doctors are forced to undertake simpler, quicker, procedures in order to reach targets within a given time. Bed occupancy is too high and cleaning is inadequate, and the result is hospital acquired infection, which can have fatal consequences.

If, as seems likely despite G.Brown's lies, the NHS will have to face financial cuts in the near future or at least have increases lower than the rate of inflation, it is clear that the NHS cannot continue without major change of some sort. One change must be the targets which distort clinical priorities.