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"LOTS TO DEFEND" IN TODAY'S NHSFriday 4th July 2008
A special 16-page edition of Health Emergency newspaper is published today, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the NHS - and warning of the dangers in many of the government's so-called "reforms".
Published just before this week's Darzi Report, Health Emergency highlights the doctor/minister's contradictory proposals, the break-neck race by some Primary Care Trusts to implement some of his less popular policies, the drive towards increased links at every level of the NHS with the private sector, and recent reports which question the effectiveness of key "reforms" since 2000.
A whole page feature argues the strength and value of the NHS despite these current policies - and the newspaper focuses on campaigning issues, celebrating as it does the 25th anniversary of London Health Emergency as a pressure group to defend the NHS against cutbacks and privatisation.
9,000 copies of the newspaper are being distributed up and down England, Wales and Scotland, mainly through trade union branches and local campaign groups which remain affiliated to the longest running campaign of its type.
Health Emergency editor and LHE's Information Director Dr John Lister said:
"We have a lot to defend in our NHS - and a lot to lose if ministers persist in unpopular and expensive policies that promote the for-profit private sector in place of well-loved public services. That's why our campaign is still running 25 years after we first challenged Maggie Thatcher's cuts.
"We want people to be celebrating our NHS and its core values in 10, 20 and another 60 years. For that we need a change of line by ministers, to spend the increased resources to meet patient need, not private greed. We want to keep our NHS public."
CAMPAIGNERS SLAM NHS PRIVATISATION PLANTuesday 3rd June 2008
Health campaigners tonight slammed plans due to be unveiled by the Government tomorrow which will see private companies like BUPA and American giants United Heathcare take over the running of entire NHS hospitals.
This evening, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw admitted that the Government was looking to sell "franchises" in NHS hospitals similar to the selling of franchises for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Campaigners have set out to nail the lie that private companies have been a success in the NHS, pointing out that:
* Privatisation destroyed cleaning standards in the NHS paving the way for MRSA and C Diff to get a deadly grip on the wards.
* Private companies involved in NHS PFI schemes have ripped off the taxpayer to the tune of billions
* Privately run Independent Sector Treatment Centres have been a disaster with the taxpayer paying for operations never carried out.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"The Government's suicide mission to alienate core supporters takes another leap with this effort to privatise the NHS on a scale that even Maggie Thatcher would have balked at.
The big American health corporations will be scenting blood and the opportunity to make a killing on the UK's NHS hospital wards.
There will one almighty row about this, that's for sure."
CAMPAIGNERS BACK CALL FOR IMPROVED MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES IN PRISONSTuesday 27th May 2008
Pressure group Health Emergency today backed calls from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health for major improvements to mental health services within the prison system.
A Sainsbury Centre report issued today has identified significant variations in the funding of prison inreach teams and calls for the trebling of average prison mental health staff from four to twelve.
Health Emergency have warned that the quality of mental health services in prison is being compromised by massive pressure on local Primary Care Trust budgets.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, who also works with Billy Bragg on the Jail Guitar Doors project which put guitars into prisons in memory of Joe Strummer, said:
"Both prison officers and prisoners have told me that complex mental health problems are a massive issue in our jails and a failure to grasp the scale of the challenge is putting huge pressure on the prison system.
We welcome the Sainsbury Centre report and we hope that it sparks off a proper debate about how we tackle the growing mental health crisis in our prisons."
LONDON HOSPITALS BOTTOM OF THE LEAGUE IN PATIENT SURVEYWednesday 14th May 2008
The Healthcare Commission survey on patient satisfaction, published today, shows that the bottom five hospitals in the country are all in London and that 13 out of the bottom 21 units nationwide are all in the capital city.
The hospital trusts in the five relegation places in this latest league table are:
North Middlesex in Haringey
Barking, Havering and Redbridge
Mayday in Croydon
The Homerton in Hackney - a Foundation Trust
Ealing Hospital
Pressure group London Health Emergency blamed the poor performance of hospitals in the capital on massive financial pressures, a shortage of key staff, a lack of beds and a wholesale failure by NHS London, the strategic health authority, to provide serious leadership and co-ordination in the city.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"For too long senior hospital managers and the bosses at NHS London have been wasting time and money on grandiose plans and have failed miserably to deliver on key issues for patients like mixed sex words, hospital food and cleaning and infection control. Those failures have now come home to roost in this damning patient survey."
GOVERNMENT ON THE DEFENSIVE OVER MATERNITY AND A&E CLOSURESWednesday 14th May 2008
Ministers were forced onto the defensive over maternity and accident and emergency closures this morning after Health Minister Lord Darzi admitted on the Today Programme that no services will be closed or re-organised without the support of local people and NHS staff.
The concession comes as Lord Darzi publishes his guidance on the strategic review of NHS services across the country.
The Ministers comments have been seized on by health campaigners who have promised to jack up local campaigns where unpopular closures of key services are still on the agenda.
Geoff Martin, Head of Campaigns at national NHS pressure group Health Emergency, said:
"Lord Darzi has this morning given a clear commitment that no changes to key local services will be bundled through without the support of staff and the public. We will today be issuing an urgent call to all the local campaigns fighting maternity and accident and emergency closures and downgrades to get back out on the streets and to hold the Government to their word.
"The Minister has given a shot in the arm to local health campaigns the length and breadth of the country."
NHS POLICIES ERODING LABOUR'S CORE SUPPORTWednesday 14th May 2008
NHS campaign group Health Emergency warned today that key areas on health policy had been eroding the Government's support amongst NHS staff and patients long before the hammer blow of the local election results on May 1.
Health Emergency have identified a raft of issues that Gordon Brown and his government urgently need to address if they are to rebuild trust amongst their key supporters in the NHS:
* An end to the expensive and inefficient obsession with the use of the private sector in the NHS. The scrapping of plans to hand over GP services to the giant American healthcare corporations and a return to direct public procurement of hospital building free from the multi-billion pound rip-off of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
* Suspension of plans to close dozens of Accident and Emergency Deaprtments and Maternity Units across the country. An end to bogus consultations and development of a genuine consensus on the future patterns of local services engaging staff and patients.
* An end to the "target culture" - driven by expensive external management consultants - and a recognition that top-down management has failed and has seriously damaged staff morale on the wards.
* A period of stability - allowing staff to get on with doing their job free from the "permanent revolution" of re-organisation and cash-driven cuts to jobs and services.
* Refocussing energy and resources on the issues that really matter - hygiene and infection control, hospital food, single-sex wards, long-term workforce planning and building enough capacity to deal with peaks in demand.
Health Emergency are holding urgent talks with Health Minister Lord Darzi next month to set out their vision for the future of the NHS.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"Labour's reputation amongst its core supporters in the NHS had taken a battering long before the local elections and there is no doubt that in many areas voters used the threat to their local hospital services as a stick to beat the Government with.
"Next month we will be telling Lord Darzi in blunt terms that if the Government want to rebuild their reputation on the NHS they have to act sharply or they will be on the fast train to oblivion."
New book marks NHS 60th birthdayWednesday 14th May 2008
Gordon Brown's government's controversial reforms to the National Health Service are creating a new regime of "surplus centred care," warns a new book to mark the 60th anniversary of the NHS, published today.
Its author, veteran health campaigner John Lister, argues that more harmful and far-reaching changes have been made to the NHS in the last seven years than in the previous 53.
As Information Director of London Health Emergency since 1984, Lister has been at the centre of debate on NHS policies for more than a third of the six decades of the NHS, and his new book The NHS after 60: For patients or profits? (Middlesex University Press) argues that New Labour's so-called "reforms" have actually made things worse by increasing costs and bureaucracy and undermining morale of health workers and professionals.
These policies have been forced through by Blair - and now Brown - in the absence of any evidence that they can improve efficiency or effectiveness, and despite evidence that they can reduce equity in access to services.
John Lister says:
"The new system of "payment by results", increasingly fierce competition between NHS and Foundation Trusts, the involvement of Independent Sector Treatment Centres, the "commissioning" of services with ever greater involvement of private sector consultants and corporations, and now the drive towards private provision of primary care are all undermining the inherent strengths of the system set up by Labour's Aneurin Bevan in 1948, and pushing even public sector providers to focus on finance-driven targets, contracts and cash surpluses rather than on patient care.
"Ministers know their policies don't reflect the views or wishes of NHS patients or the general public: tens of thousands have rallied in protests and campaigns to save local services from closure threats, while there is little if any popular support for government policies."
Lister's book argues that "another NHS is possible" and calls for costly private sector management consultants to be "released into the community", and a fresh start to build on the undoubted strengths that remain in the NHS.
This extensive, detailed, fully referenced 340-page study of the developing crisis in our most popular public service offers food for thought to managers, politicians, health workers and campaigners alike.
NB: The NHS After 60: For patients or profits? was published on April 28 by Middlesex University Press at £25. Discount copies available via www.healthemergency.org.uk
CAMPAIGNERS RAISE ALARM OVER NHS DEEP CLEANSunday 30th March 2008
With the national deep clean of all NHS hospitals due to conclude tomorrow (Monday), health campaigners have warned that there are serious inconsistencies in the programme and that some hospitals may only have scratched the surface of the hygiene problem.
At the Labour Party conference last October, Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised that all NHS hospitals would complete a deep clean by the end of March this year.
Health Emergency understand that there are major variations in the level of deep clean that has actually taken place across the country and that many hospitals have been physically unable to decant ward areas and steam clean and fog them as happens in France and other parts of Europe when they are looking to eradicate MRSA and C Diff.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"We understand that many hospitals, because of the sheer pressure on beds, have been unable to decant patient areas and deep clean them properly.
"Instead they have had a bit of a spring clean around the beds and that is not what we were promised.
"Deep cleaning a hospital environment means decanting patients to another ward, sealing the area and fogging it with a deep cleaning agent that kills off the superbugs wherever they are located.
"We fear that financial pressures and demand for beds has meant that in many areas the deep clean has been a cursory exercise, ticking boxes rather than doing the job required."
LONDON'S HIDDEN NHS CASH CRISISWednesday 19th March 2008
Pressure group London Health Emergency warned today that the full scale of the Capital's NHS financial crisis has been hidden from public view and is likely to blow open as we head towards the end of the current financial year with dire consequences for patient care.
The warning comes after a hidden financial deficit at the Brent Primary Care Trust of £25 million was blown open following an independent investigation. Measures to claw back the debt have resulted in major cuts to frontline services for children and older people.
LHE are warning that Brent is not the only area where health chiefs have attempted to play down the scale of their debt and have called on auditors to launch similar investigations into parts of South West London, outer North East London, the whole of South East London and outer West London.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"We have repeatedly warned that the rosy financial picture painted by London's health chiefs is at odds with the harsh reality on the ground where multi-million pound deficits and the constant threat of real cuts in services are still the order of the day.
"We have also warned that the financial crisis facing London's NHS would wreck any plans to re-organise and modernise services which might come out of the Darzi review into London's health services.
"In South East London alone the accumulated debt is well north of £100 million and rising and harsh cuts are on the agenda. Londoners are right to demand to know the real picture on health service finance in the capital."
C DIFF SCANDAL HEALTH BOSS BACK IN THE NHSSunday 2nd March 2008
The Chief Executive at the centre of the C Diff outbreak at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 2006, in which 33 people died, is back working in the NHS as a management consultant on a short term contract worth £52,000 to draw up plans to close the maternity and childrens services at Epsom Hospital in Surrey.
Ruth Harrison was the senior manager at Stoke Mandeville at the time of the C Diff scandal. She left her £130,000 post in 2006 with a £140,000 payoff just before the publication of a damning Healthcare Commission report which condemned her trust for compromising "the safety of patients by failing to make the right decisions" and which slammed "failings on the part of the leadership at the trust".
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns and a leading figure in the campaign to save Epsom Hospital, said:
"Failed top brass in the NHS are on a jobs merry-go-round at taxpayers expense where they can jump from one highly paid post to the next reagrdless of the wreckage they have left behind. It's a disgrace.
"We are demanding that Epsom Hospital halt the plans to bring in Ruth Harrison to draw up the closure plans for services at Epsom. This is a shoddy and ill-conceived decision which must be reversed."
LONDONERS "SLEEPWALKING" INTO MASSIVE NHS CHANGESSunday 17th February 2008
Campaign group Health Emergency warned today that Londoners are sleepwalking into the most major changes to the Capital's health services in a generation.
The Darzi proposals for reconfiguration of London's NHS are currently out to public consulation. With the consultation period ending in three weeks, and with £15 million spent on the exercise, campaigners are warning that it has hardly registered on the radar of the vast majority of the London public.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"It defies belief that the biggest package of changes to London's NHS in decades has failed to grab the attention of the public and makes you wonder where the £15 million on this exercise has been spent.
"We know that Londoners care deeply about their health care services but most of them have no idea that this massive reform plan is up for debate.
"We are sounding the alarm bells to Londoners to have their say now before time runs out. There are rumours that only a few hundred have responded so far, and that would totally discredit the Darzi plans."
CALL FOR INQUIRY INTO SWAB INCIDENT HOSPITALSunday 17th February 2008
Campaigners today called for a full public inquiry into the management of the privately-financed Princess Royal Hospital in Bromley after it was revealed today that a patient was left with a swab inside her after a Caesarean just weeks after hygiene standards at the hospital had been slammed by the Health Commission.
Bromley Hospitals Trust, which runs the Princess Royal, has the highest deficit of any NHS Trust in the country of just short of £100 million. Much of the debt has been accumulated through the charges resulting from the PFI scheme at the Princess Royal.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said;
"There is now an overwhelming case for a full public inquiry into the management of the Princess Royal, we're not prepared to be fobbed off with an internal investigation.
There is clearly something wrong at this hospital and our suspicion is that corners are being cut with the quality of patient care in order to claw back the £100 million deficit and to pay off the private finance charges."
CAMPAIGNERS SLAM CONSULTATION SHAMBLES OVER FUTURE OF LONDON'S NHSFriday 18th January 2008
Campaigners today blasted the current consultation over the long term future of NHS services in London as "an expensive shambles which is failing miserably to engage Londoners in a proper debate over the future of health care services in the capital."
NHS London embarked on a public consultation over the future of London's NHS - known as the Darzi Review and drawn up by government-minister Lord Darzi - at the back end of last year and the consultation is due to conclude in early March. £15 million of taxpayers money has been thrown at the consultation exercise which campaigners say has completely failed to engage Londoners despite the high level of public interest in the future of the NHS.
Geoff Martin, London Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"The public consultation over the Darzi review of London's NHS has been a total failure. Despite chucking £15 million at private companies and pollsters to conduct this exercise it has failed to hit the radar and most Londoners have no idea it's going on.
"The £15 million being spent on this glorious failure to engage Londoners in a debate about an issue that's close to their hearts, the future of the NHS, would have been far better spent on taking some of the pressure off patient care budgets. It would have injected nearly half a million pounds into each of London's 31 Primary Care Trusts - easing the pressure on front-line services."
NOROVIRUS AND FLU PILE PRESSURE ON BED CAPACITY - HOSPITAL DEEP CLEAN UNDER THREATMonday 7th January 2008
Campaigners claimed today that the combined winter pressures of the norovirus and flu have seriously exposed the shortage of bed capacity and have thrown Gorden Brown's pledge to deep clean every hospital from top to bottom by the end of March into chaos.
Campaign group Health Emergency have kept a running total of bed lost and staff cuts in the NHS over the past eighteen months. Over that period nearly 3000 front line bed losses have been announced with the latest coming on Friday in Cumbria where 144 beds at the West Cumbria Hospital in Whitehaven have been lined up for closure.
At the Labour Conference last year Gordon Brown announced that every hospital in the country would be deep cleaned from top to bottom by the end of March. Logistically that would mean decanting patients from one area to another but campaigners now say that the pressure on dwindling bed capacity from norovirus and flu make it impossible to deliver in many areas.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
" We are calling on the Government to take emergency measures to allow hospitals under serious pressure to re-open closed beds without the fear of financial penalty just to get through the next few weeks.
"It's impossible to see how the deep-clean targets to tackle MRSA and CDiff can be met by the end of March with the level of demand and the widespread ward closures currently hitting the NHS across the UK."
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