Thursday, October 18, 2007

How clean is your hospital?

Well, according to this report on the BBC (and carried elsewhere) probably not very. Half of all NHS trusts (44) are not carrying out infection control measures. In this day and age that is shocking. It has nothing to do with services being contracted out and everything to do with lack of management control. The report makes it clear that the variety of targets is part of the problem.

The other thing I found interesting was looking up to see how my local hospitals were doing. They seem "fair" on treatment and weak on use of financial resources. In short they are not managing the money, and neither are the local primary care trusts. This has led to threats to services.

Is the NHS really safe in Labour's hands?

No. they can't run a drinking session in a brewery.

Going back to targets, they are not in themselves a bad idea, however when setting targets it helps to keep an eye on the possible unintended consequences of what targets are set and what happens for meeting or failing to meet these targets. This is where the problems in today's NHS come from, and why A&E departments keep to their 4 hour waits whilst people wait to get in the door in an ambulance outside, or are bumped into a ward unnecessarily.

7 comments:

Bog Exile said...

Congratulations on a funny and well informed political blog. We gnash our teeth about the same things!

For a hopefully witty commentary on just how mad the public sector is, try:

Legitimate Tangent: Notes on the lunacy of british Public Sector life. It's here at:

http://legitimatetangent.blogspot.com/

I think we're coming from the same direction. I'm going to add you to my blogroll Benedict. Return the favour?? Regards, Boggy.

Anonymous said...

Benedict fell off my cycle a month ago,they had just gritted the road,the following day I went to our local A&E as I was in agony ,got there about 8:20am got past the reception 8:25,and seen and checked by a doctor soon after,I had a broken a rib and he gave me a prescription,I went down to the onsite chemist go the painkillers as that's all they do now for broken ribs, caught a bus outside the hospital at 8:40 home at 8:55 no 4hr wait,A&E and waiting area looked clean and bright and that was at Arrowe park hospital on Wirral.

flashgordonnz said...

Wirral makes interesting reading on upmystreet

Benedict White said...

Bog Exile, As soon as I have fixed an issue with my blog roll I will add yours.

Anonymous. I have had both fantastic and bad experience of A&E. People need to know that Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well as Friday and Saturday nights may be a problem, largely because they are unpredictable, but you should never leave in a worse state than you entered.

Matt Wardman said...

The place to look is at the Public Health Minister - Dawn Primarolo.

Yesterday we also had the
Listen to the 8:10 interview - unethical and ineffective treatment in the drug rehab programme and they knew nothing about their own report highlighting really serious problems.

A shambles.

(Just like IR35 when she did that).

Andrew Allison said...

The NHS is far from safe in Labour's hands.

Anonymous said...

flashgordonnz
upmystreet is full of adverts with little info, Yahoo and google has more info.

PS Benedict should have said my hospital date was on a Thursday.