University’s report confirms NHS failure
Last month a study released by academics here at the University of York showed the National Health Service grossly under-reports incidents that harm patient safety. Their research indicates that almost a third of admissions resulted in a “patient safety incident” and, shockingly, only 5% of the incidents that resulted in harm to a patient were picked up by the NHS’s voluntary reporting system.
This comes at the same time as two other major NHS-related news items. The first was the government’s blunder over the new contract for GPs’ pay, costing the taxpayer £300m more than expected.
The second was an even greater fiasco, involving the Private Fiance Initiative (PFI), where private firms build hospitals that are then rented to the government. These private firms will earn some £23 billion profit over the next thirty years. Once selected, the firm in question effectively has a monopoly position sealed in place and can take the treasury to the cleaners. This means taxpayers’ money is granted to a private company, yet none of the competitive benefits of privatization are in play. Even worse, the contracts can last up to thirty years, meaning we will continue to pay for these hospitals even if the nature of healthcare changes over the next few decades.
Just what causes this widespread mismanagement within Britain’s largest institution? The root cause for all three problems is the same. The NHS is an unwieldy, over-centralized monolith, prone to institutionalised thinking and inefficient practice. Poor practice, of which the safety reporting system is just one example, is all too often ingrained, with no competition to counteract this inefficiency. Because of the service’s structure, bad policy decisions (such as the PFI or the GP pay deal) are made on a national scale, costing unnecessary billions.
The centralized nature of the NHS also means that it is massively distorted by the political motives of whoever is in power. The current government has promised that the £512m worth of deficits will be eliminated by 2007-2008. In practice, this means massive redundancies and writing off debts of some trusts. Hardly the long-term thinking that is needed for efficient practice. Even worse, 90% of hospital closures will be occurring in Liberal Democrat and Conservative-held constituencies, with most of the new openings occurring in Labour ones. Due to devolution, the Labour heartland that is Scotland gets 20% more spending on health per head than England.
The only way to create an efficient, workable health service for the 21st century is to move to a publicly-funded insurance-based system. Such a system need not have the gross health inequalities of the USA. Instead we should model our healthcare after the likes of France, Canada and Scandinavia, who frequently come top of health league tables while achieving healthcare for all. Only then can Britain have the healthcare system it deserves.
