I am a member of our GPs patient participation forum and last night we had a meeting with the deputy chief executive of Wigan, Wrightington, and Leigh hospital and a person from the Clinical Commissioning Group. Both in the same room, I know! We were discussing the Healthier Together proposals. This basically means Hospital provision will be layered between Specialist and local Hospitals. Greater Manchester will have four specialist hospitals none of which seem to be in the Northern area which means theres not one in Bury, Bolton or Wigan. These Health professionals think there should be a fifth. Now the issue is these three areas need to compete for specialist status, so whoever wins will be at the expense of the other areas. This is happening across Manchester by the way, so people reading this over there this is already decided for you! The Hospitals that loose will not have specialists status the funding that goes with it, this has major implications for extended services. Health professionals will want to be associated with high status hospitals so we will be developing poor relation status for local hospitals. Local Hospitals will have A&E cover down graded, and who knows what areas of care they will be left with. In fact the real issue here is marketisation and commercialisation of our Healthcare, it not about providing the best service for our local population but on maximising productivity. The above will be fine if you are fortunate to live within traveling distance of specialist hospitals. When planning these services Healthier together seem to think that so long as we can get there in 75 minutes, then thats demeeded to be acceptable. What I think they fail to realise is when your sick or your a person who wants to visit the sick, an 150 minute round trip is a long time. The bottomline is it will be good for profit maximisation but not for patient care! For for those of you who think there are times when we will need specialist care in a specialist centre of course you are right. Yesterday I suddenly realised this was the phrase they are using to hide away that some of this could be provided locally but we just want centres that factory farm patients so we can maximise profits. Its a bit like when new labour closed our old peoples homes in Lancashire under the guise of choice, with the choice of staying in a publicly owned and controlled care home removed. Last night I witnessed corporate Britian at its worst. The Tories said no decision about me without me! Healthier Together! Viva la Peaceful revolution.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 06:56:32 +0000
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