15th November 2024

Streeting’s plan for the NHS
Have we learnt nothing from 14 wretched years of Tory austerity, privatisation and draconian outsourcing? We are told the big NHS plan is to be … naming and shaming? Hospital league tables, introduced by Alan Milburn, who has just been hired as Streeting’s advisor, are a simplistic and retrograde gimmick.

Covid use of private sector examined
The Centre for Health and Public Interest has investigated the use of private hospitals during Covid. The NHS paid the private hospital sector’s full operating costs at an estimated cost of £2 billion. We were told that this contract would provide additional capacity to assist the NHS when it was being overwhelmed. In fact the private sector were allowed to treat large numbers of fee-paying patients; the contract placed limits on the number of NHS patients which could be treated.

Myth of spare capacity in private sector
Nearly all the doctors working in the private sector do it on a part time basis and work for the NHS the rest of the time. The main constraint on clearing the NHS backlog is not lack of operating theatres but the number of consultant surgeons and anaesthetists. There is only one pool of such healthcare professionals in the UK and unless that pool expands significantly and quickly, pushing patients into the private sector will have little impact on the overall waiting list.

Wife died because NHS used ‘cheap labour’
Roy Pollitt did not know his 77-year-old wife was being treated by a PA, who are only required to have two years’ medical training, and believes “she would have lived if the NHS had not used cheap labour”.

Concern over physician assistants (PAs)
As the result of professional concern over the clinical use of PAs, the government has ordered a review of the regulation of physician assistants.