assignment about nhs issues

I'vee got an assignment for college to ask people what recent issues they have heard or read about involving the NHS I have to ask their opinions on this and what they feel should be done about the issue does anyone fancy helping as ive asked family members about it but i would like the opinions of people who will be working in the halthcareare sector to compare.

Reply 1

iainmacn

Well you could look at the news for starters! It's all over it - consultation over the Government changes. Google "Equity and Excellence" if you want the latest proposal document. This includes stuff on GP fundholding and personal budgets

Another issue off the top of my head is more seven day working for physios

Reply 2

cdu778

I no the issues I'm trying to find peoples views on them

Reply 3

iainmacn

Ah sorry, read that after a long shift!

Okay - a few quick thoughts.

GP Fundholding:
-How aware are GPs of all the options for treatment/prevention, or will they tend to just go for the medical option? As part of my course we had to put together a proposal and one of the biggest barriers against GPs referring people to physio was a lack of awareness of what it could do

Prevention:
-obviously good to cut costs, but it needs to be presented right otherwise people will start moaning about the "nanny state"
- do we need more early screening stuff? e.g. with falls - can't remember the figure but these cost the NHS a hell of a lot in a year as well as affecting people's quality of life. The NSF for Elderly had a big drive on falls assessment in A&E but Gillespie 2009 says less than half of A&Es have it. Anyway - to get there you have to have had a fall - better prevention would catch the fall before it happened. Does it need to be built in as part of a general health and well-being check at the docs, or do (returnign to the first theme) GPs just need to be more aware of it, so if Mrs Bloggs looks a bit unstable on a visit to the GP for something unrelated then the doc may mention it

Patient budget:
- Personalised budget - do we all get the same? Even those with some serious long term condition?
- It's touted as giving people choice - but would good is choice without it being informed? That not only needs good stats (and not ones massaged to make an organisation look good - which is how it tends to work), but people to understand stats, and I'm not convinced a lot of people do properly, or can be bothered. Some of the issues are very complex - can the bulk of the punters make an informed choice?
- What if the person's choice doesn't work - say someone has a serious kidney condition and goes for some mystical cure like homeopathy or crystal healing as their choice, and it doesn't work. Then what? Are we just going to say "Tough, your budget's spent" and leave them to die? Or do they still get more standard medical care?

Commissioning:
- sounds good in principle, everyone competing to provide the service and the best one gets it. Or is it just the one who can pitch best who gets it? You might have a very skilled team of medics, physios etc who throw the presentation together out of hours lose out to a bunch without much experience or skill who put together a more professional pitch. I guess the skilled clinicians could spend time away from treating patients or hire someone to do the pitch bit, but that's all taking away from actual treatment
- will there be any sort of continuity? Privitisation was supposed to make the railways and tube network better - instead it turned into a mess with everyone blaming each other for failures. Or think of the cases of hospital cleaning where the cheapest bid got the job, even if they did a rubbish job. I suspect the cost of extra days in hospital because of infection far outweighed the money saved on cleaners.

Hope that's useful :smile:

assignment about nhs issues

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