It may be a New Year, but it’s the same old traditional winter crisis in the wonderful NHS. The Daily Sceptic team have asked me to comment on the latest announcements, pronouncements and prognostications from the commentariat on the current state of permacrisis. To be frank, it’s all got far too shouty, but again, that’s part of the rich tradition of how we ‘do healthcare’ in the U.K.
Regular readers of this column will be familiar with my general views on the situation and the complex interactions of flawed decisions about workforce, medical training and working practices taken 20 years ago, which are now coming home to roost. I won’t dwell on these further. Rather, I’d like to look at the latest developments in the story, and as usual attempt to analyse for readers the issues that are not obvious at first sight – to understand what the real drivers, vested interests and motivations are behind seemingly inexplicable current circumstances.
Since I last contributed, the overload on the system has worsened. The principal problems are an increase in acute medical admissions. For the non-medical reader, these are cases such as community acquired bacterial pneumonia, diabetic crises, acute asthmatics, urinary tract infections, heart attacks, strokes and so on. This year these have increased markedly, probably as a consequence of poor management of chronic illness in primary care since 2020. Attendances at A&E for minor conditions which don’t need admission to hospital are also up, because of the difficulty in accessing GP appointments. On top of that, we have a large number of influenza patients (hardly surprising due to virtual absence of flu in the last two winters), plus problems in discharging patients from hospital because of shortages in the social care system.
As readers will no doubt have noticed, this year is particularly special because nurses and ambulance drivers have decided to ‘save our NHS’ by going on strike for higher pay at the point of maximum stress. I read today that junior doctors are also threatening to strike by refusing to attend emergency patients for 72 hours. Train strikes are making it very difficult for doctors and nurses to get to and from work, particularly in London.
The cumulative effect of these pressures is that hospitals are full, because they are unable to discharge patients in a timely fashion and unable to prevent new patients arriving at the front door. Sick people continue to turn up in taxis even if ambulances are not available. When nurses and trainee doctors go on strike, hospitals are obliged to cancel routine operating and other procedures and focus limited resources on emergency work only. Of course, non-striking staff salary costs still have to be paid by the taxpayer, even if those staff are prevented from operating, so efficiency falls still further. Readers may draw their own conclusions in relation to the justification for strike action, but the argument that strikes are necessary to save the NHS seems logically inconsistent to me.
Hence routine surgical operations and other elective procedures are again being postponed, making the Covid backlog worse still. One answer might be to increase the number of hospital beds. The argument about numbers of beds in the U.K. compared to other European nations rages back and forth and has become a political bone of contention. There are useful resources available for interested readers at these links.
As might be expected, the problem is not as simple as portrayed in the mainstream media. Hospital bed numbers have been declining steadily since the 1980s and dropped markedly during the Blair administration. Much of this decline was due to advances in medical treatment, meaning patients needed shorter stays in hospital. Conditions formerly requiring prolonged hospital stays could be treated in the community and a lot of surgery moved to day case treatment or very short stay admissions. A similar pattern of reduction in hospital bed numbers is evident across the EU. This is not news.
What may perplex readers is the inability of our NHS experts to draw the logical conclusions from differences in hospital bed provision and other healthcare infrastructure per capita in Germany or France compared to the U.K. Could it be possible that the Germans have more beds per capita because they run a mixed healthcare economy with a variety of providers? In short, because the structural nature of their system (first established by Bismarck in 1883) encourages a better balance between supply and demand than in our politicised central control model. Consistent with socialists everywhere, NHS zealots insist that our system doesn’t work because it hasn’t been properly implemented or funded yet. Sadly, we are not about to get the necessary fundamental change in our healthcare model for reasons I will expand on.
In response to the current crisis, a number of encouraging innovative solutions have emerged. One is the use of hotels near hospitals for locating patients nearly well enough for full discharge. This model has been used previously in the USA. In some ways, it replicates the old model of community hospitals which still existed when I was a junior doctor in the 1990s, but in a more flexible manner allowing for ‘surge capacity’ in times of stress. The Government has also recently announced an expansion of ‘surgical hubs’ in both the NHS and private sector to process the backlog of routine surgical cases.
This is a particularly good idea and a proven efficient model for managing elective cases. The key point is that the elective centre is geographically distinct from the acute NHS hospital site. This prevents overspill of medical patients occupying beds for routine surgical cases and stopping surgical work from taking place. Hence surgeons can continue to operate even when all the beds in the acute hospital are full of medical emergency cases. There is good evidence to suggest that efficiency in NHS hospitals also increases when an independent sector centre opens nearby.
Naturally these initiatives are opposed by the BMA. The usual arguments are that elective surgical centres ‘cherry pick’ the straightforward uncomplicated cases, leaving the larger hospitals to deal with the complex and risky cases. I simply don’t understand this argument in medical terms. If the objective is to provide high quality surgical care for the largest number of patients in the most timely manner, then the method and location by which that care is delivered is irrelevant. Consistent opposition to treatment centres can in my view only be explained by ulterior motives relating to control of process by vested interest bodies. When the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting had the effrontery to suggest that pay rises for NHS staff need to be linked to productivity rises, he ran into a storm of opposition from NHS vested interests and from his own party, still committed to the 1950s centralised control model. In an interview with the Times, Streeting has suggested that the existing opaque funding model for primary care needs to change and has once again provoked an hysterical reaction from the usual quarters. My expectation is that even if he were to become Health Secretary in a Labour administration, he’d be prevented from implementing such changes by his own side.
The entrenched opposition in the NHS establishment to meaningful change can be encapsulated in this podcast debate featuring Sally Warren, Director of Policy at the Kings Fund. Interested readers would find it worthwhile.
I was struck by the poverty of her argument – the main plank of which seemed to be that changing the NHS to a social insurance model would be too costly and disruptive. Her main piece of evidence supporting this conclusion was that only one country has done this before (Canada in the 1970s), but given that only the U.K. and Cuba run an NHS monopoly provider model, this really doesn’t stand scrutiny. One of the other participants in the debate is a German journalist living in North London who is highly complimentary about NHS provision of care he has experienced. Readers will note however that he is married to an NHS consultant physician, therefore has privileged insider knowledge and access in navigating the system. Readers may also consider whether the nomenclature in the upper reaches of NHS England are obliged to queue up with the rest of the population to access GP appointments and consultations with NHS specialists. Might there be a clandestine, unofficial ‘fast track’ system for those favoured individuals in our socialist system that guarantees equality of treatment for all citizens?
I may write further on the arguments deployed in that podcast at a later date, but I would like to leave readers today with one final thought about what is preventing meaningful change in our failing healthcare system. It goes to the question of where power lies in 21st century Britain. Elected representatives no longer have control of the levers to effect change as any move to encroach on the provider interest can be stymied by institutional inertia. The British medical establishment will die in a ditch before allowing remuneration to be linked to measurable productivity of individual doctors. The Gramscian ‘long march’ has occurred not just in our education system but in the health system as well. I’m afraid the near-term prognosis is grim. My expectation is that NHS management will play it long, awaiting a Labour Government in 2024, when more taxpayer cash will be handed over for no discernible increase in service levels. We risk ending up with a two-tier system by default, where the rich pay privately and the poor suffer what they must. Better not get ill or old. Happy New Year.
The author, the Daily Sceptic‘s in-house doctor, is a former NHS consultant now in private practice.
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“England’s Chief Medial Officer claimed the nation faces a rising death toll from heart disease and cancer cases due to pleas to protect the NHS.
Knock-on effects of dealing with Covid, which saw thousands of routine treatments and appointments delayed, will also fuel a surge in excess deaths.”
But definitely not due to a dangerous experimental MRNA gene therapy drug. I don’t particularly believe in hanging, drawing and quartering, but still. Witless and unbalanced? If only it was just that.
And by the way, could Sir Toby Young possibly consider in future putting the word “pandemic” used with reference to this shambles in quotation marks?
“I don’t particularly believe in hanging, drawing and quartering,”. Neither do I, but in this case I would make an exception.
SAGE, Doris et al can murder people/sheeple through LDs and the Stabs…and nothing happens. Meanwhile they put a few millions into their pocketses…
Even worthy of knighthood.
Quite. Unlike Sir Toby Young…
Damage limitation. Most of the deaths are jab-related, and this deflects from that.
All. Lies.
How prolonged? How many deaths? Frightening and they are in large part responsible.
Chris – while your questions are valid and these two are indeed in large part responsible for the collateral damage of lockdowns, they key point surely is that this piece is a cover story to mask the real crime they are responsible for (ie the rollout of the injections). Their disingenuity in asserting that “Ministers may not be so lucky in getting their hands on a jab with the next disease” is beyond the pale, as far as I’m concerned.
Yes, I agree. I think the excess deaths are the result of lockdowns and adverse reactions to the injections. They have responsibility for both. Vallance has a financial conflict of interest via his ownership of shares in GSK, a company in the business of producing vaccines. He is also implicated in the cover up of the possible origins of the virus in a laboratory. Of course, politicians bear most responsibility for excess deaths and injury.
On a brighter note, perhaps their forecasts of excess deaths will prove as accurate as their forecasts of deaths from COVID. I hope so, almost everyone I know has been injected.
Also, the fact this shedding phenomenon seems to be gaining more traction does not bode well. Do we unsullied, non-GMO people really need to be worried about the secretions of the jabbed we have close contact with? Well it’s a bit late if you’re partner has had the shot. I’m really not going to worry too much about this but when I hear Peter McCullough warning of the data on this then it does get a wee bit concerning. Here he is in a 3min clip. The full vid is available on Rumble;
https://rumble.com/v1y8npe-dr.-peter-mccullough-and-shedding-of-vax.html
This is the substack containing the paper ( and references ) he’s talking about. Is he really saying mRNA is staying in the body indefinitely? Shouldn’t scientists somewhere be measuring this at regular intervals in people’s blood? We need to know. Especially if you’re married to a jabbee!
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/health-of-pure-bloods-threatened
Surely heads must now roll?
All of this was foreseeable, all decisions were on their (and Hancock, Johnson, Gove and Sunak’s) shoulders.
Time for Madame Guillotine?
Probably assistant heads, if at all.
Yes please. And tumbrels.
“Time for Madame Guillotine?”
Before or after the hanging drawing and quartering?
And as an aside…remember that German nurse who injected thousands with saline instead of the Covid jabs? She’s got off, although she’s charged with “intentional assault”…for injecting people with a completely harmless, isotonic solution, as opposed to a toxic, mystery concoction of gene therapy gunk, that apparently stays with you indefinitely. Only in Clown World!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11490847/Anti-vaxxer-nurse-injected-8-600-patients-saline-instead-Covid-vaccine-walks-free.html
God bless that lady.
I didn’t know about it, but I hope movies will be made about her in years to come.
How the hell did she manage to get hold of so many doses of saline without it being noticed somewhere?
Or did she mix up batches in her kitchen and bring it in a thermos?
A lot to be said for Romania, where many doctors were apparently quite happy to help you on the quiet to avoid the poison without being shut out of society.
Hang em high.
This story is epic and it’s something we’ve discussed on here many times in the comments sections. Access to unvaccinated blood should you need a transfusion. This baby boy needs to have a heart operation where he will require blood to be transfused but the parents want to have the assurance that he’ll receive blood from unvaxxed donors. If the judge in New Zealand decides in their favour this will set a precedent worldwide, as I’m unaware of anywhere that you can request unsullied, non-mRNA polluted blood. I’ll be watching this story with interest.
https://twitter.com/Son_ofHari/status/1597819355630571522
The New Zealand doctors have done a great article covering this issue. I know how quickly a hospital can use their blood stocks. We’ve had to blue light blood from neighbouring hospitals when I worked in a surgical setting, so this is a very real issue for all elective and emergency surgeries. The stuff is used day and night, 365 days/year. Certainly I would want a say in which type of blood I want to receive.
https://nzdsos.com/2022/12/01/vaccinated-blood-response-nikki-turner/
In the UK they don’t even enquire if you are jabbed or not – they just don’t take your blood within 48hrs of the injection.
Plausible deniability if a recipient suffers an adverse reaction, perhaps? You would think they’d be more careful since the contaminated blood scandal a couple of decades ago.
Meanwhile, despite wailing that stocks are running low, the earliest appointment they can give me to donate is next March, and I’m a ‘first responder’, apparently. (No, NOT a paramedic..)
Maybe I should tell ’em I’m unjabbed and see if they treat me differently; I doubt it.
“Maybe I should tell ’em I’m unjabbed and see if they treat me differently; I doubt it.”
Nope they are not interested I asked the last time I went wether they separated out “vaccinated” from “unvaccinated” and the bloke looked at me as if I should be sent to the nearest loony bin.
Safe Blood donation: https://safeblood.uk/en/become-a-member/
If they ‘trusted the science’ they’d be properly investigating the cause of all of the health issues and excess mortality that we’ve seen over the last 18-24 months.
Instead, though, they’ve decided among themselves that it must have been due to ‘people not getting enough NHS’, and are responding accordingly.
As they’ve decided what has caused the problem they’ve also decided that there’s no need to investigate any other terrible decisions that might have been made by our authorities.
I had wondered where these candidates for the gibbet had been hiding.
Obviously, seemingly out of nowhere, have sprung an increase in cardiac and cancer deaths, nothing to do with the “vaccines” of course. All down to lockdowns.
Oh well, lessons will be learned.
I wonder if Whitless and his sidekick like sex and travel.
What an absolute couple of Next Tuesdays.
Anything but admit the vaccines are to blame. That would put them offside with Big Pharma.
It would also open them up to massive vilification (rightly so) and criminal charges. They would be totally ruined.
We know better.
We’ve got VAR.
And badly reduce their bank balances.
I assume their knighthoods were awarded for services to mass murder
Well, I’m glad that’s cleared everything up.
I was beginning to think that the mRNA jab might have had something to do with this totally unforeseeable phenomenon.
Clearly I can totally dismiss concerns raised in papers such as these :-
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb-discovery/article/biovacc19-a-candidate-vaccine-for-covid19-sarscov2-developed-from-analysis-of-its-general-method-of-action-for-infectivity/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X
Can’t wait to get jabbed now.
As Pfizer tweets, ‘thankfully you can do a few internet searches and get your PhD…’ implying that Pretty Happy Dudes with bullshit degrees piled on high and deep, paid by criminal Pharma or govt’s, are ‘the science’ and the sheeple should just shut up and believe in the religion of Scientism. HG Wells, ‘Open Conspiracy’ and all that.
Why does no one, including Toby, even hint at the excess deaths being caused by the jabs?
Will Jones does, often.
They still don’t get it, do they!
They have learned nothing. What alternatives to the failed March 2020 approach do Whitty and Vallance suggest?
Billions were wasted on useless measures such as mass testing, face muzzles, and the lockdowns themselves. Most of the Covid deaths occurred in hospitals and care homes aggravated by the cackhanded and incompetent way in which the crisis was handled. GPs also have a lot to answer for regarding excess heart and cancer rates by shutting their doors and passing everything over to the hospitals.
“aggravated by the cackhanded and incompetent way in which the crisis was handled.”
This is cock-up theory. The handling of the “crisis” was not incompetent it was deliberate and pre-planned which is why the same procedures were rolled out across the world.
So these despicable people are now prepared to admit that the lockdowns will kill tens of thousands of people. When will they be handing back their gongs and their £millions?
Nothing to say about the poorly tested, experimental jabs which – so far in the UK – have led to an admitted 2500 deaths.
These evil people have no shame. They’ve destroyed the lives of a whole generation of young people.
will we ever live to the moment when these two ‘science’ salesmen are brought to testify about their role in the lab leak cover up, lockdowns pushing, jab coercion, collusion with the press and pharma, smearing campaign. At least our friends across the pond have managed to depose Fauci the science god, although with a very remote prospect of locking him behind bars forever. .
“Britain will face a “prolonged period” of deaths due to the pandemic — but not from the Covid virus itself,. “ Rather, it will have been caused by our gross over-reaction to it’s occurrence.
A little modification to the statement made, for those in any doubt.
A right pair of Bar sterds!! Sirs as well !!.. ( of course )
So – once they’ve caught up with the backlog of all the cancelled treatments and ops, missed diagnoses and appointments etc and those that will unfortunately die as a direct result of lockdown…when they’ve done that and the excess death rate continues to climb, what then?