Posts Tagged ‘NHS’
Vote YES!
I’m dismayed at all the so called liberal and progressive thinkers who are calling for a “No”.
If you vote “No” you’re voting to support the corrupt, self-serving politics that is holding this country back.
I think AV is a terrible idea but it would be even worse to let those lazy, selfish, tabloid slaves that are supposed to represent us carry on as they are.
Vote “No” for more of the same. Vote “Yes” for the chance of some change.
Those of you who can’t be bothered to get off your backsides even to spoil your ballot paper deserve nothing. If you want to be part of society then take responsibility and vote. I’d make it complusory and if you don’t show up you can forget any benefits, NHS, waste collection or other public services – and you can stop your moaning too!
An Appeal To Andrew Lansley
Dear Mr Lansley,
Medicinal Cannabis
I am writing to you about the urgent necessity to permit the prescribing of medicinal cannabis by doctors.
Please do not refer me to the Home Office. Its intransigent position on the subject amounts to a scandalous denial of science and cruel mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of British citizens. This is a health issue which requires your attention and care for those in pain and suffering.
There is now an overwhelming body of peer reviewed, published research that proves beyond doubt the efficacy of medicinal cannabis for the treatment of many conditions. Britain is becoming increasingly isolated as a place where patients are denied access to the medicine they need. Utterly absurd is that patients from the EU can bring medicinal cannabis into Britain under the protection of the Schengen Agreement but British residents risk prison for using exactly the same substance.
Every country in Europe except France and Britain now has some form of medicinal cannabis provision. 15 US states now permit medical marijuana on a doctor’s recommendation and Israel has a fast expanding programme. There are huge cost savings and benefits to be gained and enormous reductions in harm from side effects of poisonous pharmaceutical products.
There are already many instances in Britain where MS patients have been refused Sativex on cost grounds and so have been forced into illegal purchase or cultivation and have then been prosecuted as criminals. This is a shame and disgrace on our nation and I appeal to you to take steps to end it.
Perhaps you do not realise the transformational effect that medicinal cannabis can have on some people’s lives? Almost miraculous results are being achieved, particularly with MS, Crohn’s and fibromyalgia. People who would otherwise be trapped by pain and disability are able to lead productive lives with the help of medicinal cannabis.
Please Mr Lansley, will you arrange to meet me and a delegation of people whose lives are literally saved by the use of medicinal cannabis? This cruel and demeaning policy cannot be allowed to continue in the face of overwhelming evidence. Safe, high quality, standardised dose cannabis is now available from Bedrocan in Holland, the Dutch government’s supplier and is exported all over Europe to fill doctors’ prescriptions. How much longer must British citizens wait?
Co-ordinated action is already underway for dozens of patients to take the Home Office to judicial review for its refusal to grant import licenses for Bedrocan. This is at huge cost in public money and people’s lives. You could take steps to end this suffering now. You could enable the NHS to start making huge cost savings immediately. This issue is not going away.
CLEAR is a new team of committed professionals that is determined to bring this issue to the top of the political agenda. Please arrange to meet me and learn at first hand how much good you could do by a change of policy that is, in any case, inevitable. Don’t make those people in pain and suffering wait any longer.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Reynolds
Send a copy of this letter to your MP. Download and print here.
Back To The Future Of The NHS
I have grave concerns about the government’s NHS reforms. I feel like it’s Groundhog Day.
I was deeply involved in the last major health service reforms back in the 1990s. I am hearing exactly the same ideas, phrases and promises as we heard then. Haven’t we done this all before?
When the “internal market” was introduced and the first NHS Trusts were “founded”, the idea of marketing was introduced to the NHS for the first time. I saw the opportunity, organised a conference at the QEII conference centre and built a nice business, thank you very much, for several years as an expert in the field. I was an advisor to several health authorities and a number of the new NHS trusts. I undertook marketing and communications audits, ran training courses and I made something of a specialty of designing, writing and producing annual reports. I learned a lot and I felt I contributed a lot. Why is it all being done again?
Marketing is a perfect description of the way the health service should work. It is the management process responsible for anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer needs efficiently. The 1990s NHS model was that “purchasers”, health authorities and GP fundholders, would buy services from “providers”, hospitals and community health services. “Purchasing” was later renamed “commissioning” to reflect how complex the task is. It’s about understanding what services are required and making complex choices as well as actually contracting for them.
Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) were always a redundant tier of bureaucracy in my view. District Health Authorities (DHAs) were to be the principal commissioners but the plan was that GP fundholders would eventually take over most of it with DHAs becoming centres of expertise rather than administration. Then there was a rather messy fudge between GPs and community health services and we ended up with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).
There is a huge amount of expertise required in commissioning. The complexity of the tasks involved – understanding, assessing, testing, planning, choosing, contracting and much more, is enormous. GPs will have to buy in that expertise which will build a bureaucracy which we will call – what? We will have gone round in a circle.
One of the biggest mistakes made about the NHS is the endless stream of attacks on managers. Almost all the problems that the NHS has and that people complain about are management problems. NHS managers have a hugely demanding and thankless task for which they are regularly pilloried and censured. They are, actually, crucial to an effective NHS, just as much as the clinicians.
So now we are to have “Foundation Trusts” and GP commissioning. It is the same thing, yet again, under a slightly different name. The NHS is not broken. It is, in fact, greatly improved. It doesn’t need fixing.
We do not need more reform. We need some adjustments. There have been great achievements on waiting times. Now, we need to shift the emphasis towards outcomes. We need targets on quality rather than quantity. It’s a tweak rather than a revolution.
Peter Reynolds 