Let me just count to ten, backwards. It’s supposed to calm you down.
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1…
*&&^% 5$^(*^^&$%$ %^£@!*&)&*^$ $%£@!
It hasn’t worked…
I’m speechless… nearly.
I have never seen such a stupid response from a Secretary of State for Health, to try and address a problem that is adding to mortality, creating huge risk and that everyone working in the NHS, knows the solution to.
Let me digress.
Margaret Heffernan, teaches us about the dangers of ‘wilful blindness’. There’s a very good Ted-Talk, here.
A potted version:
A woman called Gayla Benefield was doing her job… she uncovered an awful secret about her hometown that meant its mortality rate was 80 times higher than anywhere else in the US.
When she tried to tell people about it, she learned an even more shocking truth: People didn't want to know.
Margaret Heffernan demonstrates, for us, the danger of ‘wilful blindness’, and praises ordinary people, like Benefield, who are willing to speak up.
Let me speak up. Spell something out.
Ambulance response times are a shambles because there are too many crews, queueing up, outside A&E.
Why?
Because A&E is choc-a-bloc.
Why?
Because A&E can’t move people onto the wards.
Why?
Because wards are full...
(We entered the pandemic with too few beds in the system and have continually struggled to manage with reduced capacity, now this is unsustainable)
...and staff are unable to discharge people safely.
Why?
Because social care is on its knees; 160,000 vacancies and they don’t have enough money to fix it, or pay people properly.
(The Royal College of Emergency medicine say; ‘Social care must be resourced to ensure patients can be discharged when they have completed their treatment to prevent long hospital stays’.)
That means we can’t get people home, through the back door and that means the front door is, mayhem.
Delayed discharges to intermediate and social care are the problem and the fact the NHS has fewer than 4,000 district nurses doesn't help.
It also means people waiting for ambulances are put at risk and patients in ambulances, waiting, to get into A&E, are put at risk.
You understand all that. I understand that. The Confed understands that. The news media understands that and the bloke running the chip-shop understands that.
There is only one person in England that doesn’t understand that. It is the Secretary of State for Health Steve (The Bully-Boy) Barclay.
... “to address the crisis in ambulance performance”.
Don’t laugh. He’s serious.
What’s a ‘hackathon’?
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking marathon) is a sprint-like design event wherein computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, product managers, project managers, domain experts, and others collaborate intensively on software projects…
... the goal of a hackathon is to create functioning software or hardware by the end of the event.
If you can tell me what software we can invent that will get social care functioning properly, I’ll send you a biscuit.
This is a totally bonkers response to a simple, system-flow problem.
Why is only Barclay deaf, dumb and blind to the issue…
It’s simple. His mate Rishi, who he is supporting in his run for PM, hiked up national insurance to fix the backlog in NHS elective waiting and ‘to solve the problems of social care.’
There was more money for social care, yes. But…
… it amounts to £5.4bn, over three years. Mostly for reforming how the public pay for care and around a third for ‘reforming’ the sector. It does not mean an increase in hourly rates of pay and will do nothing to solve the recruitment problem.
Because…
… it’s a really difficult job, the pay is crap and almost every other employer, shops, supermarkets, Amazon, pays more.
And...
... a bus driver earns more, a bin-man earns more and an office cleaner earns more.
Barclay knows this and Margaret Heffernan is right.
He is wilfully blind because politically and practically he is boxed in. He hasn’t got the bottle to say what we all know. He can’t fix ambulance problems until social care is fixed and this new money won't come close.
To look busy he distracts us and occupies us with &*$^% non-sense about hackathons.
The DH+ must know this. NHSE Board must know this.
Somebody needs to take Barclay down the backstairs of NHSHQ and whisper in his lug-hole...
>> I'm hearing - We spend over £6bn on agency/bank staff per year and I have seen an example; £832 for one shift.
>> I'm hearing - National director for emergency and elective care Dame Pauline Philip is bailing out. Can't say I blame her.
>> I'm hearing - Ifti Majid ChEx Derbyshire Healthcare is leaving to take up the boss-role at Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust.
>> I'm hearing - Patients per GP are up 3% in a year as workforce slumps by over 440, GPs who have left.
>> I'm hearing - NHS England’s medical director of primary care Nikki Kanani is leaving in a sideways move, to join NHS England’s chief delivery office team as director for clinical integration... on secondment.
