Choice™.
Tony Blair chose Choice™ as the choice of choice for NuLabour's policies. Whenever a choice was needed for policy, Choice™ was chosen over any other choice available.
Patricia Hewitt, dead in the water from the neck up Health Sec (now that Tone has chosen to officially announce his choice of departure date) chose to make Choice™ her number one choice of policy for the NHS.
Choice™. Choice™. Choice™. More Choice™ was better, so total Choice™ must be utopia. What no-one seemed consider was that a Choice™ of five uniformly under-funded over-targetted opted-out PFI-endebted dirty hovels was no choice at all. If total choice Choice™ is Utopia, then zero-choice Choice™ must be Hell.
Crippen and Dr Rant have been Stuka dive bombing the non-choice of the Choice Agenda™ for what seems like forever. Patients want to know that their local hospital will be clean and well staffed and will provide good care. Patients don't want non-choice Choice™. Patients want good local services.
Well now patients have been given a real choice. They were asked to choose what they thought was important in health care. Unsurprisingly they chose not to choose Choice™ as their top choice.
In fact, Choice™ was so far down their choice of priorities that none of the three Choice™ questions placed higher 73 out of a list of 83 health priorities. That's worse than Briain's entry in the Eurovision song contest - possibly because Malta and Ireland didn't get a vote in the health care poll, but more likely because Patricia and Tony's choice agenda stinks even more than Scooch's Flying the Flag.
So, in summary, the top Choice™ of Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt and the rest of NuLabour is the bottom choice for almost everyone else in the country.
Kind of sums up the Blair health policy, really.
Monday, May 14, 2007
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28 comments:
The Choice agenda was never about giving patients choice and it looks like patients have recognised the attempt to dupe them. It is one of the lines of attack on the current model of secondary care being delivered by a network of district general hospitals (DGHs). As funding is diverted away from DGHs to subsidize ISTCs and tarriff rates for Payment by Results are set so that DGHs would have to do the unprofitable work the ISTC turn away, it is obvious that many DGHs will hit difficulties and close down services. Meanwhile Government appointed medical "experts" brief the media that stroke and heart attack victims can't be properly treated in a DGH. End result of introducing "choice" is that the local DGH will close down or be reduced to a very limited service while patients will be able to "chose" a metropolitan (ie Labour voting area) megahospital or the local privately run treatment centre. Why is this Nulabour's aim? DGHs employ large numbers of staff on rigid pay structures so cannot benefit from the flood of cheap labour from Eastern Europe. The NHS would stand to save a vast amount of money if the work could be done outside of the NHS by private companies. It would of course mean huge unemployment in towns with failing DGHs but after 6 months unemployment the staff could compete for jobs with the Eastern Europeans and in any case most DGHs are in market towns that don't vote Labour anyway so nothing lost. If it breaks up the powerful Hospital Consultant lobby that will be icing on the cake.
good that patients have common sense to realise this is a piss-poor ideology and system that wont bring them any benefits.
Like most folk, I want a local hospital (DGH) dealing with most medical problems most of the time.
I want regional centres that will do the very specialist work.
I do not want "managed choice." This is indeed a political vision rather than a mechanism to optimal management of clinical need.
i want real choice
i want the state insurance policy to pay out when im diagnosed
and i want to take the money to wherever i can get the best balance of timely service, in a clean environment, with a well qualified consultant rather than some kid appointed way too early
i want to take my money to a real consultant not some triarge nurse or pysio screening out people GPs have already identified as in need of an op with no motive other than lenghting the process and hoping patients move or die before getting to the front of the queue
if the receptionists are evil snotty cows or the toilets are all blocked and the walls literally smeared in shit... then funily enuf i want the CHOICE to take my money elsewhere
any millions of real patients making these choices every day will force all the providers to improve for the benefit of all INCLUDING those who choose not to choose
i want REAL choice not patricias fucked up centralised liar version
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