Consultation on proposed changes to Southwark healthcare provision

[Borderlands]

The proposals for changing healthcare provision throughout Southwark are out for consultation and you will need to respond PDQ if you want your voice to be heard - even if they commissioning group don't really have to take any notice.

There are a couple of opportunities to actually say something. Here is a link for those of you who are interested, and those of you who should be interested....which is all of us.

http://www.southwarkccg.nhs.uk/GetInvolved/ImprovingServicesConsultation/Pages/GetInvolved.aspx

For what it's worth the only options A and B you will find in the consultation document amount to almost exactly the same thing - and this is to direct patients away from hospital as much as possible into "local" healthcare centres. Sounds excellent - but be careful what you wish for. This the preferred set by commercially orientated gps, their private companies (and not-conpletely obviously-for profit arrangements) and or international (usually US based) private companies who are gearing up to promote themeselves to leech off NHS funding who view the NHS as simply a mostly trusted brand.

The other idea the document is trying to sell is that hospitals really should only be for specialist care - which seems such a good and obvious idea until you realise the full implications in the light of the proposed changes: that the clinical commissioning group plan is to marginalise effective general hospitals (including teaching hospitals) in contrast to feathering their own nests using an unproven style of delivery of healthcare. This will inevitably mean that hospital funding will decrease or become unpredictable and therefore they will more and more rely on income private customers ....oops I mean patients - this is the basic idea of US giant McKinsey who advised the government on how to dismantle the NHS. By the way your value as an NHS patient in Southwark is only ?82 per annum (very low) - this is part of the marketising of health that is underway which means that those in rich boroughs are valued more highly and their health will be better funded....funny how the government has forgotten diseases don't respect these boundaries (look at the measles epidemic in Wales).

The consultation document asks for your opinion, not your experience, not your expertise - and the questions are set up deliberately to force answers that the CCG seems to want. You need to be on your guard while filling it in either online or on paper - or just write in your own questions: like why we can't keep what we have and improve on this and co-operation between hospitals, gps and the local authority. Still, even if you are even slightly concerned about what might happen it's important to respond to the consultation - even if it is to say it is spurious and/or rigged for the outcome the CCG's desire.

[langlounge]

Thank you very much for this Borderlands. Of all the stupidities I have seen in my lifetime, the way we are letting the NHS be stolen from under our noses by marauding bandits, is the most dizzying stupidity of all.

As far as I know.....we are the only people in history to sell ourselves back into serfdom, aren't we? Is there really no one who remembers their grandparents' terror of being ill?

For anyone who doesn't know what it's going to be like for most people once the City of London and their chums have sold the NHS down the river, I have a middle class US friend, from Texas, she and her husband ran their own very successful business for years. They vote Republican. Now she needs a transplant. Their business has declined after her husband had a coronary, and she no longer has health insurance that will pay for the transplant. They don't want to have to sell their house, which is the only source of funds they have left, so she is asking everyone she knows in the UK if she can time it until her liver is failing, and then turn up here at an NHS hospital.

[Zebedee Tring]

More fool them for voting Republican and no doubt opposing Obama's modest health reforms. Now she wants to use our NHS when it suits her. If it had been, say, African refugees coming to this country and then immediately using the NHS, she would have been up in arms and encouraging Fox News to come down hard on them - that is, until she and her husband were ill and miraculously started to see the point of what they would no doubt have regarded as a "Communistic" health care system.

[first mate]

The idea of an outfit like Concordia and the infamous MGP having even more sway over the health decisions of local makes my blood run cold.

[Borderlands]

Yes these two outfits are just the kind of firms I mean - if you look at Concordia's web site I think it mentions some awards it has in an attempt to impress the unwary - but they weren't from any health body that rang any bells - so just the kind of meaningless self-regarding and deflecting propaganda you would expect from such a generally loathed provider.

But here's the really frightening thing: I think the doctor behind Concordia might be on the clinical commissioning group and was on its near predecessor. So you can guess pushing the engorged new healthcare centre set up proposed in the consulation document would be right up Concordia type bodies' street. It would mean more insecure, over-stretched, overworked, inexpert, salaried GPs who will come and go rather than build up a rapport with the area. This is because there are plenty of GPs who do not have the experience or desire for the increased admin and business-style responsibilities: they want to treat patients. But if our entire experience is of unmotivated, fearful and overworked GPs (as we will never get referred to expert and multi-disciplinary care in a hospital)this will feed into the perception that we need a healthcare centre...how convenient for Concordia, United Healthcare and similar set ups. Heads they win and tails we will continue to loose if this is what is forced on us.

What me and many other patients will end up doing is always going to A&E wherever it can be found - which if health supremo Bruce Keogh has his way could mean getting a friend to drive me to one of a handful of hospitals left in the entire country....probably somewhere slap bang in the middle of the countryside.

Let's go down fighting!!

[Borderlands]

You can easily sign this petition on 38 degrees web site to add your tick to mine and others. If you just put in your postcode it will automatically connect you to the Southwark petition:

http://action.38degrees.org.uk/ccg_postcode

[first mate]

Sadly, I was slightly put off signing that petition because one has to give an email and agree for info to be stored and updates sent etc.... Shame one couldn't just give a name and postcode without the obligatory database attached.

[Borderlands]

Know what you mean - I did it in any case because I've participated in several campaigns over the last couple of years and so far nothing alarming has occurred...but understand what you are saying.

Hope this doesn't put you off the consultation questionnaire which is also online. Worth putting fears, doubts. protests on this.

[first mate]

Borderlands,

Not at all, I intend to get involved, just wish that campaigning organizations would think a little more about information gathering and the like, nicely couched promises to 'just keep your details, but we won't do a thing with them' don't wash with me I'm afraid.

Back on thread, this is such an important issue. Had a quick look at consultation questionnaire and there seems to be no way of circumventing the design. It feels like any way you answer can be used to support one of the proposed options. There is no opt out.

[langlounge]

first mate Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Sadly, I was slightly put off signing that

> petition because one has to give an email and

> agree for info to be stored and updates sent

> etc.... Shame one couldn't just give a name and

> postcode without the obligatory database attached.

There comes a point when you have to take a stand though first mate, and soon you we will have lost our chance to do that.

At least those people are organising to save health care for the ordinary person - I do take an interest, and am glad for the pointer to this, it is the first clear and accessible means I have seen of getting involved to do that. I really don't know how anyone can be daft enough to believe the NHS is being sold off to any greedy thug that can bid, as the end result of someone wanting to "improve" it. The NHS is being broken up and sold off because super rich companies and investors identified the UK as a place where no money was being screwed out of the sick and their desperate families, and set about working on how they could create a market to profit from us.

How did we become so stupid, so staggeringly thick and brainless, as a country, that we can fall for this, and so lazy and cowardly that we can let them get away with it?

[Borderlands]

Agree with what you have written - the total re-organisation idea has been stewing in the brains of Oliver Letwin since he as young-fogey in the 1980s, but of course, other administrations have toyed with various models of healthcare provision because that's what politicians do, and I can't even remember who was responsible for introducing the godawful internal market which began the grooming which has ultimately prepared the public to accept (or at least not protest against) privatisation....a service here, a service there.....

But I don't believe any of this would have got this far (even with Andy Burnham's former stance of permitting some privatisation there was no intention to wound the NHS mortally this way) if the Liberal Democrats hadn't kidded themselves that they could and have prevented the potential worst excesses of the Tory lead coaltion by agreeing to a slight rewording of the repellent Social and Health care Act. They have compromised our health knowing illness can make some people very rich indeed. That's the bottom line. And there are an awful lot of ill people in London, and Southwark - TB anyone? Look at the furore over failing hospitals now - instead of being taken back out of trust status (re-nationalised) and allowed to get the finances and staffing sorted out free of utterly spurios competition, these hospitals and their de-moralised insecure staff will be "reformed" perhaps offering very few services in future and at some point hived off to the private sector (who will offer some public provision if they can make money out of it). The foundation trust and pfi farrago is just replaced by another...

I will try to go to St Barnabus's although I can see it looks as if they are limiting who can attend. And hope others will come along too.

[Borderlands]

How about only usin the "Other" option and filling in your reasons?

[Health Involvement]

Thanks for your interest in the consultation on 'Improving Health Services in Dulwich and the Surrounding Areas'. As the organisation who has developed the proposals (NHS Southwark CCG) we really do welcome any interest and debate as part of the consultation and would like to emphasise that any feedback received via the consultation questionnaire or other routes promoted will be included in the evaluation.

The consultation document also states that if anyone has alternative suggestions to those presented in the proposals that we welcome these. The questionnaire is provided to help people feed back in a structured way, however people are also welcome to send in letters, reports or other submissions that do not follow the questionnaire format.

The two public events at St Barnabas Church can be booked online or on the telephone and are open to anyone who wants to attend. The reason for having a booking process is so that the numbers of people attending are known in advance and we can ensure that sufficient staff and facilitators are available to allow everyone to take part in a meaningful way. Please do come along.

More information can be found at: www.southwarkccg.nhs.uk/GetInvolved/ImprovingServicesConsultation/Pages/default.aspx

[Borderlands]

This is just the kind of "abuse of the system" the government is keen to exaggerate for propaganda purposes - as if the failings of medical treatment and chronic compassion fatigue (which can and does lead to pretty much criminal neglect) can all be put down to health tourism instead of real terms cuts in our money going specifically to medical care rather than black-hole pfi deals and private company set ups for formerly locally run and appreciated GP surgeries (Harmoni anyone?).

It's very helpful for the government to have a cartoon like approach to this kind of thing added to a steady drip-drip diet of bad news (and twisted "stats") to an increasingly cynical public (especially those already at the bottom of the pecking order). I remember a fantastic C4 news piece comparing the NHS with continental systems showing how amazingly successful it is...

Of course, the reason Branson and Harmoni are getting involved is theirs far more gold in siphoning off tax-payer money (and then out the country into off shore accounts) than investing in manufacturing. Branson's carefully constructed persona has been managed this way for the purposes of hoovering up formerly public sector services. Yes, some of the moneys no doubt will go towards new balloons adventures or perhaps rockets to Mars....so we'll be in the space race again (the space being our lost public services).

[Health Involvement]

Our consultation on health services in Dulwich and the surrounding areas came to a close at the end of May 2013 and the consultation responses have been evaluated. We are now holding at feedback event at which Opinion Leader (who undertook the evaluation) will share the key themes that emerged during the consultation process. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions about what local people and organisations told us. A light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

To ensure we have sufficient space and refreshments, please let us know you?ll be attending by booking in advance. You can do this at: www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/7328033345/invitation

The consultation evaluation report and equalities impact assessment will be discussed at the CCG governing body meeting on 11 July 2013 and will be available on our website at: www.southwarkccg.nhs.uk if you would like to read the report before attending the meeting.

Following this, NHS Southwark CCG?s governing body will meet on 12 September 2013 to agree on a number of recommendations arising from the consultation.

[Borderlands]

EDers should be aware that proposals restricting what GPs can offer so that health centres have some purpose was a key aspect of directed discussions at the local consultation. The reason for this was that duplication is being portrayed as equalling pure waste....

Anyone who has read my posts before on the NHS deforms will guess what I think of that: surely we want duplication? And why would any one be a GP in future if there is a threat to offering a particular area of expertise because a healthcare centre might offer it in that locality. And what if the healthcare centre is staffed by cheaper, insecure and under-trained staff, who can be replaced at the snap of a manager's fingers? Is this the future vision for our health provision in Southwark? We are simply not worth as much as patients in rich boroughs: we're just iller but, hey, that's our choice.

If GPs are actually not allowed by the CCG to offer patient services they want to, because if could be portrayed as wasteful and inefficient, this is what I would see as rigging our healthcare in favour of another kind of service. Presumably meaning the "innovative" business-orientated GP providers like Concordia or Harmoni - no flies on either of them - ever (just sack the unprotected staff). Look at the way groups of established GPs cannot get a foot in the door on this all round London.

And by the way, the consultative meeting I went to did not begin to address the interface between hospital and GP care at all - a key concern for most of us. Not once. Got the feeling it wasn't allowed.

So, it seemed to me that the consultation is pretty much, even if unintentionally, grooming us to accept that instead of referring patients to hospitals (too expensive, and full of private patients in future) GPs will just provide triage for the new healthcare centres instead (untested, money down a blackhole, staff of unknown quality and status).

Why would anyone become a GP in future unless it was purely for the dosh? And don't say that's the case now - it's frowned on now which is, for the most part a good reaction.

This is all about money folks - not health. A&E anyone?

[first mate]

Borderlands,

Thanks for this. It sounds worrying. Anyone with experience of 'new model' GP practices like Melbourne Grove/Concordia will have a sense of where our services are bound.