What future for our NHS?

Our National Health service seems to be continually under attack by often misguided politicians and also from within by those who work in this sector but forget the basic principles of how to select treatment plans using evidence based medicine .




We have a Government that . has caused a crisis in A&E and cut 4,000 nurses while wasting £3 billion on a damaging reorganisation of our NHS, founded 65 years ago on Friday this week .







People worried about difficulty in getting medical advice with their own GPs now often opted out of out of hours cover go to where they know a place is open and even with a horrendous wait at A and E will eventually get that medical care. This ha created serious pressures on those who are trying to cope with running this part of the service and where sifting through the patients attending is often down to the non medical person sitting on the reception desk. Of course there are many who attend A and E who have relatively minor medical needs and have come to the wrong ‘medical bus stop’ and so hamper health care delivery elsewhere in the system.



The NHS appears to use their resources inefficiently. A health service has the prime objective of treating ill patients , getting them better quickly and helping them to return to normal living and to continue as independently as possible. We also allow public companies whose main interest is producing a profit for their shareholders to write contracts that have so many self interest clauses in to protect those profits and so cost us the tax payers dear. How can these highly paid executives in our NHS and elsewhere be so naive and such poor negotiators?



However we use enormous resources to screen large sections of the public … screening for breast cancer, prostrate cancer, aneurisms, colon cancer which do find some early signs of disease but when you look closely at the figures these numbers are very small ( unfortunately) screening should only be targeted at very high risk groups.. otherwise the only use is to raise awareness of future signs of ill health.



We are now going along the trail of preventative medicines .. such as statins when the proper and only real ‘prescription’ is an adoption of a more balanced and healthier diet maybe with evidence based knowledge of how for example the diet pattern in Southern Italy results in much lower incidence of CHD.



We do not support and coordinate the voluntary sector who are absolutely vital to the sustainable care of the vulnerable, elderly and those convalescing after recovering from illness or supporting with dignity those who are terminally ill.



We must save our NHS from itself becoming terminally ill and drifting into a privatised service where the size of your bank balance determines the quality and speed of access for treatment of your illness.