A global archive of independent reviews of everything happening from the beginning of the millennium
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Theresa May's government is investing in new world
class state of the art facilities and increased capacity at the new Papworth
Hospital in Cambridgeshire, one of the leading hospitals for treating heart
disease in the world
10 April 2018
On a visit to Addenbrookes's Hospital, Cambridge today (on an adjacent site to the soon to be finished new Papworth Hospital), to announce a new £75 million fund for prostate cancer and to thank Addenbrookes staff, the Prime Minister is reported as saying the following on funding:
What we're going to do is look at a long term plan - sustainable multi-year funding within that - and we will continue to take a balanced approach.
As a government we take an overall balanced approach of dealing with our debts, putting money into public services but keeping taxes low on families.
We will continue to take a balanced approach as we look forward.
We're at the point of at the moment of looking at what this long term plan should have.
What I want to do with the multi-year funding is to ensure that the NHS can move away from the system where, year in year out, we're looking at putting more funding in.
The Prime Minister was accompanied by Conservative mayor of Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, James Palmer.
£10 billion extra funding for the NHS has been announced since November 2017.
*****
The visit to Cambridge by the Prime Minister has been much appreciated.
She will be visiting other NHS establishments around the country to hear the views of staff.
17 May 2018
David Cameron commissioned a perfectly viable and well considered report into social care. Simply get on and implement it, adjusting the limits if necessary.
Damien Green's proposal today is like Andy Burnham's but worse. A surefire vote loser.
A lot of folk are fed up already with insurance, private or state, and prefer to bear risk themselves.
The diminishing amount of entrepreneurial activity in the country is proportional to government's unwillingness to permit risk taking.
Let private equity care providers go to the wall if, like Carillion, they have a large scale problem but rescue the assets and the residents so that they are not subject to sudden moves.
Ted Heath did it at little additional cost for Rolls-Royce so why not now?
*****
If the government really cannot afford to finance the NHS, and the residual amount of the care budget if the report is implemented, mothball HS2 now and put it on slow burn.
Government has little business in financing this speculative transport venture that will have to be sold off once it is completed.
The proposed Heathrow third runway will be financed commercially.
The Channel Tunnel and HS1 were, with the government only chipping in for the latter late in the day.
The business ratepayers of London bear some of the risk of Crossrail. They will probably have to bear some again if there is a Crossrail 2.
Only an upgraded northern rail network should be paid for by the government, to honour the Northern Powerhouse promises.
*****
Government should let business take risk rather than dump it on the consumer and the taxpayer.
That way some of the great pools of investment funds located in the City might lap over into the real economy rather than just trickle.
NHS 1948 - 2018
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Healthcare is moving in the direction of scale and big data and this is probably a mistake. Large data sets in healthcare are inherently low quality because diagnosis by individuals and data recording are subject to the limitations of human nature. Error rates in the data probably cannot be reduced to single figure percentages.
High quality data sets from genetic sequencing are more useful and lend themselves to the customisation of healthcare.
Large healthcare providers, whether state or insurance based, will struggle to offer appropriate care to all individuals if they use probabilities and big data as the basis of their offerings.
What is effective for a population, often by a very small margin, may be inappropriate for large numbers of that population.
Large organisations also tend to be slow to withdraw poor advisory guidance.
That is very evident in Britain's NHS and is a roadblock to it getting more state capital, which it needs, because it must be preceded by reform.
The reduction in the number of hospital beds, previously advocated by Sir David Nicolson and Andy Burnham, has to be reversed.
This capital needs to come from borrowing on public markets not from taxation. That is the way to end austerity (if a symbolic ending of austerity is necessary). The NHS salaries and operating expenses come from taxation and these are very considerable. The taxpayer deserves to get something better than a bossy, unreformed organisation for its money.
Is Andy Burnham still advocating cutting the number of hospital beds as he did when he was Labour's health spokesman now that he is mayor of Manchester? The electors should also ask him what his views on PFI are now, in the upcoming local elections. Does factionalism prevent Labour candidates agreeing with their mayor?