£1bn raid on NHS to pay for Social Care
According to the Echo, £1bn of 'Ring-Fenced' NHS money ( sounds of hysterical laughter ) is to be diverted to what has become jocularly known as Social Care - in the community, of course.
Ok, so I'm being a clever dick and quoting English Ministers in Parliament, but does that mean that Welsh services will be spared further murderous cuts ? Only The Shadow knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, but I know about the evil intent of NHS Wales to deprive us all of vital parts of existing services in order to save money, even though I'm no Cranston Lamont.
What ever happened to the principle of saving lives ? It's bad enough for the more densely populated urban areas, but it's impossible for patients in rural areas to access health services, unless they are fairly well off, own a car, and don't mind taking a three hour drive ( minimum ) to the nearest 'Centre of Excellence'. For the ambulance service, the situation is - and will continue to be - dire. They will be transporting more chronically ill patients to distant hospitals with a greater probability of delivering more deceased patients to one of the five or so A&E departments that are left open to serve the entire population. Contrary to popular opinion, paramedics and ambulance personnel provide an excellent service, under impossible conditions, with having to queue outside A&E departments because the hospitals have no beds.
And - Why do they have no spare beds ? - because of bed-blocking by elderly patients who have no care home places available for transfer to be made. So the hospitals whine that it's the fault of Local Authorities, whilst the LAs blame the government for not providing them with sufficient funds. The government responds that hospitals and the LAs are failing to work within their budgets. No one accepts responsibility and nothing gets done to improve the situation because of this puerile pastime of finger-pointing that achieves nothing except create destructive acrimony and more needless deaths due a failure of Anyone to Manage any patient care. Who - dear Mr Cairn - is going to provide this dream of 'customer-based' priority of services ?
It is an inescapable fact that managers in the NHS and those managing bureaucrats in Cathays park are only interested in one thing - self preservation and increasing rewards for their pathetic failures. The only entity to avoid any cuts is the management and bureaucracy who all give fresh new meaning to the word INCOMPETENCE. Not one of these immoral thieves puts the patient first - not one !
It's much easier to blame supposedly uncaring nurses and doctors who are expected to do twice as much work for the same salary. Morale is poor throughout all medical staff. They are instructed to discharge patients more quickly, so that GPs are left having to waste months by referring discharged patients back to hospital for the care that they are diagnosed to need.
With well over 800 beds having already been cut, the authorities continue to reduce the amount of care needed by so many patients, with absolutely no remorse because the need to save money is greater than the need to provide healthcare to the citizens of Wales. R.W.
Regarding the provision of Social Care, the Vale of Glamorgan Council have no remorse about closing Bryneithin - the only home in the county to provide specialist care for the Elderly Mentally Infirm. For y don't miss ears these self-centred bureaucrats starved the home of essential maintenance and any capital expenditure to ensure that the home would be able to continue providing essential care to these incurable dementia sufferers. So, if our government is allocated any of this £1bn of funding, will the Vale Council correct their negligence by keeping Bryneithin as the centre of excellence that it has always been ? Then, it would be feasible to create more specialist care homes for the growing number of our elderly that are suffering in a lonely world that is increasingly uncaring about our most vulnerable citizens
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