"Tell us the same old story....you're running out of new excuses."

  'NHS must now get patients out of bed' - Echo 2nd April

How shocking it is to think that there might be people in hospital who shouldn't need to be there. What are the ruddy GPs doing wrong, anyway ? They work on the basis that anyone ill enough to require hospital treatment, is sent there - usually for emergencies or invasive treatment for chronic illnesses. However, if you try to follow the logic of so-called 'health expert' Marcus Longley, discharging them quickly will free up beds for more sick people - brilliant.  It takes a University Professor to state this authoritatively in order to solve the problem of 'bed-blocking' ( where patients  have no where else to go to go - say, for respite care or rehabilitation after major surgery ).  Under the Chairmanship of Simon Jones, the term bed-blocking was replaced with the more accurate term of Delayed Transfers of Care.  These are usually elderly patients who are due to go into Social Care homes which the local authority is supposed to provide.  Anyone with half a brain will remember that the hospitals blamed the local authorities for not providing these essential beds, whilst the local authorities complained that they were inadequately funded. And so the arguments and complaints see-sawed into the usual blame game, or as it better known as the abdication of both authorities' Duty of Care to the long-suffering patients.

What this Marionette Longley is saying is that the patients are to blame for not healing themselves .speedily enough to be discharged quickly, in step with the governments' position that we make ourselves ill due to our lifestyle choices. For the past decade, we have had a growing number of elderly or vulnerable people requiring urgent secondary care, whilst the numbers of beds in the community - provided for by the local authorities -  are being downgraded or eliminated in order to cut costs.  Even 13 years ago, when I had heart surgery, patients were being sent home within a week, which is quite ridiculous, considering the huge trauma suffered as a result of the surgery and the amount of anaesthetics required to keep patients asleep for their five or six hour stint in the operating theatre.

Whatever your personal viewpoint, it is completely inaccurate to say that 'NHS must now get ( bed-blocking ) patients out of bed'. What is correct to say, however, is that well over 800 beds have been cut over the last decade - in defiance of all reason and common sense - in order to bring the present orchestrated crisis in the NHS about.  Imagine the horror felt by dementia patients and their relatives when they are informed that there is no longer any specialist care centres forn these terminally ill people ?  You have only to contact Margo Farbrace of the 'Keep Bryneithin Care Home for the Elderly Mentally Infirm' campaign to hear the horror stories.

This kind of mischief-making may be ok to keep Marcus Longley and his government puppeteers in lucrative employment, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the failure to provide adequate healthcare for the people of Wales.    R. W.