'Prudent' Healthcare the new buzzword

'NHS has no choice but to change'

Not content with creating a whole series of meaningless insincere phrase that say nothing, the dear Minister has now created one more in order to keep us on our toes - Prudent Healthcare.

Prudent : "Acting with or showing care and thought for the future"  

Well....... that's what the Oxford Dictionary gives as a definition - but - do YOU recognise anything resembling this in The South Wales Programme ?  Nope ? - neither did I.  All I saw were pages of bland rhetoric that gave absolutely NO detail as to what the programme was.  Maybe this is what the Minister wants us to believe is his aim ( now that all the closures of hospitals and beds, rationalisations, centralisations of services, reduction of services. Of course , none of these changes were at all helpful and, in fact made the services fewer and more inaccessible.

The latest article in the Echo says that only 1 in 5 people in Wales believe that the changes will work, which I thought was rather high, as nobody I've spoken to sees anything other than the continued destruction of the NHS in Wales. The most cruel part of this so-called programme is the pre-meditated deception of the populace in making them believe that the public consultation would be meaningful.  With 25,000+ responses having been received, the vast majority of written responses were against the changes and the Minister's flunky, Paul Hollard failed to give any of the verbal responses or any resolutions from the so-called public consultation meetings.  The depth of his deception is such a disgrace, I really do not understand how the man can look anyone in the face.  Having failed as a Planning Director, he was given the job of implementing all of the programme of changes before the sham consultation had even begun. He made such a huge mess of planning the Llandough hospital site additions hat he should have been sacked.  Directors like him are the lowest of the low in professional standing, being only kept on as loyal henchmen to their paymasters.

Before I continue, has anything above shown you that Prudent Drakeford or NHS Wales 's fulfilling the definition of prudent i.e. Acting with or showing  care and thought for the future ??? I didn't think so.

What is actually happening is that the Welsh Government are trying to transform the Minister into a sympathetic believable chap almost as though they were creating the next Dr Who out of a cloud of smoke and a flash of light Hence the appearance of Prudence Drakeford - Professor Prudence to his colleagues and just 'Pru' to his friends.

Unfortunately, this cruel deception has manifested itself with 2 people dying already with ambulances being held up for as long as 4hrs outside A&E departments, where the delays are due to short staffing or a lack of beds.  This is hardly surprising after over 1000 beds have been closed in the last 13 years and many hospitals and local health services have been closed. Add to this the incredibly daft reduction of A&E units - only 4  ( 5 when Cwmbran hospital has been built - 4 years) then you can immediately see that these few A&E units cannot possibly cope with existing demands, let alone future demands.

Therefore, regardless who the government tries to blame for these problems the cause is always their fault for implementing such a massive reduction in services - in the first place - for saving money at the expense of adequate healthcare resources.  Consequently public and patients are being made to suffer, deliberately, because the government refuses to fulfill its' constitutional obligation to provide adequate healthcare services, wherever and whenever they are needed. Bearing in mind the fact that 152 cardiac patients have died over two years, whilst on the surgical waiting list, the latest cuts will only make the situation worse i.e. the death rate among patients awaiting treatment must increase due to inaction of the NHS/government.

In conclusion, the government has to provide adequate healthcare services to its'citizens, regardless of cost. In my own opinion, the fault lies in incompetent management throughout the NHS structure and our ineffective government. Get rid of this layer of incompetent managers and petty money-grabbing bureaucrats and allow the people qualified to manage such important services, to come in and restructure this failing services.  Until this is done, patient care and patient safety will never ever improve under the current structure and ridiculous changes, currently underway.   R.  W.