This article first appeared in the Ludlow Advertiser.
Many people have received first class treatment from the NHS, including myself after a recent stroke. Regrettably, that is not everyone’s experience. It is no secret that our health system is creaking at the seams.
Telford A&E unit is threatened with closure overnight from next month due to a shortage of consultants. Health bosses aim to shut it forever. Ludlow Maternity Unit closed overnight at the end of January. The plans are to close it permanently to live births.
This pattern is being repeated across the country. Everywhere, there are insufficient resources to meet growing demand. This is hitting cash-starved rural areas harder than cities. People in towns like ours will have to travel further to access many health services.
Ministers say the NHS doesn’t need any more money. They demand greater innovation, which I agree with, and yet another reorganisation, which I oppose.
The latest idea is to commission health services through Accountable Care Organisations. Many fear that this will lead to large scale privatisation of the health service. I share those fears.
We must not become reliant on private companies to deliver public services. Company priorities are shareholder value and executive pay, not the public values we need to deliver our health services.
Organic change and collaborative working are the way forward. Not the big bang reorganisations beloved by ministers competing for their place in political history.
Organic and collaborative change should happen here too. Health managers would have made changes and introduced innovation more quickly in Shropshire if they not been distracted by the troubled Future Fit process. They wanted a big bang but have so far delivered a damp squib.
outrageous let’s all march and show our solidarity it’s all bollocks we need to act not just let it happen
Hello Andy
What the NHS needs is a change of Government to one which actually supports the NHS and will see through the repeal of the disastrous 2012 Health and Social care Act, which your party ushered in with the Tories.
This act needs to be replaced with the NHS Reinstatement Bill http://www.nhsbillnow.org/
Locally Future Fit recommends replacing an A&E with private companies running Urgent Care Centres and we have yet to see an up to date STP, this is currently hidden behind a password protected firewall on NHSE website https://www.england.nhs.uk/systemchange/view-stps/ .
Presumably as a County Councillor you will be familiar with the delights this document no doubt holds for the local population?
Time Future Fit was closed and stop being a distraction . Maybe there are some personal financial benefits for some of the various Board members or others to keep it going ??!!
Maybe it is time for Mr Dunne to do some real work and try to help us in South Shropshire keep our much needed services.
We do not need private companies to take our hard earned taxes just to pay ” big bosses ” and “big dividends”.
How many more advisory groups , commissions , well paid hangers on , etc etc do we need. Enough , enough of the chiefs ….. reduce their numbers and put the money where it is needed ….. in the hospitals with the staff that actually do the job.
Enough of words by the ” highly paid ” but actually only “talk” and do not actually contribute anything except negativity.
What was that book written by J the Hunt?
You know. The one he wrote before being appointed as Minister of Health by Wonder Boy Cameron.
The one about privatisation of the NHS being “the way forward”.
And “the way forward” being J the Hunt forcing the NHS down the plug-hole.
And persuading Con voters that those plebs who can’t afford private health care insurance are just collateral damage.
time to turn the flow of money going to pakistan and india who are wealthy countries and laugh in our faces, the money that has been pumped into the african continent aid which never used for the starving but to arm warlords. this aid money should stay in our country to fund n.h.s and homeless people.