private health expert runs the NHS, why?

CCGs, clinical commissioning groups (established in 2012 to hand the bulk of
the NHS budget to private providers), have stopped providing funding for many medicines & surgical operations under their clinical policies.

The CCGs sent a list of medicines they'd banned to all GP practices but failed to recommend GPs CHECK TO SEE WHICH PATIENT IS EXEMPT from paying for the medicines. This led to doctors practices applying a blanket ban with the result being hundreds of patients ringing in asking where their repeat prescriptions were?

In their rush to save money due to government underfunding, the CCGs claimed they now had limited resources so must ban or restrict access to certain hospital operations and even rationed and banned some basic primary care surgical procedures unless the patient met certain 'criteria'.

One 'criteria' now for gaining access to NHS medicines includes 'financial viability'. 

This 'criteria' is straight from the American health insurance market, something the head of NHS England is all too familiar with.

After all, the man running NHS England (NHSE) is no other than Simon Stevens, the ex vice-president of global operations Europe at UnitedHealth, the largest private health insurer in the USA.

Stevens took over as CEO of NHSE in 2014 where he almost immediately invited the head of Americas state funded 'medicaid' over to England for a quick chit chat about how to run Accountable Care Organisations over here in England.

Earlier this week the UK Conservative government voted not to protect the NHS from trade deals with the USA and other countries.

The 2019 Conservative manifesto claims they would protect the NHS from trade deals, yet the very same MPs who pledged to protect the NHS went and betrayed it.

Here's the list of all the MPs who voted AGAINST protecting the NHS in post Brexit trade deal.

Giving multi-national companies access to NHS contracts is no different from a traitor selling off the crown jewels..

More..

Simon Stevens CV [PDF] can be downloaded here

Simon Stevens: NHS chief executive with a private past

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Join the campaign to save Chorley A&E NOW!

For more on how to get involved visit the campaign group facebook page:

Protect Chorley & South Ribble Hospital Campaign

Not just Chorley A&E, 80% of other routine services also to go

WHEN the consultation comes round certain committees will have been 'briefed' long beforehand about the dangers of attempting to run a hospital A&E on short staff levels.

Let's face it, there's been no change in the Hospital trust board's recruitment campaign so they'll use the staff shortage issue to push thru' the now not so hidden agenda of service transformation to an American style health insurance system.

After all, they've made it very clear, the A&E departments are driving all the deficit and if they can downgrade them one at a time (starting with Chorley A&E) they can proceed to concentrate on the longer term plan of closing Preston A&E and having a single 'trauma centre' somewhere in between both sites.

Ultimately, that's what THEY want, not what YOU or I want, but what 's best for the trusts longer-term finances. When hospital services are closed, there are no 'better outcomes'.

But that's only a small part of the plan, and last week the LEP reported the trust had plans passed at Chorley council to build a £17.5 m building including operating theatres to do ophthalmology and related procedures - which BTW is part of the elective only site planned for Chorley district hospital (CDH).

This again, is inline with the 2012 health & social care act (NHS privatisation act) which authorised hospital foundation trusts to gain up to 50% of their income from private sources - so expect many paying patients at the new building, the one taxpayers paid for.

The government so-called write off fund of £215m for LTHT may cover some existing costs but won't cover the deficit over the next year or 2 . It will however help to go dome way towards meeting the requirements in the STP/10 year plan to dismantle the NHS and transform it into 44 local American style Acccountable Care Organisations (ACO) throughout England run largely for profit.

EIGHTY percent of services, along with our A&E, are planned to be closed at CDH and moved into private buildings or hubs previously owned by local councils, but will become joint ventures along with sales of public hospital buildings & land left behind.

They did it with the land at the hospital and it became private property used for parking. The closures however won't be 'leased', they'll be GONE FROM OUR HOSPITAL FOREVER.

It will be almost impossible to integrate the services back where they belong, under public control in public buildings and hospitals.

The Health & Social Care Act simply must be revoked and an end put to the market in our NHS. All trade unions must come together and say NO to hospital trusts forming subsidiary companies (SubCos) and fragmentation of our services being moved into private community clinics.

An all out strike is needed by all unions as the Tories know full well they are winning the conversion of our NHS into a profit extraction machine, doing it bit by bit so it largely goes un-noticed.

When the time comes everyone must do their duty and fight tooth and nail to keep health services in the public sector. It's more than your life is worth. Everyone is at risk...

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Join the campaign to save Chorley A&E NOW!

For more on how to get involved visit the campaign group facebook page:

Protect Chorley & South Ribble Hospital Campaign

Chorley A&E, debt write offs, and the consultation farce

Chorley A&E, debt write offs, and the consultation farce...

11th July 2020

Ironic isn't it, no sooner have the Lancashire hospital trust received a £215 million 'debt write-off' [loans cancelled], the hospital board announce its plans to build a four-storey, state-of-the-art extension at Chorley Hospital.

The local democracy reporting team also reported this week that a public consultation into the future of the accident and emergency department at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital could begin within weeks of the unit reopening in September

No Local Plan to Retain A&E at Chorley

The local 'NHS transformation' plans titled 'Our Health Our Care' & public consultation are due to continue next month which implies all the trusts efforts (and plans) have been towards utilising their get out of debt card, constructing a four-storey building, converting Chorley hospital into a step down cottage hospital with pre-planned elective ops but no A&E, and accelerating progress on the Integrated Care Program.

It's a myth that Chorley & South Ribble hospital is getting its A&E back since it hasn't had a type 1 A&E since April 2016.

What Chorley hospital will be getting back from Preston, assuming the virus doesn't recur, is the staff that were moved to Preston to deal with the coronovirus uptake in March.

In August 2016 the a group established by the trust & CCG called the Systems Resilience Group (SRG ) agreed that "it has no other realistic option but to maintain the current service of an 8am until 8pm urgent care service at Chorley Hospital as the best way of ensuring the delivery of safe and sustainable care for patients".  This will be reviewed again in April 2017.

Chorley hasn't had an A&E since then, only the privately run urgent care centre with no overnight fracture x-ray diagnostics.

This week we've seen what little value is placed on 'public consultation'. NHS Managers in South West London and Surrey have announced their decision this week to downgrade two existing Major Acute Hospitals - Epsom hospital in Surrey and St Helier hospital in South West London - BOTH will lose ALL of their Acute Services.

So in summary, it's only clinically viable to open the Chorley A&E if the trust board wish it to be such. Currently, the trust have been criticised by the county councils health scrutiny committee for failing to provide evidence the trust have undertaken an extensive recruitment campaign to hire mid-grade doctors to enable re-opening of Chorley A&E.

And with the millions proposed for a new 4-storey building at Chorley, along with the local Our Health Our Care plans to centralise and have a single A&E at Preston (short term), the chances of retaining the Chorley A&E are down to everyone across the land coming together to take action. That includes trade unions, community partnerships, volunteer groups, community NHS campaigns, councillors, MPs, supporting GPs and so on.

As we've seen with the Huddersfield Infirmary fiasco and now the Epson & St Helier hospital service closures, consultations are a farce, and as long as the Lancashire hospital trust play the staff shortage card, it appears they will continue to push the local NHS privatisation plans through just as the government intended...

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