NHS: Under a critical eye during the US healthcare reform

 

 

Recently, the NHS has been under fire due to the media hype and criticism of Obama’s proposals for theUS healthcare reform.  Journalists, healthcare ‘professionals’, and even Alaska’s ex-governor Sarah Palin has stepped up to crush our national health service and branding it as ‘evil’ .

 

I would have to strongly disagree with these claims - as I think that the NHS is many things, but evil is definitely not one of them.  Fox News aired an interview (see above) between Tory MEP Daniel Hannan and Fox television reporter Glenn Beck, which I feel was a lively yet one-sided discussion. Throughout the interview, the statement of ‘going to change the world’ was pulled out of proportion. Beck drifted off to employment issues towards the end of the discussion and Hannan quoted figures of waiting times which are 5 years old!

 

I will agree that cancer is a big killer; however cardiovascular disease is an even bigger killer. In the UK, patients with cardiovascular disease are treated very well, contrary to what Beck and Hannan would claim.

 

I am in agreement that the NHS is not a ‘perfect’ system (however, the US healthcare system is not ‘perfect’, hence the reform proposals). The raft of management versus doctors is disproportionate. The middle layer of management can be slimmed down especially as the electronic patient record (EPR) is established. The widespread establishment of EPR’s is critical – it’s obvious with the correct training and confidence from users of the information, it will save costs.

 

I feel the needs of patients are the behest of the ward staff as much as a doctor’s diagnosis is not in itself a remedy, treatment or cure. Once a diagnosis is made, implementation of treatment has to then ensue and the greater portion of that is delivered, under the supervision of doctors who have tight schedules arranged for them, by nursing personnel.

 

However cost effective (or not) healthcare is, it is a balance of the resources and the delivery. More doctors at higher salaries left to make their own appointments would arguably cost more than a leaner staff of doctors with increased ward personnel and attentive administrators who managed their time and the resources more critically to ensure the resources can cope

 

Finally, embracing new technologies to ensure that care at home, care in the community, remote patient monitoring – all of which are available now – are utilized. One night treatment in hospital is broadly equivalent to 1 year remote monitoring for someone with a condition who needs to change their lives and be mindful of their lifestyles. These technologies additionally serve as weekly, daily and hourly reminders to people to be more aware of and take more responsibility for their own conditions – that leads to lower admissions or certainly likely to be less extensive and expensive in-hospital treatment times for them once they become patients.

 

This is an important debate not only for the future of the US healthcare system, but also important in shedding some light on the NHS ‘brand’.

 

That’s enough of my rants, what do you think?

 

-Mark

 

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