View Full Version : Many NHS trusts 'short of funds'
News title from the BBC website
Just out of curiousity, has anyone else here worked at the NHS and seen examples of cash being wasted unnecessarily?
I used to work at Worthing hospital as a computer technician and the amount of money wasted on pointless things astounded me.
I see patients every day who have to wait months for simple appointments to wait months for simple tests.......the NHS is a joke that no one wants to admit to....
it's great (ish) if/when the sh*t hits the fan but the killer is that the sh*t needn't have hit the fan in the first place if the NHS had been up to the job in the first place :dozey: :rolleyes: :(
Well let me give you a good example of waste.
When I started at the hospital, they were just starting to buy "Opus" Pc's (Business side of the Tiny brand), which were Pentium 133mhz's
Previously they used to buy Compaq desktops, frmo 386's upto pentium 1 100mhz's
Our IT team covered two hospital sites (Worthing and Shoreham)
Whenever a department wanted a new pc, printer or anything computer related, they had to raise what's called an "SD7" (Item request form)
(SD7's were required for ANY Item, including non computer stuff)
No matter how many items or how much the item was worth, it cost the NHS £20 PER order
A classic example was a nurse ordering packs of pens which cost £2, but because it was bought through the supply department in the NHS, it ended up costing £22
Now, here's where major cash is being wasted in what i'd call a mixture of corruption and waste.
A department buys 10 pc's, they HAVE to buy it THROUGH the IT department or the department would refuse to service or support them (Although this rule was bent/broken for directors and whatnot)
If 5 years down the line they wanted to upgrade 5 of them, they'd give the IT department the old WORKING Pc's, then buy new ones, no problem
Now say their keyboard broke, or their mouse, or their harddrive died, they'd have to buy a NEW one
But....thing is, we have their OLD working equipment sitting in a big storage area in the hospital doing nothing
The IT department refused to give out what it would call "spares", even though the items were bought by another departments budget...crazy eh?
Another good example of waste would be HP printers, if one went wrong (And they often did), instead of taking it to an HP authorised repairer and paying say £50, they'd tell the department (Sorry we can't fix it, you'll have to buy a new one) and we'd then recommend the stupidist, most expensive printer which they never needed.
We wouldn't even give them back their cartridges or salvagable parts.
On some of the hp 800, 600 and 500 series printers, there's a strip of plastic which guides the cartridges along the rail and it's called a "Mylar" strip
On quite a few, that snapped and therefore rendered the printer useless
The cost of a new strip? £5, £7 including postage
So what did the IT department do? told em it was unrepairable and got them to spend £200 on a brand new printer.
The list goes on and on, but if you imagine how many computers are in those two hospitals (1000+) and how often they'd need "replacing", it's alot of cash.
They to, like other hospitals, believe in "modern art" and have spent i'd imagine, in excess of 100k on stupid pieces of art work, namely a wooden carved sculpture of an otter which is human height and supposedly cost 20k.
We have one hospital that pay a taxi company £90 to take 2 patients 11 miles, :Yikes: :Yikes: yeah that's right £90. One hospital is paying the taxi company £6,000 per week for transport.
Peanuts. No use arguing about £200 on a printer or £90 on a cab when you have fun like this going on:
On June 10, the National Audit Office published a report showing how the companies that had built the Norfolk and Norwich hospital had, as well as making stupendous profits, legally walked off with an additional payment of £73m by exploiting the gap between the financial risk the government said they had taken on and the risk they had really shouldered. It wasn't as if the government didn't know this was coming: in June 2001, a summary of leaked documents that showed this was going to happen was published in this column. The Treasury sat back and watched.
The hospital (while nice) has fewer beds than the ones it replaced and is some way out of town.
A contest for the most money extracted from the NHS? It'll be a PFI, no question.
It does seem like everyone (except patients and most medical staff) looks upon the NHS as a Huge Cash cow.
The local PCT cannot make up it's mind whether to expand a local health centre where there is not much land available or relocate nearby where a huge redevelopment is in the early stages. Their current site is in a prime location so would command a premium land value. The nearby site would be more accessable to users and staff. But they are dilly dallying. :shrug:
They also spend a considerable amount of money on contract nurses.
A contract nurse gets between £30-50 an hour, the agency will charge the hospital £100 an hour for a nurse at short notice.
In the Cardiff hospitals, the health trust used to pay double time for permanent nurses to work extra shifts when they were short staffed. Some penpusher decided they should only be paid the normal hourly rate for the first x amount of hours, and time and a half for the rest.
As a result, when ward managers phone nurses at short notice to work an extra shift because another nurse is ill, they dont jump at the chance anymore.
They say "Sod off and pay £100 an hour for a contact nurse! :shocked:
There is far too much waste in the NHS. I have seen it time and time again when attending the hospital
I know once when my mum got discharged from hospital the pharmacy got her medication wrong so they said for her to go home and they would send her medication in a taxi! It came 15mins after we got home!!
Just out of curiousity, has anyone else here worked at the NHS and seen examples of cash being wasted unnecessarily?
You mean like wasting £70,000 on a large rock for the foyer of a hospital? Or a full time £42,000 a year arts curator for a hospital to show people the rock, and explain the, erm, art behind it?
Nope. :angel:
(Yes, I know it was out of a special arts fund for hospitals, but for anyone to say its more important for a hospital to look more 'artistic' by having a huge rock in it, instead of say... I don't know.. saving patients' lives, needs shooting (or sectioning) IMHO. And an arts curator... in a hospital... what the Dicken's goes through these people's minds sometimes?
It does seem like everyone (except patients and most medical staff) looks upon the NHS as a Huge Cash cow.
The local PCT cannot make up it's mind whether to expand a local health centre where there is not much land available or relocate nearby where a huge redevelopment is in the early stages. Their current site is in a prime location so would command a premium land value. The nearby site would be more accessable to users and staff. But they are dilly dallying. :shrug:
It's like evrything owned by the Goverment I can remember British Coal, BT, British Gas, British Rail. The Companies who used to supply the mentioned Government owned firms have since gone to the wall, they used to charge way over the odds for services, I can remember one situation where I needed some wood for some work I was doing at home, I phoned the company up who we used to deal with when I was at British Coal, they delivered it I looked at the invoice and thought thats cheap. A few weeks later we needed more or less the same wood for a project at work, we ordered the wood it came they gave us the invoice signed off they went, a few days later I was looking at the invoice I nearly fell off my chair £450 :Yikes: :Yikes: Now I had more or less the same amont of wood if not more and my invoice at home was £150 :Yikes: :Yikes: :Yikes: These companies have since gone to the wall, I wonder why??
I know of a hospital in Derbyshire who were sending a team of staff over to America to a medical seminar, they flew out by Concord so they would get there early to be abe to do some shopping. This is true.
I know of a hospital in Derbyshire who were sending a team of staff over to America to a medical seminar, they flew out by Concord so they would get there early to be abe to do some shopping. This is true.
We all know the trouble with the NHS, the problem is there are to many pen pushers ticking this and ticking that on a stupid amount of cash each year.
Chrysalis
25-09-2005, 11:10
On the subject of months for simple appointments.
I waited 3 months from refferal to see neuro specialist, he then reffers e for scan in same hospital, 2 month wait, I want results and then no letter at all so I rang my self and made appointment to see neuro specialist again another 3 months. Then now he reffered me for other scan which I am waiting for letter now with appointment. They could streamline the whole thing and I have it whilst I am there, if I wait 2 or 3 hours so what it beats waiting 6 months.
My friend who has private healthcare told me the nurse who treated him used to work for the nhs but the conditions and wages were nowhere what she gets working private so she left the nhs and I am wondering if its the start of a trend for permanent nurses moving to private trusts and for the nhs to use expensive agency staff, it baffles me how a penpusher calculates that they saving money to not pay permanent nurses more and when they hit the inevitable shortage as a result then they pay stupid amounts for temps.
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