Hopeless Hewitt

The English Secretary of State for Health admitted on tonight’s Radio 4 PM programme that she was not aware of the difference between the United Kingdom and England .  The question came up when she was quizzed about the incompetent supply of influenza vaccine this year.  Mrs Hewitt also claimed not to have heard Prime Minister’s Question Time today where her boss, Mr A Blair, was grilled about the same subject by the leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard.

Earlier this week the Department of Health (DoH) had claimed that there were 14 million doses of vaccine prepared for England whereas that figure applied to the UK as a whole.  Neither the PM nor the Secretary of State could, or would, admit to any failure of competence within the DoH which had led to the current shortage or the confusion between the two areas.

Characteristic and careful Labour spin, seeking to avoid any blame being laid upon the DoH, had laid that shortage at the feet of the general practitioner.   Mrs Hewitt was evasive when questioned on the PM programme but did not have the courage to deny that her department was responsible for the spin or admit that it – and she – was also responsible for the shortage.

The flu vaccine scandal has coincided with yet another blunder within the rapidly crumbling NHS for which she holds complete responsibility.

A Suffolk PCO is seeking to deny hip operations from obese patients on the amazing grounds that the arthritis for which they need the operation is their own fault.    Using that amazing logic no operations or treatment should be given to any injured sportsman or one who developed arthritis in later life.  Treatment should, in the logic of Suffolk PCO, be denied to all who develop lung cancer or occupational had.

The real cause of the Suffolk measure is a lack of funding from the Department of Health which is causing local PCOs to seriously run into debt.

One would have expected the SoS to have seized the opportunity of being on the radio to condemn the Suffolk proposals but she did not even mention it and, I must assume, agrees with it.  Shame, by the way, on the grovelling, sycophantic doctors who seek to find clinical reasons for denying patients this treatment on the NHS.

Hopeless Hewitt and the Prime Minister, however, constantly bleat on about the amount of money they are putting into the NHS but they do not make it equally obvious that week by week some new expensive initiative is downloaded onto NHS workers and PCOs and that funds do not follow.

Expensive change and reform is following change and reform to the extent that those working within the NHS are punch drunk.

Morale is crumbling as rapidly as the service.  

GPs agreed a contract with the DoH just eighteen months ago but already Hopeless Hewitt is threatening to unilaterally tear it up for some mad, political reason.   Apparently, after agreeing to the GP’s working day she is now about to demand that evening and weekend surgeries are compulsorily provided.

Meantime, cash-strapped PCOs are holding back payment from GPs, whilst the DoH unilaterally changes the goal-posts so that GPs will be paid thousands of pounds less next year for vaccination administration.   Many are turning their backs on immunisation.

At the same time this incompetent SoS is about to grant nurses and High Street chemists prescribing rights from the whole British drug list.  The small matter of needing to be able to diagnose before being able to prescribe troubles Hopeless not one bit.   They will have 38 days training first!

Why should a GP bother with ten years or more hard training to do the same?

Yet, this ill-thought idea will come into force next year.  Watch out, British patient!

Then, having created the PCT/PCO administrative system, Labour, under Hopeless is about to destroy it by re-inventing and renaming Health Authorities but without “provider” status.   Sorry, that was last week.  This latest reform is grinding to a halt this week as Hewitt changes her mind and replaces this provider role.

The chaos under the Hewitt regime continues as, desperate for doctors, she invents “physician’s assistants”.  These people have no medical qualification but are to be allowed to take the place of doctors in some circumstances.   Patients, confused by the title will not know whether they are treated by a doctor or not.

In another ill-thought out reform Hopeless is about to destroy GP boundaries so that practices will have to accept patients from anywhere.  And do house-calls on them?  The point is not considered.

She is also contemplating dual registration.  This will add another bureaucratic layer as the two or more practices will need to communicate with each other.  Madness!

Finally, as if to emphasise her total disinterest and distrust of the profession Hopeless Hewitt is taking as much advantage as she can of the idiotic and foolish GP contract which has divided GPs’ work into bite-sized chunks.  The trouble is that it’s not the GP who is biting them.  It’s private industry as they successfully compete to carry out enhanced services previously carried out in GP practices.  The next service to be lost will be the vaccination service.

Mind you, if the GPs’ trade union hadn’t actively, and even deceitfully, campaigned for this fragmentation, Hewitt would be in no position to destroy general practice by this attrition.

But they did and the NHS crumbles by the day with the overwhelming help of its responsible Minister, Hopeless Hewitt.

Heedless of the collapsing morale of the managers she is about to make redundant with the reorganisation of the PCOs, probably gleeful at the chaos she causes the medical profession, Hewitt blunders on.  Of this she can be sure, the remnants of the NHS she and Blair will leave behind will no longer be the envy of the world.

Hopeless, indeed.

(24/11/05)