Ideas 21-1...The UK National Health Service (NHS)

If you want to buy the UK's National Health Service, then read this chapter first.

Based upon the costly failure of HMG to IT the NHS (National Health Service), it's plainly obvious that IT is beyond their understanding. As I write, junior doctors striking over contracts, has now given way to consultants in conflict over pensions. It beggars the question, why do we need to train doctors for seven years simply to spend their days listening to their patient's common complaints, when the general public should have access to expert systems software and hardware that would diagnose problems from home. I am quite certain that our degree qualified nurses would have no difficulty in using such software in order to decide treatment, or referral to specialists, in most cases. In addition, on the internet can be found reviews of GP surgeries and their rating. Looking at many of these ratings, one is forced to ask the question, why is this doctor still being employed in the NHS when their surgery is so poorly managed? The NHS should employ good doctors only, employed mainly in research labs and hospitals, since the future lies with gene therapy (bio engineering) enabled through greater understanding of how the human genome works. The days of designer drugs and designer humans is not far off, which has the capability to dramatically reduce the cost of running the NHS.

At present, when you go to see your GP (General Practitioner) most of them just sit there, saying nothing, presumably afraid to open their mouths in case they later get sued. They expect you to tell them what is wrong with you. So if you are no good at surfing the internet for the answer, then it could turn out to be terminal, through wasted time in diagnosis. In addition the client is only allowed to present one ailment to the GP per appointment. Considering the trouble people go to get to the surgery, plus the fact that many workers would be fired for taking too much time off to attend appointments, one is forced to admit that the NHS is more of a bureaucracy than an emergency service. Wouldn't it be better to convert GP's surgeries into annual medical test centres run by nurses? I have no idea of the cost in diagnostic machines, but on a mass production basis there must be savings. These test centres could be set up in exchange for the scrapping of most medical negligence claims, whilst the earlier an ailment is detected, the cheaper the treatment will be. Outstanding NHS litigation costs are estimated to amount to 83 billion pounds (2019), plus 4.3 billion pounds in legal fees, with costs rising by 17 per cent per annum. The NHS receives 10,000 new claims for compensation each year.

That brings to mind how my step-father, Walter Hewitt, died. He was on holiday with my mother Audrey in Blackpool, staying at a hotel on the sea front affiliated to the Post Office. He collapsed from emphysema (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which he had been suffering from for about three years. Emphysema is caused by smoking. At the time there was no cure, apart from a lung transplant. My brother Stephen and I went up to see him in hospital. We sat there by his bed with my mother, when a nurse came in, and gave him an injection. I watched the heart rate monitor becoming less and less active, and within five minutes he was dead. Later the nurse said,"Do you have any complaints?" My mother didn't know what to say. I've always thought he was bumped off. The trouble with this treatment, is that it doesn't provide the NHS with an incentive to find a cure. Years later in November 2023, two nurses from the same hospital stood trial charged with killing two patients with tranquilizers and conspiracy to do so to a third. That was at Victoria Hospital, Blackpool.

In 2019 the NHS is short of 107,000 staff, resulting in 4.4 million people awaiting surgery. And then of course there is the shortage of hospital beds, much of it caused by a shortage of care home beds and auxiliary nurses, to send the hospital patients to after treatment. In addition, between April 2017 and October 2019, there were 1019 reports of sexual assault on mixed gender wards, some committed by staff. Clearly some solution must be found soon. Waiting for bio engineering to cut NHS costs is likely to be a wait too long, whilst the long wait for medical diagnostics on the internet, appears to be due to resistance to change within the organisation. I can't even book an appointment with a GP via the internet. I have to walk to my local surgery and ask for one, because if I telephone, I am invariably told to hang on whilst the staff attend to someone else, or I've phoned at the wrong time of day. As for a blood test, I have to wait a week or two to see a GP, usually a locum, then wait another week to see a nurse who extracts the blood. I can book over the internet a delivery time for my groceries from Tesco supermarket, so why can't I do it to see a GP or nurse? The organisation has become as bureaucratic as the government. Not a good idea when you're an emergency service. HMG should set up Coordination Centres operated 24/7 like the Dutch, out of existing surgeries and get the GPs to work as doctors in hospitals and medical research labs.

Litigation costs could well prove astronomical if allegations in the Mail newspaper are proven. In it, 29% of elderly patients become victims of NHS euthanasia, even when they are not suffering from a terminal illness. It all began to unravel with the arrest of NHS Doctor Harold Shipman who was found guilty of the murder of 15 patients in the year 2000, although he is thought to have terminated about 250. At the moment there are two large investigations by the police into NHS practices. One involves poor maternity care to 900 babies at a Shropshire hospital, (Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals Trust) involving clinical malpractice by doctors, midwives, etc. over forty years, and the other at Gosport War Memorial Hospital where 450 patients died between 1989 and 2000, possibly due to opioid overdose administered by Dr. Jane Barton & Co. A fourth police investigation into this incident is underway, ten years after the General Medical Council exposed this practice. Police are now investigating 15,000 death certificates, whilst staff have been warned that they could face murder charges, as from March 2021. I look upon this as nothing more than delaying tactics. If murder charges were brought then its likely that they would also be brought against UK members of COBRA and SAGE.

November 2021...David Fuller, an electrician was found guilty of having sex with 100 corpses in a mortuary at two hospitals in the UK county of Kent, together with the murder of two people.

February 2020...GP Manish Shah received three life sentences for sexual assaults on 24 of his female patients, whilst the NHS Healthcare Safety Branch is investigating 25 baby deaths at hospitals in Margate and Ashford. In November 2020 nurse Lucy Letby was charged with the murder of eight babies and the attempted murder of ten more at Chester Hospital two years before. These people do it because they know they can get away with it, because there is no psychologically based personnel selection, visible security, no indoctrination and no AI personnel monitoring. The accused was found guilty of 7 murders on August 18th, 2023. Reports in the news media implied that the senior staff were more interested in defending their own reputations that stopping further deaths of babies. Seven consultants were obliged to apologize in writing to the accused after they had concluded that she was probably involved. Their calls for the police to be called in, appear to have been delayed, as were at least two internal investigations. It leaves one with the impression that our medical staff are little better than those in Nazi concentration camps, who terminated inmates who became too ill to work. it is plainly obvious to me that the NHS is a clear candidate for its staff to be replaced by AI and androids. And that is only the beginning.

It is plainly obvious that HMG cannot manage the NHS anymore than it can manage government departments, which it prefers to outsource. There are a couple of things I would like to say about this tragic state of affairs. I can detail here the most brilliant management structure applicable to every organisation in the country, including government, but no one can make it work smoothly without a workforce that is loyal, intelligent, hard working, humane and honest. Those values have to be instilled by parents and teachers. The UK is beset with a workforce that comes from all over the world, from different cultures, with varying beliefs and values. Many of them are prepared to risk their lives to live in a land of the free, often only speaking a language which they are already familiar with. HMG wants a medical service on the cheap, rather than make the effort of instilling the values mentioned into homes and schools, etc., and then recruiting from within our borders. In addition there appears to be little oversight by NHS managers, via CCTV in wards and offices, plus the electronic tracking of patient treatment, operations, staff conduct, forensic accounting of drug issues and recording of electrical equipment use. The data from which is necessary in any due investigation. It should all be monitored in real time by quality assurance personnel. The UK is a multi party system with a history of buying your loyalty through promises. It can't manage through the application of hard love. Until a technocracy comes along, the problems within the NHS are insurmountable. I do not believe that there is a large enough organisation out there that can manage it effectively. These proposed QA/IT systems will therefore have to be managed by AI.

By failing to legalise mercy killing in the NHS and victim agreed assisted suicide or euthanasia, on the outside, Parliament has blurred the lines between good and bad medical practice. In maintaining this policy of non-committal, they are troubling the minds of many doctors, who as a result, either leave the medical profession, or commit suicide. No matter how impossible you may think it is, don't you think that the best policy would be for HMG and the NHS to work towards immortality, thereby keeping people out of hospital? Because until then, if the police and courts fail to stamp out these serial killings, these scandals will continue to be exposed. Secondly, after reading this, I would rather get my chain saw out and construct a funeral pyre on my lawn, than go into an NHS hospital as a patient. You can learn a lot by watching Channel 4's Time Team. You never know when the knowledge could come in handy. Namely, how to construct a funeral pyre.

December 2023...A group letter was sent to the chief constables of Norfolk and Suffolk, calling for action, relating to the deaths of 8440 NHS mental health patients over a period of just 3 years. Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said that they had started a review of the matter. On another subject, how many patients are registered at each GP's practice is also questionable. The accuracy of these figures was investigated by the NHS Counter Fraud Authority, until the investigation was abruptly stopped in 2019, due to difficulty in obtaining data. Statistics became suspicious when it was noted that there were now more appointments after the pandemic and with fewer GPs. Patient numbers are affected by births, deaths and relocations, in addition to post covid syndrome demand. However, there are many illegal immigrants and criminals who change their identity many times, whilst people who leave the country are unlikely to tell their GP that they are no longer in the UK if they are still claiming certain UK welfare benefits. GPs received about £165 per patient in 2023. It all adds up, doesn't it?

In the NHS there are approximately 142 operations carried out on the wrong part of the patient's body per annum. There are about 1000 baby deaths here in the UK compared to Sweden per capita. Reports on these incidents appear to be ignored in hospitals as time goes by, hence the need for an expert systems software based quality control system. In the year 2020/21 there were 10,000 claims for medical negligence, which cost the NHS £83 billion, much of it going in legal costs. In Birmingham, one hospital gets four claims per week. To reduce costs, Sweden has a no blame system where claims are settled by insurance companies. This encourages staff to admit mistakes, thereby passing on this knowledge to those that need to know, in order to ensure that it won't happen again.

There are 2300 hospitals in the NHS, employing 146,000 doctors, 370,000 nurses and 37,000 managers working for 223 trusts, out of a total workforce of 1,093,638 in England, 162,000 in Scotland, 389,000 in Wales, and 64,000 in Northern Ireland. This does not include temporary staff, locums, dentists, optometrists, and those working in the private sector. There are 10,300 GP's (general practitioner - doctor) surgeries in the UK, 450 of which closed between 2013 and 2018. Half of these surgeries are regarded as below standard. Average GP waiting time was two weeks prior to the Covid 19 pandemic. Since the start of the lockdown in March 2020 most people, including me, have been unable to see a GP at all. That's a 3 year wait at the time of writing in December 2022. It's an unforgivable disgrace, clearly showing that who ever is managing the NHS is plainly inept. GPs are overworked and over stressed, having twice the safe number of clients. As a result GPs are leaving the NHS at the rate of about one thousand per annum. This is likely to increase now that the super tax threshold has been lowered, making it unprofitable to work long hours. The NHS costs £126 billion per annum to serve 68 million people. The NHS recruits about 6,000 nurses from abroad each year at a cost of £23,000 per annum each, because it costs £70,000 and three years to train one UK nurse to degree standard. The NHS is currently recruiting about 2,000 to 5,000 doctors mainly from abroad, paying agencies £100,000 in the process, because it costs £230,000 (students return £67,000) and three years to train one doctor here in the UK. 12.5% of the NHS workforce are from abroad. Once recruited, doctors then work either in a hospital, GP's surgery or in medical research. At the time of writing this prospectus, nurses in Northern Ireland are on strike. So, you've read the good and the bad about the NHS, now what am I bid? The reserve price is only £400 billion pounds, whilst its sale could well result in an expensive civil war. Please note that compensation to the UK's pharmaceutical industry, due to loss of business resulting from a foreign owner buying drugs from their main country of operation, is not included. HMG will not pay litigation compensation and legal costs for incidents which occurred prior to this sale. And of course the above details are...vague, whilst the GP wait is officially 2 weeks, there are many who have no GP at all.

In addition to the above problems, paying GP's huge salaries that enable them to retire early, or work part time, was a bad idea brought on by parliament. Not only can't I get a self diagnosis, but also, I have no idea where I can find a list of treatments that I can buy from the chemist (farmacy) that do not require a prescription, thereby saving both me and the NHS time. And why send a patient to see a specialist when the specialist hasn't got a clue about your condition, as happened to me once. It all points to an organisation that at a very senior level is very badly managed. Of course my views are pretty simplistic. Rumour has it that HMG under prime minister May, wanted the NHS to be restructured rather like the US Kaiser Permanente system. It employs 14,000 doctors, 40,000 nurses at a cost of $38 billion. This organisation is approximately one tenth the size of the NHS. This equates to an annual cost of $380 billion, or £292 billion, whereas the NHS actually costs £126 billion. Running the NHS like Kaiser Permanente would cost the government considerably more, since the staff would be paid more, whilst the patients would be allowed to live longer. Needless to say, this would likely meet fierce resistance within parliament, since many MPs have private medical insurance and don't feel that the peasants deserve similar.

Resistance in parliament concerning increasing income tax or national insurance to pay for a better NHS and social health care in old age is symptomatic of our corrupt political system that has wallowed in a low tax sauna for millionaires and billionaires since the creation of monetarism by the late prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and has no intension's of correcting this anomaly. Margaret Thatcher was the most corrupt politician in the UK during my lifetime. If anybodies statue should be torn down and thrown into a river it's hers. (Palace of Westminster, London's Guildhall, bust in Port Stanley and in Grantham, Lincolnshire). She was in effect a slavemaster who destroyed the careers of countless professionals, forcing them into low skilled, low paid jobs that led to an unforgivable amount of ill health and crime. She sold off the nationalized industries, handing the wealth created to millionaires in the form of a ridiculously low top rate of income tax, rather than placing it in a sovereign wealth fund, to be invested in the nation's future. Parliament rubber stamped this policy after being told that it would turn millionaire entrepreneurs into billionaires, for the good of the nation. That gave every MP a clear conscience. And of course the dumb dumb electorate simply rubber stamped it at the next general election, on the euphoria created by winning the Falkland Islands war in 1982 at a cost of 255 British soldier's lives. Millions were made unemployed through high interest rates through the 1980s, which undermined the power of trade unionism, encouraging slavery in all but word, and we've had the blind leading the blind ever since, straight into a global downturn and pandemic, seemingly incapable of managing effectively the NHS, with calls in parliament in September 2021 for GPs to see patients face to face, rather than replacing the system with AI over the internet. A political system that has no intention of improving people's quality of life is a liability, not an asset, whilst a political system that does not understand technical matters like IT and AI, is little better than a bomb with a lit fuse, or a walking disaster area.

On September 7th, 2021 prime minister Boris Johnson announced in parliament that the cost of the pandemic and social care would be paid for through a 1.25% increase in national insurance levy paid by employer and employees and on a 1.25% return on personal investments. A person will not have to pay more than £86,000 for social care in their entire life. There will be a means test for those with savings between £20,000 and £100,000. Those with less than £20,000 will pay nothing. The tax rises will raise £12 billion per annum. BJ has now nailed himself to the NHS crucifix, since the conservative party stated in its election manifesto and confirmed in the PM's speeches later, that there would be no tax rises. Some people have stated that even this rise isn't enough to solve the NHS's problems. As the prime minister pointed out, at the start of the pandemic 30,000 beds out of 100,000 in NHS hospitals were occupied by long term, mainly elderly people, fearful of losing their homes if they went into care. A cure for long term ailments was clearly overdue.

After a day of thought, many people realised that HMG's new deal for those in a care home, would not pay for bed and meals. They still risked their homes being sold off to pay for those extras. As was pointed out by the leader of the opposition at prime minister's questions the next day, landlords would pay no more, but care home nurses on the national minimum wage would be lumbered with the national insurance rise, as would 2.5 million families on universal credit faced with a £20 cut in benefits amounting to £1,000 per annum. It appeared to be another conservative party con. As I see it there are three ways of solving this problem; restore our tax system to pre-Thatcher levels, increase efficiency in the NHS by replacing GP's surgeries with AI and expert system software on the internet, and getting parliament to finally approve euthanasia. Let's face it, who the hell wants to spend their remaining months in an old folk's home in the rainy UK, waiting for the grim reaper, since HMG is not considering relocating geriatrics to the Caribbean, which would be a far cheaper solution? It would be comparable to that in the USA, where Americans are relocated to Florida. As for increasing NHS efficiency, the AI already exists and it's just as good as a GP, and could no doubt be better if modern diagnostic kits were distributed to people's homes. As for social care, one would only need to relocate to a care home if there was no one at home to dress you in the morning, feed you in the evenings, and look after your toilet needs. Everything else would be done by robots and electronic monitors. The GP's and their staff could then be transferred to hospitals to work, thereby solving the recruitment problem. Does HMG have the necessary intelligence and backbone to do this, risking a strike. Good heaven's no!'

Before you go into an old folk's home, you may like to take a look at your medical file on the internet. In the UK people are entitled to look at their paper file, but it's probably too thick for you to find what you're looking for. If it's like mine, you will be far from pleased. I looked at my internet based medical file and simply did not recognise myself. There was no mention of of the ailments tinnitus, arthritis and allergy (angioedema). There were no details about the blood test I had a couple of months before either. It did mention my Statins, which I no longer take, because I don't see the point when my blood pressure is only 110/70, and has been that way for decades. There was no mention of diabetes either, which the NHS had tried to recruit me for. What stood out more than anything else, if you're computer minded, is that the details are not on an RDBMS (Relational DataBase Management System), which could provide up to date medical reports on the nation. It would appear that the general public has no monitoring ability and therefore control of the NHS, which is not a good thing. Needless to say, when I'm frail and in need of hospital care, it's now highly likely that the staff having read these criticisms, will gleefully get out the lethal injection kit. This beggars the question, 'did HMG reveal to the USG all the good, bad and ugly points about the NHS, in its sales pitch?'

Litigation however, is not the only financial problem. The spectre of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and privatisation raise their ugly head each time people talk about finance. PFI was a way to privately finance construction of hospitals and surgeries across the UK. It financed at least one hundred NHS projects over a period of twenty years, resulting in the NHS still owing 55 billion pounds. In addition, many young people simply don't want to work in the NHS. The regime is too strict, the exams too difficult, the financial reward too little, whilst the environment is too depressing. It is clear that as attitudes change, without robotics, hospital services will break down. It should also be pointed out that the cost of new hospitals is unnecessarily expensive. Generally speaking, a general hospital is a general hospital, like homes, they can be factory built from standard modules. In the NHS, they are not. There is therefore enormous room for financial improvement. The economical bulk buying of drugs, enhanced by the in-house manufacture of pharmaceuticals (generic drugs), is an as yet untouched opportunity.