NICK FERRARI Time to count the cost of NHS waste
THE A-LEVEL results came out last week, but understandably many students and parents in England cried foul. For them there had been a return to grades being awarded on pre-pandemic standards, while inwales and Northern Ireland allowances were made for another year. The Government pledged necessary “calibrating” would ensure fairness. Seems more like another classroom cock-up for this long-suffering cohort.
Why don’t we put GP receptionists in charge of our border control? No one would get past.
IT WAS the call I dreaded, but one I knew I’d have to make at some point. It would be to the hospital and health trust close to where my mother lived – and it would mean my Mum’s brave days of battling her illness were over. She had gone to a better place, but the cottage in which she lived had Nhs-supplied kit worth literally tens of thousands of pounds, and I needed to arrange its return.
I’ll be forever grateful to them for providing equipment that allowed my Mum to see out her days in her own home, rather than the sterile and impersonal atmosphere of a hospital ward.
At 93, she deserved that. And within days of the request being put in, everything from dressings and surgical gloves to a walking frame with wheels and a bed that could tilt, be raised or lowered, and even had a massaging pad fitted, was in the living room to help her.
The supply had been superb, but the return was to be an eye opener. While the bed was picked up within days and the massaging equipment soon after, I was told there’d be no collection of the frame, sticks and bags of medical supplies. The frame and chair could be taken to a charity shop, they said, and the drugs, dressings and everything else should be thrown away.
Understandable if they’d been part used, but this applied even if they hadn’t been opened.
This unhappy time came back to me last week during the Government’s special “Health Week,” in which they sought to show how they were tackling the many issues facing the health service.
Candidly, it seemed to have about as much impact as the “Boats Week” that preceded it, but if current Health Secretary Steve Barclay has the determination to follow through on just one policy that was announced, it has the potential to be a game changer.
Barclay appointed Steve Rowe, former chief executive of Marks and Spencer and the man who guided the flagship brand through the Covid pandemic, to conduct a review of NHS spending and to identify where savings could be made and waste cut.
Regrettably, there’s no shortage of places where he can look, starting with some figures produced a couple of years ago in an investigation into NHS procurement.
It discovered one trust had spent £16.47 on a packet of 12 rubber gloves that could have been bought at a DIY store for £1. Another paid an astonishing £21.76 for a box of 100 plasters, which a different trust had bought for £1.69.
Plenty of people called into my radio show with examples, including the medical supplies saleswoman who could sell special chilled packaging for the transportation of chemotherapy medication for £5, where the NHS had spent £75.
Or the doctor who told us he’d seen the invoice for a white marker board for £300
– exactly the same as the one he’d just bought for £27 for his children.
Apparently, NHS purchases can only be made from what is effectively an authorised catalogue of approved suppliers.
This is perhaps understandable, as the quality and safety of every item have been checked, as has the provenance.
It would not be a good look to be buying plastic aprons made in sweatshops in China with staff being paid the equivalent of a dollar a day.
But as we spend nearly £3billion a week on the health service, we have a right to expect it to be spent wisely and not wastefully. Reviews like this have been promised in the past and delivered little or nothing. If this were to prove effective, it could improve the “health” of the Government immeasurably.