Monday, June 24, 2013

Another MVNHS© Scandal

Regular readers will be familiar with the on-going shanda at the Much Vaunted National Health System© facility in Mid Staffordshire:

"Almost 3,000 people may have died unnecessarily in just one year at the 14 NHS trusts whose excessive mortality rates were reviewed in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal"

This particular facility has been in the news (and not for its outstanding reputation for delivering quality health care) for quite a while. So one might be forgiven for thinking that the folks who run the MVNHS© might be sensitive to any whiff of impropriety as regards care "Across the Pond."

Unfortunately, it just keeps getting worse:

"[A]fter the revelations of the cover-up over deaths from negligence at Morecambe Bay hospitals, we learned just what happened to Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director at the CQC [Care Quality Commission], when she tried to bring to light failings at the regulator which were putting patients’ lives at risk."

Ms Sheldon made the mistake of believing that the folks who run the Service actually care about the folks they ostensibly serve. This was, of course, a mistake:

"When Ms Sheldon tried to air her concerns that the CQC wasn’t up to the task of uncovering bad practice in hospitals and care homes, her messages to chief executive Cynthia Bower and other board members were not answered, or were stonewalled."

Remember, this is one of the platforms on which the ObamaTax is based, so it's a pretty significant peek into our own future. And it's not pretty:

"As a result, the CQC’s chairman, Dame Jo Williams, wrote to then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley asking him to sack her."

Shoot the messenger! The challenge, of course, is that this won't make the problem go away, and it certainly won't save any lives. But then, that's not the real purpose of the Much Vaunted National Health System© (or the ObamaTax), as can be clearly seen here:

"The ensuing debacle was not just the result of a botched merger: it reflects an NHS culture which is profoundly, systemically and almost certainly irredeemably rotten." [emphasis added]

And it is, in fact, that culture which has been transplanted here. How else to explain the that Donald Berwick was, at one point, in charge of the agency in charge of implementing our train wreck?

And make no mistake, this culture is what leads to:

"[N]eglect and cruelty reached such a pitch that patients drank from flower vases to relieve their thirst ... these failings are not being addressed; because what rules in the NHS, from top to bottom, is a culture of ruthless unaccountability in which the buck stops nowhere."

Ah, that magic phrase: "culture of ruthless unaccountability." What does that remind us of?

[Hat Tip: FoIB Holly R]
blog comments powered by Disqus