Why we really do want to decentralise the NHS – national does not work
SO. What do we think is the best system then? Taking all the people to dim to go into banking, sticking them in the Department of Health and giving them 10% of GDP, one tenth of all the gelt that the nation produces each year, to buy our health care for us?
Or perhas a slightly more decentalised system in which the tax money is still spent on scraping us up off the roads after an accident but we don’t rely on all those really celver people or the way that it’s spent? You know, perhas we allow people who actually know what they’re doing to spend it instead?
Hmm? You’d prefer the Man in Whitehall knows best would you?
A direct tender has enabled Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS foundation trust to purchase a patient records system at a cost more than £7m below the price paid by the Department of Health (DH).
And it’s not £7 million off £100 million, a little shaving: The trust paid £1.8m to supplier CSE Healthcare Systems for the Rio patient records system. It signed the contract on 2 July for six years, with a possible two year extension.
Campaign4Change has reported that BT’s contract with the DH under NPfIT cost £224.3m for 25 deployments of the same system, or about £9m each.
They’ve actually ended up cutting near 80% off the cost of the system.
No, let’s ask this question again. Do you want a centralised NHS where who pays what for which is determined by those very clever indeed people in Whithall? For the entire nation? Or would you prefer a more localised approach to expenditure, where we get the people who actually know what they’re doing to purchase what they know they need and want?
And if this works for computer systems then why won’t it for blood, hip replacements and cancer drugs?
Quite. Perfectly happy with a tax financed health service but let’s get rid of the “national” bit shall we?
Posted: 6th, August 2012 | In: Money Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
