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1:30pm July 14, 2013

➸ Doomed to die by the NHS: Devastating report to reveal thousands dying needlessly as 21 hospitals probed in scandal that eclipses Mid Staffs horror | Mail Online

clatterbane:

Please excuse the Daily Fail link, but it’s the best I could find easily.

I’m glad that there’s been more investigation into this pattern of systemic problems, though I wish I had much confidence in the system actually getting fixed. I was also disturbed by the lack of focus on disabled people who are not elderly.

However any proposal to close departments will be fiercely fought, just as they are in ongoing campaigns at Stafford  and elsewhere. 

Campaigners say health bosses often use patient safety as a Trojan Horse to force through closures that are mainly about saving money.


That is one of my concerns here. The system is already seriously overloaded, especially after budget cuts, so they’re wanting to close down whole hospital departments rather than try to make sure patients’ human rights are respected.

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham last night accused Ministers of letting the 14 trusts’ hospitals ‘deteriorate significantly’ since 2010. He said: ‘Ministers wasted precious time with a needless re-organisation that took £3 billion away from patient care.

Many hospitals have made severe cuts to staffing. The NHS is in danger of forgetting the lessons from Stafford, where cuts to frontline staff were a primary cause of poor care.’


No. That’s what they want to tell themselves, but it’s an excuse. The primary cause of abusing and neglecting patients, so that some of them keep dying from it, is dangerous attitudes. Not considering some people worth the bother of helping or even saving their lives, and justifying this with talk about limited resources. The excuse is disgusting, the way it implies that letting an old and/or disabled person just die is a totally expected thing if you’re understaffed, and that it’s somehow normal not to want to waste limited time and resources on people like that. They do not deserve any respect, or even to live.

I will say again that this is a predictable result of having managed care on steroids, with very little oversight or accountability. Similar things happen under other kinds of systems, but the current NHS setup positively encourages treating people like crap.

Yeah. I’m really nervous how similar stuff will play out now that Vermont is moving towards so called death with dignity, but of course not towards life with dignity. Because that would make too much sense.