[awakened53]

Why is ‘Our’ ‘World-Beating’ NHS Such a Basket Case?

I’m frequently asked by friends and colleagues why the NHS can’t sort itself out – it now seems self-evident to many that we simply can’t go on like this. Leading commentators in the media and public life now acknowledge that social insurance schemes operating in mixed healthcare economies popular in mainland Europe have both better outcomes, wider choice for patients and generally higher satisfaction scores than our ‘world beating’ NHS.
The proportion of people choosing to pay for their own care outside the NHS system is rising because the NHS simply can’t meet patient requirements. A few weeks ago I wrote a piece looking at the substantial operational challenges facing the service. This week I’d like to look at some of the inside reasons and hidden agendas which mean the NHS can’t change even if it wanted to.
Broadly speaking there are four groups who need to be onboard the change bus if structural reform of the NHS is to succeed – the electorate, the political class (cross party), the NHS management cadre and NHS professional groups. Unless all of these groups agree on both the need for and the direction of change, nothing is likely to happen. The barriers to meaningful reform are not obvious to the lay person. I have written previously about structural changes in the workforce and the increasingly intrusive burden of regulation, which hinder efficiency. In this piece I will focus on the hidden road-blocks to restructuring.

Read more: Why is ‘Our’ ‘World-Beating’ NHS Such a Basket Case?

[awakened53]

NHS Spends More Than £8.2 Million on Woke Non-Jobs

HS trusts are spending more than £8.2 million a year on equity, diversity and inclusion officers. The Telegraph has more.
The figures, revealed through Freedom of Information requests, relate to just 70 of the 125 acute hospital trusts across England – suggesting the scale of the spending could be far higher.
It comes after job adverts posted by 16 trusts in one month alone revealed they would cost the taxpayer more than £700,000 annually.
The new data show that in 2022, the 70 trusts are employing 187 people in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) roles – almost three per employer.
In total, the 187 jobs are costing the NHS up to £8,220,783 a year.
It comes after the NHS warned it was facing a £7 billion funding shortfall and could be forced to cut services due to rising inflation and the cost of this year’s pay award.
The Government subsequently announced an extra £6.6 billion of funding over the next two years in the Autumn Statement for the NHS. But experts warned the increase would not account for rising inflation and other unexpected costs.
Some of the hospital trusts which replied to requests admitted they were employing up to 10 people in diversity jobs.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has nine staff working in EDI roles, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has nine filled and one currently advertised, while the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust has at least nine full-time employees in such roles.
The three trusts’ spending on the EDI roles accounts for 16 per cent (up to £1.3 million) of the total.
King’s College Hospital also has the highest paid individual employee in a diversity role, with one member of staff earning up to £128,600 a year.
It comes after Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, last month ordered a crackdown on diversity jobs in the NHS amid fears “woke box ticking” is costing taxpayers millions of pounds.
Mr Barclay is alarmed at the “spiralling cost” of the jobs, it was reported last month.
A Whitehall source told the Sun: “Steve is very concerned about the spiralling cost of these jobs. The numbers are clearly getting out of hand.
“Patients want every penny of NHS cash to go into fixing the service, not hiking the management payroll and increasing the burden of woke box ticking.

Read More: NHS Spends More Than £8.2 Million on Woke Non-Jobs

[awakened53]

No Hope Service (NHS) – trust them with your life: Bungling doctor’s surgery accidentally sends hundreds of patients a text message saying they have ‘aggressive LUNG CANCER’ … instead of wishing them ‘Merry Christmas’ from GPs

A bungling GP surgery has accidentally sent a mass text to hundreds of patients informing them they have ‘aggressive lung cancer’ instead of wishing them a Merry Christmas.
The text message, sent on December 23, issued the bogus diagnosis to patients at Askern Medical Centre in Doncaster – including some who were genuinely waiting for lung cancer test results, the Sun reports.
Property developer Chris Reed, 57, reportedly received the text message after being tested for lung cancer – causing his partner to burst into tears.
Mr Reed attempted to phone the surgery but found the phone lines full, before rushing to the centre to then be informed it was a mistake and his cancer results were, in fact, negative.

The text message, posted on social media by multiple upset patients, read: ‘From the forwarded letters at CMP, Dr [name] has asked for you to do a DS1500 for the above patient.
‘Diagnosis – Aggressive lung cancer with metastases.’
Metastases is a term used when cancer has spread from one site to another, making it more difficult to treat.
DS1500 is a type of form used so that people with terminal illnesses can claim benefits.
The message appeared to be meant for internal circulation amongst surgery staff only, but sparked outrage amongst local residents with many saying they were left shaken and worried by the message.
The surgery issued a second text message 22 minutes after, offering ‘sincere apologies’ for the error.
It added: ‘Our message to you should have read: We wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.’
One patient at the surgery, who rushed inside after receiving the text, posted the error on Facebook, writing: ‘Something [is] clearly not right at Askern Medical Practice. Fuming.
‘I received this message and I’m not the only one. I was shaking and close to tears.
‘Quite a few in the surgery now with the same text. I was near the surgery and walked in to say what the hell?

Read More: Bungling doctor’s surgery accidentally sends hundreds of patients a text message saying they have ‘aggressive LUNG CANCER’

[awakened53]

Exactly as planned – Patient forced to wait FOUR DAYS for a bed and child sleeps on a chair in ‘grossly overcrowded’ A&E as hospitals run out of oxygen and mortuaries near capacity amid NHS winter crisis

An A&E patient was forced to wait for ’99 hours’ before receiving a bed last week and parents have told how their ailing children were forced to sleep on chairs as the NHSfaces a worsening crisis this winter.
The unnamed patient was brought to Swindon’s Great Western Hospital by ambulance last week but was left waiting on a gurney for four days while staff urgently tried to source an available bed.
One clinician at Great Western Hospital told the Sunday Times: ‘We’re broken and nobody is listening,’ while Jon Westbrook, the hospital’s chief medical officer, wrote in a leaked email to staff: ‘We are seeing case numbers and [sickness] that we have not seen previously in our clinical careers.’
Meanwhile in Oxford at the children’s A&E department of John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, a three-year-old girl was seen curled up on a plastic chair trying to sleep after waiting for hours to be treated.
The girl’s father Tom Hook shared the image on social media and wrote: ‘Exhausted, dehydrated and fighting multiple illnesses, this is the best the NHS could do, five hours after arriving at A&E and 22 hours after we phoned for help.
‘The staff throughout were fantastic and clearly doing a nearly impossible job in a broken system that just channels everything to A&E — which then can’t cope with the demand.’
MailOnline has contacted Great Western hospital for comment.
Ambulance staff are being urged to conserve oxygen supplies due to a surge in demand for portable oxygen in A&E departments which has seen stock run dangerously low in several hospitals around the country.
One NHS worker from the South West told the Sunday Times: ‘We are now at the stage where there is not enough oxygen in cylinders to treat patients in corridors, ambulances and in our walk-in area in A&E.’
The Health Service Journal (HSJ) said ambulance services had told staff the shortage was caused by the high number of patients with respiratory conditions and ‘the suppliers are reporting that this is higher than during the first wave of the Covid pandemic’.
And one senior healthcare official said there could be as many as 500 people dying every week because of delays in emergency care.
Speaking to Times Radio on New Year’s Day, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Dr Adrian Boyle said a bad flu season is compounding systemic problems, leading to hundreds of unnecessary deaths.

Read More: Patient forced to wait FOUR DAYS for a bed and child sleeps on a chair in ‘grossly overcrowded’ A&E

[awakened53]

I Was on the NHS Covid Frontline But Quit When I Saw the Harm We Were Doing

In late 2019 and early 2020, I was asked to work on the front line in an emergency department to help with the ‘war effort’. We had no idea what was going on, apart from a few videos of the Chinese suddenly collapsing due to this new contagion. We were waiting for it to hit the U.K.

It hit, I saw what it did to people, they became unwell, x-ray x-ray x-ray, PPE, barriers, red lights, code words, panic, panic. Our world changed overnight, and my world changed especially. One minute we were told not to wear masks, the next moment it was made mandatory etc.

At this point, my sole focus was to protect myself and my family, so I began studying in order to do so successfully. I read papers during my breaks and at night before work. I reflected on what I saw at work and made a mental note of the real-life evidence.

The emergency department warped as time went on; I saw a lot of errors and mismanagement of resources. Patient care was being delayed, which led to staff burnout and medical errors. I could see that if this went on, people would needlessly die.

I knew something had to change. So in efforts to bring about some change, I wrote a book outlining how Toyota’s lean manufacturing methods could aid in improving patient safety as well as reducing costs in emergency departments. The book was called [i]Saving A&E The Toyota Way[/i]. While researching for it, I learned a lot about healthcare infrastructure, artificial intelligence and preventative medicine. I knew what the national health situation was like; I knew we had to change as a species.

I presented that book to my hospital; my consultants liked it, but as an academic piece. That was not my intention, but hey ho, life goes on. There were more pressing matters at hand.

As the pandemic was progressing, I continued to research, write blogs and share what I saw. And I saw a lot of unscientific rubbish, unethical practices and poor care. The research papers said one thing, and yet we were doing something completely different. I knew very early on that not everyone needed to be jabbed. Something seemed fishy.

I worked in the emergency department and then paediatrics during the second peak. There was one child admitted due to COVID-19 who was later discharged. The ward was largely empty. And yet many doctors online were saying that COVID-19 was extremely dangerous to children. Nonsense.

Something was off: doctors weren’t being doctors, autopsies weren’t being done, the medical field was ignoring anyone who didn’t have COVID-19, and yet staff were doing TikTok dances. They asked me to join. I refused.

While all this was happening, I lost my grandma. The doctors didn’t want to see her in her home; her infection got bad; she didn’t want to go to the hospital; she became septic; she had to go in. I visited her after my shifts and fed her during my breaks.

I got the bad news from a doctor on the night she died. I asked the doctor if we could see her as a family, and he approved. We saw her one after the other, in tears and trying not to wake the other patients. Midway through, a matron I used to work with told us we couldn’t see her due to hospital policy and warned us that if we carried on she would call security on us. I told her we had approval already. She didn’t care. I saw evil in her eyes.

I asked her why she became a nurse. It was surely to treat and help people with compassion. She didn’t budge.  I said, “Go ahead and call security then.”

Thank God, we had enough time for our family to all say their goodbyes. I made sure I was the last one. I knew and saw that many others weren’t as lucky as I was. Many had to FaceTime their dying family members. We were treated so badly and healthcare professionals encouraged it. I also knew the evils that lurked inside mankind that day.

During paediatrics I asked my colleagues about masks and jabs. Why did we only allow one parent to see their newborn child while wearing a mask, whereas we could all snuggle up together in the staff room maskless? I’d get responses that sounded like parrots. “It’s the rules”; “Policy”; “To stop infection”; “We just have to do it”. No science. No debate. No conversation. No brain.

I later worked in a children’s psychiatric ward, and what I witnessed was truly backward. Many children, many of whom wanted to commit suicide, were placed in solitary confinement so that useless PCR swabs could be taken. Two would need to be done, and the nurses would sometimes forget to do these. I actually had to make them a table so they would remember. Children were required to be swabbed, but staff members who would go wherever they pleased over the weekend were not.

I told my seniors that none of this made sense and that children did not suffer with COVID-19, but they just told me it was policy. The hospital trust actually recruited people to make sure staff were changing into scrubs before work too. The worst of it was when we had a ward round on one occasion. In psychiatry, the patient would sit in the room with the rest of the staff. This particular time my consultant found out that the young person who was in the room with us wasn’t swabbed. After the patient had left, she made us all stay in the room and asked us to lock the door and find ways to disinfect the room. She was seriously considering bleaching all surfaces. In disbelief, I asked her if we had to all strip down naked and shower together too. I had work to do, so I left.

The mental health of children and adults during lockdown was the lowest I’ve ever seen it in my career. Children were arriving with life disruption-related issues such as trauma, abuse, etc. all related to lockdowns.

My next job was in general practice. I was working towards becoming a GP. I enjoyed understanding and caring for all sorts of patients. I’m a generalist at heart. However, this transition marked another difficult time for me.

On the last day of hospital medicine and just before the first day of GP work, a close work colleague of mine went to play football, collapsed and never woke up. Deep down, I knew what had caused this. I knew the link between mRNA technology and myocarditis early on.

I cried finding this information out. I cried in front of my mother for the first time in my adult life. I’m in fact tearing up typing this. My friend was killed.

I went to his parents’ house to give my condolences. His parents were there, broken. He recently proposed to his fiancée. She was there too, broken. We viewed his funeral via Zoom.

There’s a spot in the park I dip into regularly while looking up at the leaves. I am reminded of him when I do this. I am reminded of how lucky I am to be alive. Deep down, I was terrified about what this meant for people around the world.

Time went on, and I worked in general practice. There was discussion about making vaccinations mandatory for all healthcare workers. I knew this was not only unscientific and unethical, but murderous. Yet my colleagues didn’t seem to care. They were safe, I guess.

Regardless, I could not do anything about it, so I plodded along. I never stopped reading papers, writing, tweeting and sharing information. I saw patients; I saw jab-related side effects, missed periods, new-onset whole-body inflammation, hair loss, etc. I saw cognitive dissonance too.

All of a sudden, one day, my practice asked me for my full jab status. This puzzled me because the managers knew I had to be jabbed with everything else in order to work in all the other specialties. I knew they wanted to know only one result. Whether or not I had taken the COVID-19.

I didn’t lie. I told them the truth. The next day, in a panic, they asked me to stop seeing patients face-to-face. They had made a team decision as a team, without me, that I was no longer able to see patients. They felt that I was a threat to them and that I would scare them away.

I have never had COVID-19. I worked on my health and immunity every day, and I purposely breathed in the virus in the emergency department to stimulate T cells. I knew jabs increased one’s risk of infection and showed them evidence. I was the least risky person in the practice and I knew it.

They didn’t care. They didn’t care about evidence. They didn’t care about ethics, about immunity, about anything. I shrugged this off and called patients instead. I was ostracised at work and many colleagues acted coldly towards me. I was alone, but not lonely; I knew I had evidence on my side.

Many doctors had to take sick leave from work multiple times due to COVID-19. I had meetings discussing my jab status. A doctor with myocarditis on long-term meds post-jab urged me to get the shot. One said I was “too principled”, It was surreal.

They admitted it was all politics. I asked them why they didn’t read papers? I asked them about T cells. Silence.

I have wanted to become a doctor since the age of six. I love biology and enjoy helping people using my knowledge. But I understood that I was working in an environment that was harming people. I had many sleepless nights thinking about leaving.

One morning, after parking my car at work, I felt a warmth around my head. It had no words, but if it did, it told me that everything would be okay. As soon as I had that experience, my decision was made, and I felt light; a colossal weight had been lifted.

I asked to quit, and a few meetings later (carried out to make sure I wasn’t crazy), I left healthcare and then deregistered myself from the medical register. I wanted to be totally free. I needed to be.

The flat my girlfriend and I were planning to buy fell through. I was in financial turmoil. My mother cried for weeks. I was lost, but I was free. I wasn’t part of the killing system.

I did what I only knew – I began writing. I started a Patreon and am grateful for those who did and continue to contribute to that. But it wasn’t enough. I ended up being on the dole for just less than a year. The guy I had to call every two weeks was surprised I was once a doctor.

I began learning and researching everything I could to help people who had been jabbed. I knew what was going on and I didn’t want another pandemic to happen. I wanted to save as many lives as possible.

I would take my bike, cycle across the park to my local library, and work feverishly every day till close. Around this time, I was permanently suspended on Twitter for stating facts.

I see this as a blessing now, as it made me work even harder to produce something that could never be banned. A book. I worked and researched to make sure I got this book out before 2023.

I was blessed around this time to come into contact with Alex Mitchell. He introduced me to other people injured by the shots. I was determined to make sure their voices got heard. I included their stories in the book.

During this time, on my walks, I had many insights and extraordinary experiences that many people may not believe or might dismiss as crazy. I saw light, and I ended my fears.

Before the new year, I released my book, [i]Calling Out The Shots[/i]. It goes through what genetic agents are, what they do to our bodies, how we can improve our immunity, ways we may mitigate jab damage and what we need to do as a society to heal.

The book marks my first gift to the world. I am working on many more and other projects. I will fight for humanity until my final breath.

[i]Dr. Eashwarran Kohilathas is a medical doctor, qualified personal trainer and author who aims to help people achieve physiological, psychological and spiritual freedom. This article first appeared as a Twitter thread.[/i]

[awakened53]

Finding a doctor is going to get easier – it’s just that when you’ve found one she won’t actually be a doctor

The UK Government is getting round its deliberately manufactured shortage of doctors by the simple expedient of lowering standards. The shortage was manufactured in many ways. For example, medical schools were told to admit more female than male students (even though it was known that women doctors would often choose to work part-time). Second, the medical establishment and the Government allowed GPs to cut their working week to three days. Third, the General Medical Council (which controls licensing in the UK) introduced an unpopular ‘revalidation’ scheme which added a new layer of bureaucracy to practice and also meant that once a doctor retired he or she was likely to be lost to medicine forever.
So, having created the shortage, the Government has introduced a raft of brilliant ways to lower the quality of care (and to save money too).
Undeterred by the fact that allowing nurses to make diagnoses and to prescribe potentially lethal drugs hasn’t been an entirely wonderful success (that’s my polite way of saying that it has been an unmitigated disaster), the Government is now going to allow pharmacists to start prescribing too. Your friendly pharmacy will, for example, be allowed to prescribe antibiotics. My immediate fear is that they will, to save money, be instructed by the authorities to prescribe very short courses. The ultimate danger is that this will lead to even more antibiotic resistance and, in the end, to far more deaths caused by uncontrollable infections. The next step will be to allow members of the public to buy antibiotics over the counter and I doubt if that will cause more problems than have been created by doctors.
Pharmacists will also be allowed to provide blood checks and patients will be allowed to refer themselves for physiotherapy, hearing tests and podiatry. (Good luck to them. Antoinette is still waiting for the hospital physiotherapy appointment she was promised three years ago.)
This is all part of the deliberate process of downgrading medical care in the UK and will allow GPs to get on with the two things they are now paid to do: to fill in forms and to organise vaccination programmes. (The vaccinations are, of course, given by members of staff, thereby ensuring that doctors don’t have to endure any contact with members of the public.)
And the plans don’t end with pharmacists.
The Government plans to introduce a new breed of cheap, cut-price doctors who won’t go to medical school but who will serve some sort of general, fast track apprenticeship. I suspect that if all goes according to plan these new cheapo doctors will, in the diagnosis and treatment stakes, lie somewhere between a boy scout and someone who’s taken a 20 minute first aid course.
But, on the plus side, they will probably also be able to mend your sticking garden gate and put a new light bulb in that tricky standard lamp in the living room.
Where is all this heading?
Well, I’m pretty certain that before long we will all be advised to obtain our medical advice from a neighbour. But which neighbour should you choose?
Here’s my advice on how to choose the correct neighbour for medical advice.
Look for a woman aged at least 60.
She will wear elastic stockings designed to disguise her varicose veins and prevent her ankles swelling to elephantine proportions. These stockings will be elderly, loose and wrinkled.
She will wear a full pinafore (which ties around the neck and the waist). The pinafore will be made of a cotton material – usually but not invariably decorated with a floral print. It will NOT be plastic and it will NOT contain a humorous or rude message.
Her hair will contain no fewer than three, and no more than seven, curlers. Fewer than three curlers suggest that she is too careless about her appearance to be a skilled diagnostician. More than seven curlers suggest that she is too interested in herself. She may wear a small, cotton print headscarf around her hair. If she does then it will be tied in a large knot at the front of her head.
Unless pointing at something, she will stand with her arms crossed and resting on her bosom. Her bosom will always be immense.
She will have a smouldering, half-smoked, un-tipped cigarette hanging from her lower lip. She will never be seen to light a cigarette and she will never be seen with a new cigarette in her mouth.
When available for consultation she will stand on her front doorstep.
The woman you see will never ask to be paid. She will, however, expect you to pass on to her any secrets, gossip or intimate information you might have. She will expect a full and accurate account of your economic status, any idiosyncratic behaviour you know about concerning other neighbours, your family prospects, your plans for the purchase of soft furnishings and any impending court appearances.
Meanwhile, I heartily recommend that you read my book How to stop your doctor killing you. It is packed with valuable advice designed to help you stay alive.

Read More: Finding a doctor is going to get easier

[awakened53]

When Will the NHS Address its Under-Representation of White People?


It’s now apparently acceptable to accuse the Royal Family of being ‘terrible white’ or ‘too white’. In fact, it’s not only acceptable, but saying this makes one a courageous, outspoken hero for the BBC and the progressive Left. So, I assume it would also be acceptable for me to suggest that our beloved NHS may be ‘insufficiently white’.

Let me explain. Our collapsing NHS seems obsessed with hiring DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equality) managers. The apparent purpose of these wonderful people is (to quote just one of many similar job ads) “ensuring our workforce reflects the communities and patients we serve in order that we can meet the needs of our diverse communities”.

So, let’s do a quick check on how well current NHS staffing “reflects the communities and patients we serve”.

Of the NHS’s 1.3 million employees, 74.3% are white compared to 80.7% of the working-age population and 87.1% of the total population; 12.5% are Asian compared to 10.1% of the working-age population and 6.9% of the total population; and 7.4% are Black compared to only 4.4% of the working-age population and 3.0% of the total population.

Between 2009 and 2022, the percentage of NHS staff who were white went down from 84.1% to 74.3% and the percentage of NHS staff who were Asian went up from 7.3% to 12.5% – the biggest increase out of all ethnic groups

The first conclusion is that the NHS actually has a greater percentage of employees from ethnic minorities (25.6%) than in the working-age population (20.2%) and than in the general population. So, if the NHS is going to reflect the communities it serves, as it claims it wants to do, then clearly the NHS should employ more white people and fewer Asian and black people.

But, you say, aren’t most of the NHS ethnic minorities doing the more menial jobs while evil, ghastly white supremacists take all the top, best-paid jobs?

Well, here are the figures.

For professionally qualified clinical staff, only 68.7% were white compared to 80.7% of the working-age population and 87.1% of the total population; 15.9% were Asian compared to 10.1% of the working-age population and 6.9% of the total population; and 8.0% were black compared to only 4.4% of the working-age population and 3.0% of the total population.

Read More: When Will the NHS Address its Under-Representation of White People?

[awakened53]

The Scandal of the NHS Ombudsman Who ‘Deletes’ Thousands of Complaints He is Supposed to Investigate


The response to Covid has had countless pernicious effects. But one you are unlikely to have heard about in the news is the damage done to one of England’s most important public bodies.

Since Covid, you are far less likely to have your complaint about the NHS investigated by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The vital service offered by the PHSO has been quietly – and unjustly – downsized to help it tackle a large backlog of complaints caused by lockdowns and other restrictions.

The decision by the PHSO to greatly limit the number of complaints it will now investigate was taken not by our elected representatives but by the Ombudsman himself and those closest to him in the organisation, which is independent from Government. There has been little public and media scrutiny of the decision and its consequences, in particular whether a different course of action could and should have been taken.

The most obvious harmful effect of the change is that many more members of the public are now being denied justice than they were before Covid. But there are other serious effects. Fewer health service providers and those in charge of them are being held to account. In the PHSO’s scramble to meet its self-imposed performance targets, many providers today face no penalties for their – often avoidable – failures. Consequently, they are no longer told by the PHSO to learn from their mistakes. Patients are now more likely to face risks which would have been addressed and greatly reduced before the Government’s self-serving reaction to Covid.

How, exactly, did we reach this point, and could it have been avoided? And when – if ever – will the public have access to the Ombudsman service it pays for and needs?

Many receive good care from the NHS. But when things go awry and if patients are unhappy with the way an NHS provider answers their complaint they can ask the PHSO to step in. Over 80% of its work concerns healthcare complaints. It handles tens of thousands of complaints each year. Although it investigates a far lower number than that, since it was set up in 1993 it has righted many wrongs and helped improve the NHS. It plays a crucial role in the health of the nation. But it has never been an easy job. Even before Covid its workload was high. Complaints can be complex and caseworkers daily face a series of difficult decisions about the many complaints they are handling.

The service is far from perfect, of course. Over the years it has received much criticism, much of it justified, but some selective and unfair.

For many of those who receive poor service from the NHS and who then complain to the PHSO, in April 2021 things suddenly got worse. A large swathe of complaints began to be summarily struck off the PHSO’s books. Back in March 2020, when Boris Johnson announced the first lockdown, NHS chiefs decided not to accept complaints from the public between April and June. And amid the sense of alarm intentionally generated by our Government, the NHS focused its attentions on Covid. The PHSO, in turn, suspended the processing of complaints in part because it was unable gather the information it needed from the now otherwise preoccupied NHS.

And, as with most companies and organisations across the country, the PHSO had to make the rapid shift to working from home. For the PHSO this was unlikely to have been easy. It required moving most of its operation into the homes of its staff, while fulfilling its obligation to protect the privacy of complainants’ data.

For three long months the processing of complaints by PHSO to decide which ones should be investigated and which ones reasonably rejected stopped. Those awaiting a decision on their complaint were held in limbo. While current cases were delayed, new complaints, needing assessment, began to stack up. On resuming its work in July 2020, the PHSO was further hampered. Covid restrictions meant the NHS responded more slowly to the PHSO’s queries than it had before the pandemic. If that wasn’t enough, paper-only files it needed from Government departments could not be accessed because everyone, everywhere was working from home.

The PHSO’s work in general was slower, further adding to the backlog. Its staff were less productive, with some having to balance working from home with educating children and supporting elderly relatives. To make matters worse there were technical issues. Cases were not correctly tracked and data monitoring was negatively impacted, hindering parliamentary oversight.

As a consequence of all this, the PHSO resolved far fewer complaints and the backlog of complainants waiting for an initial decision again grew. Rather than the usual three or four months, many had to wait up to a year. A sting in the tail was that – while the precise causes remain unclear – as Covid declined, the number of new complaints increased.

Read More: The Scandal of the NHS Ombudsman Who ‘Deletes’ Thousands of Complaints 

[awakened53]

A Doctor’s Challenge to the BMA

I recently received a copy of a statement made by Mr Philip Banfield, an obstetrician who is the BMA UK Council Chair and who spoke at the official covid inquiry.

Banfield said: `Speaking in my capacity as BMA chair of council, I was acutely aware of the responsibility I held not only of speaking on behalf of its association and all its members, but for every single doctor working in our health service and the millions of patients they care for.’

I didn’t know whether to cry, scream or punch the wall when I read that. The arrogance! Banfield was not speaking for all doctors. And he certainly was not speaking for patients. The BMA has been the patients’ enemy for years, and never more than it is now. BMA strikes are causing untold damage to endless numbers of patients. Not surprisingly, hospital and GP patients are increasingly dissatisfied with the care they receive. For Banfield to claim that he was speaking for patients is simply extraordinary and shows a level of disconnect that is deeply worrying.

If BMA members had the guts to strike for better health care, for an end to working practices which have led to the longest waiting times in history or for the end of the General Medical Council’s absurd disciplinary process which punishes doctors who dare to ask questions or share truths, then I would not approve of their methods (doctors are never entitled to withdraw their labour by going on strike) but I would approve of their motives.

But BMA members are striking for more money.

Consultants on an average salary of £128,000 (plus pension) are striking for a 35% pay rise. That’s an extra £45,000 a year. They must know they cannot possible receive such a pay rise. If they did they would destroy what is left of the National Health Service and they would help push inflation still higher.

The doctors’ strikes are official BMA strikes. Far from caring for patients the BMA appears be using them as a weapon, boasting recently that one in six people will soon be on waiting lists if doctors don’t receive the 35% pay rise they are demanding.

It is the BMA which has, in my view, helped destroy health care in the UK. It was the decision of GPs not to work nights or weekends which destroyed hospitals and the ambulance service. And today the average GP works around three days a week. Librarians and accountants work longer hours than GPs.

Does the BMA want to destroy health care in Britain? Or does it want to destroy Britain?

I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. It seems to me that the BMA is helping to take us into a world of 15 minute cities, digitalisation, mass vaccination programmes and the Great Reset. It was, I remember, the BMA which said that climate change should be a new priority for doctors. It seems to concern them not at all that climate change is just a myth – and a myth, like covid and vaccination which must never, ever be debated.

Banfield of the BMA went on to discuss covid-19 as though it were a real pandemic. Does he really not know that the evidence proves that covid-19 was no more than the rebranded flu? Does he really not know that doctors and hospitals and bureaucrats and politicians killed more people than covid-19? Does he not know that all scientific debate was crushed by the medical establishment? Does he not know that the covid-19 `vaccine’ does not do what it is supposed to do and is so toxic that it should not have been given to one patient – let alone billions?

Read More: A Doctor’s Challenge to the BMA