sanjunien wrote:... I mean,which incompetant tool managed to dream up that mess ?
Then there's been the episodes of the likes of KPMG being called in by assorted hospital trusts (at a cost of millions) to work out how to save money, cut jobs, offshore jobs etc etc ...
In one case, in north London, the plan was to offshore the medical secretaries' jobs to the Indian sub-continent.
Now this sort of thing has been done before – in the US. And it was a disaster there. Audio files were sent around the world to be transcribed. Now, with the best will in the world and far, far better language skills than I could probably ever dream of having, mistakes were inevitable in the transcription process – unclear recordings, accents and dialects etc.
What happened were cases of notes coming back with the wrong medication listed – not by much in terms of letters, but by a lot in terms of the drugs in question.
Result – real problems in terms of patient care. And writs. Etc.
And there were also security issues that came as the transcribing businesses refused to send back notes etc – unless they were paid more.
Yet this was still, up to a couple of years ago at least, being seriously mooted in the UK. As if all that were not bad enough, if anything had gone wrong, even if it had been no fault of anyone in the NHS, the taxpayer would still have footed the bill. Which, of course, you potentially see now with the PIPs case.
My analysis?
We've had 30 years where the only thing that is regarded by government as important is, ultimately, big business and the orthodoxy of neo-liberalism.
That's brought us to a point where there are companies behind these NHS moves, waiting to pounce like vultures (which is perhaps a bit unfair to magnificent birds).
Just as you have companies making money out of unemployment – and then telling the government what to do about the schemes so that the public sill stop complaining but they can continue to benefit.
Just as you have bankers and financiers awarding themselves massive bonuses – even as the companies they head up are recording massive losses or failures. If you raise the question, they squeal that they'll leave the country.
Just as big business is allowed to decide that it won't pay its full tax bill – and so government departments do deal (presumably with the knowledge of government) to let them off.
Just as big business is able to run roughshod over local concerns on such matters as planning permission, because it has enough money simply to keep coming until it gets what it wants.
Three decades ago, Pandora's Box was opened. Trans and multi-national capital is now so large that, in many ways, it hardly has to worry about what you and I think. And governments – not just in the UK but elsewhere – behave as though they were elected not to serve us, but simply to service big business and finance.
