The Rise and Fall of the NHS

Prof Donald Longmore OBE

ISBN 10: 190762922X / ISBN 13: 9781907629228

Editore: Pressman House Publishing Limited, 2013

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Codice articolo rev3394305738

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Rise and Fall of the NHS
• Editore: Pressman House Publishing Limited
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 190762922X
• ISBN 13: 9781907629228
• Rilegatura: Brossura
• Condizione: Very Good
• Peso: 200 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

The National Health Service: One of the greatest achievements of the 20th century may soon be no more. Now the NHS is imminently threatened with destruction, it is the responsibility of someone who knows the NHS intimately and cares about it, to diagnose what has gone wrong with it, to tell it how it is and to propose a practical course of action which could save it from destruction by: uninformed political interference; resources being wasted on excessive, damaging and unnecessary bureaucracy; management instead of leadership; and multiple predators who will gain from its demise. The once-noble organisation, which at first significantly increased our life expectancy by an average of 5.2 years, is now actually responsible in some areas for an increasing death rate and has been reduced to headline scandals and becoming the butt of cartoonists. If the description is a true representation of the rise and fall , has it really fallen? It s not all bad. I hope sincerely, as is most likely, that you the reader are a relatively fit person who will not be ill, break a hip, have a stroke, or become senile. The sad thing is that the NHS may soon be no more. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have fought a health bill through Parliament, believing that it will improve the service and reduce the cost. It seemed that those who drafted the Health Bill could not come up with a worse structure but they have. The NHS is the world s fourth biggest employer with over 1.4 million, employing on the frontline 386,500 nurses (38% foreign, not all trained and speaking English), 109,000 doctors (35% foreign, not all trained and speaking English) and 122,000 scientists, technicians, etc. adding up to 617,500. This leaves 782,500 an excess of 164,500 others. Who are they? Do they contribute to the nation s health? Applying medical diagnostic techniques, distinguishing between diseases you are born with and ones you get, it appears that the problem is the malignant new growth of bureaucrats following many politically-motivated reorganisations. Urgent treatment is required. A doctor treating a patient knows that there are four possible outcomes: the patient can get better, stay the same, get worse, or die. So it is with the effects of the Health Bill. Each key element is examined to see if it will make the NHS better, stay the same, get worse or be handed over to the predatory private health organisations circling round, ready to pick off the lucrative bits. At stake is the future health of the nation, over 7% of our national wealth and electoral defeat or victory. A likely outcome of the drive to foster competition and license providers is multiple commercial medical contractors taking over the service, overseen ineffectually by an Ofhealth watch, like Ofcom or Ofgen. The NHS was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century and was envied as the best in the world. It was conceived when Britain, standing alone, was losing a war caused by political ineptitude and pacifists disarming whilst Germany turned itself into a war machine. It started in 1948 and had a Golden Era, despite food rationing, huge debts and the war-damaged infrastructure. It worked politically expedient where we would like to be initiatives rather than where we could and should be plans. Successive governments have reorganised the service and the result is an unsustainable organisation. The motive may have been to retain control of one of the world s biggest employers, or to sell off the service as franchises to bring in revenue, like the railways.

Informazioni sull?autore

Donald Longmore, OBE, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh and Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists, was born in 1928 and his school years were passed at a number of schools, due to evacuation and the disruption of the war. He finished his education at Solihull School as Head Boy and Captain of Games. He went to Guy s Hospital Medical School and qualified in 1953. Whilst at University, he was awarded a Blue. His postgraduate medical education in medicine and surgery was at Guy s Hospital working for President of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Dean. He intended to be a surgeon with an interest in preventing disease. He spent two years teaching anatomy. He then continued his training at the London Hospital as an Orthopaedic Surgeon with Sir Reginald Watson Jones. The vascular injuries around broken bones interested him and he went to the Texas Medical Centre to learn vascular surgery from the famous American surgeons Dr DeBakey and Dr Denton Cooley. At that time, heart surgery was just starting and he trained in open heart surgery. In the early days of heart surgery many of the patients died of kidney failure, so he studied renal dialysis and built artificial kidneys as well as heart-lung machines. Kidney transplantation became a reality in the 1950s. If kidneys, why not hearts? In 1963 he started a heart transplant programme at the National Heart Hospital, but clinical heart transplantation didn t start until 1967. By that time, he felt that transplantation was addressing the problems of failed preventive medicine, and he started work on early diagnosis and the use of computers to enhance diagnostic techniques. In 1975 Donald Longmore and John Stephenson, a computer expert, started a charity named Heart Exploration And Research in Therapy (HEART), which is now called the Coronary Artery Disease Research Association (CORDA), to fund research into the early detection of cardiovascular disease, population screening and monitoring the efficacy of preventive measures. By 1980 it was clear that Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) could be developed sufficiently to achieve most of CORDA s objectives. Donald then trained in physics and founded and partially personally funded the Royal Brompton CORDA Magnetic Resonance Unit, which is now one of the world s leading clinical and research centres. He is disappointed that the pioneering preventive work is not being pursued. He has shown that it is possible to reach out into the community to answer the four questions to which you, the readers, want answers:- Have I got arterial disease which kills half of us? Is it going to cause me to drop dead or suffer from debilitating disease? Can something be done about it? Is it possible to measure the effect of simple treatment? He asks - why is this not being done? Donald Longmore is a keen yachtsman and his other interests include skiing, vintage cars, restoring historic boats and making things. He still works on the development of more practical, cheaper and more patient-acceptable Magnetic Resonance and other diagnostic machines. Donald Longmore has asked two eminent people, whose opinions he greatly respects, to comment on this book and to write forewords. One was chosen to comment on the science and one as a clinician. He is grateful to them both for their forthright reviews.