Saturday 14 November 2015

AS A CONSULTANT, I WILL SUPPORT MY JUNIORS IF THEY STRIKE



Junior doctors are deciding on whether to strike for three days. This is the final attempt to kickstart fair negotiations between the BMA and NHS Employers over a new junior doctor’s contract. Although we would all prefer that a strike did not happen, I will be supporting my juniors for the following reasons:

1.     Junior doctors form a vital part of the NHS. They are a dedicated, hardworking and vital part of the NHS family and MUST MUST be valued and respected. They also happen to be the hospital consultants and GPs of tomorrow. Changes to their contract are being imposed on them with a refusal by NHS Employers to negotiate on vital points. Proper negotiations with NO pre-conditions must start immediately. Let's not forget that Jeremy Hunt has also threatened to impose new working arrangements on consultants.

2.     We must attract the best students to medicine and the best doctors to frontline medicine. Recent data shows that Britain needs 26,500 more doctors to match the OECD average. The NHS is already the most cost effective universal healthcare system in the world and existing resources are being stretched to breaking point. The new contract is one step too far. A flow of junior doctors away from the UK or frontline medicine has already begun. Let’s not make that problem worse.

3.     The new contract imposes a new definition of ‘normal working hours’ on junior doctors, and penalises those working in specialities with a greater ‘out of hours’ commitment (such as emergency medicine, cardiology, paediatrics etc). This sort of work needs to be recognised and paid appropriately. Removing safeguards that prevent doctors from working even harder exposes them to abuse and may harm patients. Women in medicine must not be penalised for taking maternity leave. We should be working harder to help all doctors achieve a good work life balance.

4.     Clinical scientists are vital to good healthcare research. The new contract penalises junior doctors doing clinical research.

5.     The NHS already delivers 7 day urgent care. So when Jeremy Hunt, David Cameron and the media say that these contract changes are necessary to turn the NHS into a 7 day service, nobody really understands what they are saying. Can we assume that they are talking about elective or non-urgent care? If the government wants to create a 7 day non-urgent service, a 30% increase in resources and funding (and not just doctors) may be required and we all know that that won’t happen. Imposing contract changes on junior doctors, then consultants, GPs, nurses and everyone else in the NHS is not the answer.

6.     The assumption that ‘excess weekend deaths’ are avoidable by making doctors work harder and longer is rash and misleading. Even the authors of the cited papers make this clear. Patients admitted on the weekends were more sick, almost twice as likely to be an emergency admission (than on a weekday), were at NO extra risk of dying during their hospital stay and had a small increase in mortality 30 days after admission (as would be expected). So when politicians and the media say that a ‘7 day NHS’ made possible by changes to doctors’ contracts will ‘save 6000 lives’, they are not being truthful. At best they don’t understand the data, at worst they are deliberately misleading the public.

7.     We have had enough of political spin. Talk of militant doctors, danger money, doctors being misled by the BMA, doctors lacking a sense of vocation and worse is starting to make negotiations with the present government impossible.

8.     This is only one of many spanners. Disruption of the NHS by refusing to negotiate fairly with junior doctors is just one of many spanners being thrown at the wheel of the NHS. See my pre-election blogs for a summary of how the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 and now TTIP will conspire to break the NHS. We only have to look at Jeremy Hunt’s predecessor to see where this might be going.


Vinod Achan

Vinod Achan is a Consultant Cardiologist at Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey




 

Wednesday 6 May 2015

AN ELECTION PLEA FOR THE NHS




On 9 June 2011, I attended a medical networking event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London. At the end, a man with an American accent stood up and spoke about how backward our NHS was, and about how everything was about to change as we adopted a ‘modern’ US style healthcare system.

Having worked in the US and experienced first-hand the striking contrast between both systems, I stood up and responded. The NHS is an excellent model for cost-effective universal healthcare, promising equal access to high quality healthcare without fear of bankruptcy when patients are at their most vulnerable. The US, despite all its innovation and technology in various cathedrals of excellence, spends far more on healthcare with worse outcomes and denies healthcare to its weakest.

Less than four years later, that vision of a US style healthcare system is being realised in the UK at a faster pace than many of us imagined possible.  The NHS has been reorganised and is now on its knees with flat-line funding since 2010, morale at an all-time low and more threatened ‘efficiency’ cuts. The Health and Social Care Act passed in 2012 set this government’s agenda for disruption of the NHS. It had two main effects.

A. Control of the NHS budget was handed to GP-led Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) that were doomed to fail without adequate support. CCG support services have sprung to their aid, so that many jobs previously done by the NHS for the NHS (eg. the design of future services) will now be carried out by companies like KPMG, McKinsey and US health insurer United Health (1). Note that in 2010, KPMG’s head of global health believed that ‘in the future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider and not a state deliverer of healthcare’ (2).
 
B. CCGs are also being forced to open up every part of the local health service to private companies. Time-consuming tendering processes in which the NHS is no longer the preferred provider will lead to expensive bidding contests. In the US, administrative costs account for 20% of healthcare costs compared to 7% in the UK (prior to the 2012 Act). Private organisations will cherry-pick profitable services, leaving NHS providers to mop up less profitable work.

In order to save the NHS, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 must be revoked. The NHS must become the preferred provider of healthcare services to protect it from competition. We must resist changes that will make the NHS even more expensive and unaffordable. Electoral promises to pour £8 billion into the NHS mean nothing if the money flows out of the NHS and into private hands. 

Add to this equation the impending TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) between the US and EU which would make it impossible to reverse these changes, and the future of the NHS starts to look very bleak. Cameron has described fears that TTIP might damage the NHS as ‘bogus nonsense’ (3).

If like me you regard the NHS as a national treasure to be defended from global corporate interests, and if you agree that all of us (and especially the most vulnerable amongst us) should have access to healthcare free at the point of delivery without fear of bankruptcy, then please consider all of the above when casting your vote tomorrow.

Vinod Achan

This blog had had 910 views by day 4.

To see my 'Elevator Pitch' on NHS reforms in 2013, see here.

Wednesday 11 March 2015

ABPI Sponsorship of NHS Debate: What's the Catch?


I am looking forward to the #GuardianLive debate tonight where the three main political parties will discuss the future of the NHS. Guardian’s health correspondent Denis Campbell will chair, and guest speakers will include Norman Lamb MP, Minister of state for care and support, and Liz Kendall MP, Shadow minister for care and older people. Should we be surprised that such an important debate is being sponsored by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)?
The relationship between healthcare and industry (both pharmaceutical and medical devices) has always been an important but difficult one. Mass production of Penicillin during World War Two would not have been possible without the hand of industry. Lifesaving medication like Aspirin and Beta blockers have been developed and produced by industry. Similarly, none of the devices that cardiologists implant routinely, coronary stents and pacemakers for example, could have been developed without close collaboration between industry and clinicians.
Yet relations between healthcare and industry are at a low point. Many conflicts of interest arise when pharma influences healthcare delivery. The NHS drug budget is approximately £10 bn per year and rising. Looking at just the top 10 prescribed drug classes by cost, more than £3bn was spent in England alone on branded drugs where in most cases equally effective cheaper generic alternatives are available. Overdiagnosis (by changing diagnostic criteria or incentivising doctors to diagnose), lowering the threshold for treatment (as with statins, for example), and limited evidence that ‘innovative’, more expensive treatments work, all favour industry’s agenda. Many of these damage the NHS which strives for universal delivery of cost effective and evidence based treatments. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been set up to strike a balance, ensuring that effective and affordable treatments are available to everyone. How the different political parties will overhaul NICE following the election is of huge interest to all (see this excellent Guardian article, sponsored by ABPI).
Data transparency in clinical trials carried out by industry is an important issue. It has been estimated that only half of all registered and completed clinical trials are published. Positive trials are twice as likely to be published than negative ones. One example of this is the failure of the pharmaceutical company Roche to disclose all trial data concerning Tamiflu to the Cochrane Collaboration. The UK government has spent £500 million stockpiling Tamiflu on the basis of data that is not complete. Patients giving their consent for use of their personal data in these trials are seldom made aware of this. Studies suggest that only a fifth of all new drugs brought to market offer any advantage over existing therapies.
Key themes for tonight’s debate include:
·        If the NHS has finite resources, how should they be spent? Is it more cost effective to outsource services?
·        How can we improve access to innovative, new drugs to improve patient care?
·        Patient data: who should have access, and why?
It is easy to see how the ABPI view on these may differ from that of most NHS clinicians. The relationship between clinicians and industry is an essential one. But there are serious tensions as well. I hope the debate tonight reflects these.
Vinod Achan

Tuesday 3 March 2015

Michael Sheen speaks in support of the NHS



Actor Michael Sheen gave one of his finest performances yet in support of the NHS this weekend. He spoke in Tredegar, Wales, birthplace of Aneurin Bevan, architect of the NHS. Sheen’s speech, delivered with impressive force, should be an inspiration to all those defending the NHS. Here are some key extracts:

·       In 1945, Aneurin Bevan said, “We have been the dreamers. We have been the sufferers. And now we are the builders”. And my god how they built and what they built. Every bit as much a wonder of the world as any architectural marvel or any natural miracle. The National Health Service. A truly monumental vision. The result of true representation, of real advocacy. A symbol of equality, of fairness and of compassion. The nation that swept the post-war government into power was made up of a people that had faced the horrors and hardships of the Second World War. And bound together as one community, they had been sustained and inspired by a feeling of comradeship, and sense of responsibility for their fellow man and woman. Compelled to help those in need and those in hardship.

·       In his book ‘In Place of Fear’, Bevan said, “The collective principle asserts that no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means”.

·       We do not turn our backs on those facing hard times. We do not abandon them or exploit their weakness. Because they are us. If not now, then at some point and inevitably, they are us. We are not afraid to acknowledge that we can be ailing. That we can find ourselves weak. We do not shy away from that hard truth. We embrace it because in that way, we are always strong. We leave no-one behind. We only say we cross the finish line when the last of us does. Because no-one is alone. And because there is such a thing as society.

·       It’s no surprise that people feel disengaged with politics. Never an excuse not to speak up for what you think is right. You must stand up for what you believe. But first of all believe in something. Because there are plenty out there who believe in grabbing as much as they can. They won’t say it. They are too smart for that. No one says they want to get rid of the NHS. Everyone praises it. It’s as powerful a symbol for goodness that anyone has.

·       This is beyond party politics. This is about who we want to be as a nation. Too many people have given too much and fought too hard, for us to give away what they achieved and be left with so very little.
 
For a full video of the speech see here:

 
For more on Aneurin Bevan, see here.

Vinod Achan

Thursday 15 January 2015

THE ‘HOSPITAL AS A BATHTUB’ MODEL HELPS EXPLAIN THE A & E 'CRISIS'

 

A surge in hospital activity over winter months is predictable, yet this winter we face unprecedented challenges at the frontline. There is much talk of an A and E (Accident and Emergency) ‘crisis’ but A and E represents only one of several interfaces within the healthcare structure.  Consider the following simplistic bathtub model of hospital flow to look at how primary care, secondary care and social care interface with each other.

1. The hospital is a bathtub. If the size of the bathtub reflects the number of hospital beds, we have in the UK the smallest bathtubs in Europe (half as many beds per head of population compared to France; see here to compare).
 
2. The water level in the bath is determined by patient flow into the hospital (via the tap) and out of the hospital (via the outlet pipe). The tap in turn is determined by a number of factors including the following: access to primary care, telephone advice (NHS 111), and patient choice (to attend the ED rather than see a GP).

3. Flow out of the hospital on the other hand depends on patient recovery, access to rehabilitation beds and social care.

4. There is an additional re-entry circuit: when flow through the backdoor is obstructed and social care is unable to cope, outflow is diverted back to inflow (the hospital readmission).
 
Recent changes to the NHS have had an impact on this model at both ends. 

Recent changes mean that the tap has been turned to full. The number of district nurses, who play a crucial part in keeping people out of hospital, has fallen by 40% over the last decade. General practice, the jewel in the crown of the NHS, is also vital to keeping people out of hospital but now being stretched to breaking point. Recent changes following the Health and Social Care Act 2012 have distracted GPs from their clinical work and led to older GPs seeking early retirement.  Patients are finding it harder to access primary care and opt instead for the emergency department (ED).  NHS 111 is sending larger numbers of patients to the ED (see below).
 
At the same time, the flow of water out of the bath is being blocked. Social care cuts have made it harder to get patients home.  Many smaller cottage hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and nursing homes have been closed.
 
At the easiest of times, hospitals are run at 100% capacity for maximum efficiency. But open the taps to full by overwhelming primary care, then plug the outlet pipes by cutting social care and rehabilitation beds, and the bathtubs of the NHS, no matter how efficient, will overflow when winter arrives.
 
Vinod Achan
Vinod Achan is a Consultant Cardiologist and Consultant Lead for Emergency Angioplasty at Frimley Park Hospital (now part of the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust)