Tuesday 23 April 2013

Grand Alliance Rapid Policy Response Unit er responds to Not Red Ed proposal

with something "similar but different"

Today … 

The Government is considering the idea of “hospital hotels” where elderly patients can recover from illnesses or falls.

The proposals to ease so-called bed-blocking on NHS wards are based on a system used in Scandinavia, where services are run by private hotel chains.

NHS England, the new body responsible for recommending how local doctors' groups should provide for their patients, has been asked to review the scheme.

Yesterday …..

The NHS would be handed responsibility for providing nursing home care for the elderly under a future Labour government in an attempt to constrain Britain's spiralling healthcare costs, Ed Miliband will announce today.

At present, while hospital and primary care is the responsibility of the NHS, the cost of nursing and social care is met by local councils. This means that some patients – many of them elderly – are kept for longer than they should be in expensive hospital beds as councils delay taking responsibility for their care, a problem known as "bed blocking".  Labour's move could open the way for hospital trusts to diversify into social care and provide services more efficiently than at present.

Mr Miliband will announce the launch of an independent commission, led by a former Department of Health official, Sir John Oldham, to draw up detailed proposals for how the new system would work in time to be included in Labour's manifesto.

9 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

I suppose the key difference here is that Labour's proposal will be a bit crap but fairly cheap, while the Tories' proposal will be a bit crap but really expensive.

Bob E said...

Yes, I think both proposals rest on the "if a Hospital bed costs the NHS £300 a night, and "our alternative" costs the NHS either £195 per person a night to our "one arms length removed Convalescent and Care Homes" [either to be a PFI funded investment from the outset or to be established first off as an NHS quango and then to be privatised as "an efficiency measure" once they are properly up and running, have paid for the premises and equipment etc.] (NRE's) or £200 a night payable to the private sector(GA) "Care Hotels Provider to the NHS" then "that's a saving to the NHS" ..

A K Haart said...

Sounds like an astute political move by Labour. Whatever the final plan, people probably associate the NHS with "free".

Graeme said...

is this the birth of T Dan Milliband?

Graeme said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10013914/WiFi-porn-in-public-areas-to-be-blocked.html

banning wifi will reinvigorate the High Street...

It seems that Cameron really is in touch. Without free wifi, I don't anyone would ever visit a High Street aqain - tourists would stay in hotels, for example

Lola said...

This assumes that all post hospital care is provided by councils. It isn't. Maybe Milliband is looking to nationalise all of it? Personally, we had to get my mother out of bloody hospital and back to her - private - nursing home to get her better. If he wants to control costs why doesn't he switch the funding to follow the patient and de-nationalise the NHS?

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, yes but all the oldies are crying out for more freebies. Higher pensions, "free" old age care and so on. The oldies demand, the government delivers. The question is whose option is cheaper for the taxpayer.

G, who's TDM? Good article about wifi, I'll do that one later.

L, that's the other way of doing it. But somebody somewhere has to decide how ill somebody is, what sort of care they are entitled to and what % of that is to be paid by the taxpayer.

Robin Smith said...

Graeme - good one on Wifi. The only ones left on the hi street would be a few who actually talk to each other. Not bad eh?

All - My Mum would love to live in hospital. She would pay whatever it cost. If unaffordable she'd still want to be cared for. Diff between wanting to be cared for and price is not relative. They are on different levels when the next stage is... who knows?

Graeme said...

T Dan Smith was a Labour concil chief in Newcastle(?) who took massive "incentives" from architects and builders to grant planning permission on shonky schemes....I am sure that Milliband will be asking him for advice.