Tuesday 4 August 2015

NHS UK, the final destruction begins ....

"NHS England management told to leave posts unfilled if possible to save on potential budget overspends."


In the meantime a global venture capital conglomerate, trading as Integrated Dental Holdings, sucks an estimated £408 million in NHS dental treatment (2013 -14) and supply contracts from around 400 NHS practices they own in England, provided by using Eastern European dentists at slave labour rates as 'assistants' (avoiding GDC and NHS contract registration), while seeking to sell on the European Business arm for over $3 billion. IDH also has supply contracts with NHS Scotland for dental provision but under very different contractual conditions.

This is the 'thought model of NHS provision' Hunt is seeking for the NHS in England across the board even though many of the complaints going through the General Dental Council for poor or inappropriate dental treatment comes from the use of poorly trained (by UK standards) Eastern European dentists at an ever increasing cost to UK trained dentists in professional protection and indemnity cover.

In 1990 a year's dental indemnity insurance as a principal cost me £100. Friends who still practice dentistry, as full time practice principals, are now paying upwards of £4,563 in 2015, depending on the levels of cosmetic dentistry or other dental specialism they undertake. In 1990 indemnity insurance cost for a year was around 10% of the principal practitioner's monthly gross income, in 2015 indemnity insurance is equivalent to 49% of the average principal practitioner's monthly gross income while figures from the dental defence unions show most payouts are made for clinical errors by dentists under the age of 35 and most of the dentists brought before the GDC, as a proportion of the UK dental register, on a region by region basis, are NHS (England) practitioners, something the current UK Government would prefer to keep very quite about.

Clearly the UK Government does not wish you to know you are ten times more likely to receive poor or inappropriate treatment within NHS England dental care than elsewhere in the UK. You will read in the Torygraph or the Gruniad of the very occasional 'bad, fraudulent, greedy, private dentist' censured or struck off by the GDC but little about the daily trail of NHS dentists (mainly non UK trained) who are now clogging up the GDC disciplinary process to the detriment of patients and dentists.

The GDC (a UK Government quango) was recently assessed by the National Audit Organisation as being unfit for purpose, had lost the faith of the profession it regulates, poorly lead and which lost a legal case brought against it by the UK Dental profession for its failure to consult or justify its massive annual registration fee hike for 2015. This GDC is is the body Mr Hunt appoints people to as Secretary of State for Health, trusts with the future of NHS dentistry, all dental training standards across the UK and in the regulation of a profession which now holds it in utter contempt. The previous Tory Health Secretary further reduced dental professional representation in the GDC to give greater public input while appointing 'friends of the Tories' to positions they have neither the skill nor knowledge to hold. The same aim of greater patient involvement in the GMC is currently being proposed by Mr Hunt - read more Tory placemen and women to do the UK Government's bidding.


A quick look at the attempts to fit Mr Hunts preferred NHS dental model model (IDH outsourcing) into English NHS GP practice, by the likes of Virgin Health, demonstrates it is not viable as there is little or no profit in a contracting system which has already been cut to the bone, using UK trained graduates, and the 'assistant' loop hole in the GDC rules is not available due to GMC requirements for GPs though could be manipulated to fill house officer and junior nursing positions and probably already is.

In the meantime new and recent UK graduates in medicine, nursing and dentistry are taking the hint and heading off to the Antipodes or North America where their skills and training are in great demand and where working conditions and quality of life on offer is far better. They feel no commitment to the NHS, saddled as most recent UK graduates are with over £40,000 worth of student debt, courtesy of recent Tory and Labour Governments.

Oh look! The NHS in England and the rest of the UK is suffering manpower shortages amongst key professionals .... that'll be everyone's fault but successive UK Government's failure to address the underfunding of NHS recruitment, retention and training policies or their 'crash dummy' NHS privatisation scam.


Still think NHS Scotland is safe as part of the 'Better Together'  UK health program?

3 comments:

  1. Scary stuff, the no voters will blame the SNP, as usual. My neighbours, tory no voters, all had top class treatment for serious illnesses, but still complain, when I ask if they would be willing to pay thousands for their treatment, well you can imagine their reaction, no way no way!

    I recently had to have quite a bit of dental treatment, as. carer, it was free. They had to apply for funding for the more extensive treatment, great dentist, but messed up one part, so some of it had to go untreated, which was not a big deal as it was less essential, still I was grateful for the much needed mostly excellent dentistry I received.
    What really gets me angry is that the no voters have condemned us to likely sunstandard treatment if any at all, when we get to their age, ie in their 60s, 70,s and 80,s. They had it good, mostly, free degrees, I know one who did two degrees for free, somehow, cheap mortgages, houses now worth 100s thousands, free bus pass, ( In NE England no buss pass until you have reached retirement age, 65) a nice grant each yera to help with heating and lighting etc. I would never begrudge these things to the poor, but I do when it comes to the mostly very well off tory voting unionists. They will not see the damage they have caused to our country, bonny Scotland, but I suspect, they do not care anyway.

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  2. meant substandard, of course, sunstandard sounds actually ok!

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  3. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!. NHS dentist

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