Jeremy Hunt’s own officials doubt his evidence on seven-day NHS plans, leaked document reveals
Has anybody else noticed the way the media – the Independent here is no exception – have started referring to the possibility of having a seven-day National Health Service, as though we don’t have it already? We do!
Jeremy Hunt’s entire strategy has been based on a fallacy. Remember the Twitter campaign in which who-knows-how-many doctors, nurses and other NHS employees sent in photos of themselves, in post, on weekends under the hashtag #iminworkjeremy? Here’s one to remind you:
That’s why Jeremy Hunt’s officials are dissenting on his claims about a seven-day NHS – because the NHS already operates on a seven-day basis. There are no improvements to be had.
Yet the Tory puppy press are still pushing their paymasters’ claim, despite knowing it isn’t true.
Would reporters please credit us with some intelligence – and show that they are using their own?
A leaked document has revealed that Health Minister Jeremy Hunt’s own officials doubt his evidence on a seven-day NHS, it has been reported.
The internal Department of Health report states that it is not possible to prove that a seven-day NHS would lower the number of patients dying at weekends.
It allegedly says that the Department: “cannot evidence the mechanism by which increased consultant presence and diagnostic tests at weekends will translate into lower mortality and reduced length of stay.”
Mr Hunt’s push for seven-day services has been based on his claims that to do so would combat higher death rates on Saturdays and Sundays.
The Department has cited a number of studies which apparently observe the trend, including a 2015 report for the British Medical Study which found that every year 11,000 more patients die within a month of visiting hospital if they are treated on a weekend.
The figure has been contested by critics who say the number is not due to lower staffing or services but because those who visit on weekends are more likely to be seriously ill, thereby skewing the figures.
Junior doctors have opposed the proposed changes to their contract which they claim would put patients at risk due to unsafe working hours and conditions for medical staff.
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I just don’t get it. When my angina was unresponsive and I had to call an ambulance at 1.00 am on a Saturday morning the specialist and cardiology doctors were there right through the day. The specialist was on her rounds from 8.30 am, the cardiology doctors all night. We already have a seven day NHS so who apart from Jeremy Funt/Hunt/Bunt is saying otherwise?
I don’t read the media presstitutes any more. They are usually spouting propagandist lies so get my news from more reliable sources who tell the truth. I expect the Graundian to lie their socks off, the daily fail and the Sun whores, but is every “news”paper misrepresenting the doctors and staff of our NHS?
Jeez.
That’s my recent experience too. I’m usually admitted on a Saturday or Sunday – I’m not sure why it’s always at a weekend; perhaps because I can’t so easily get access to antibiotics or delay going for tests – but there’s always a full compliment of specialists and junior doctors. My experience has never led to me to think that we have anything less than a 7 day a week NHS. My guess is that this conflict is more about crushing NHS moral/unions to make the service more acceptable/profitable for privatisers. In that it gets costly industrial action,, and the bad publicity, done at the public’s expense. .
Just heard on the news that the Young doctor Rose Polge who is missing in the SouthWest has left a note mentioning Hunt. If so this is an appalling tragedy but I can understand the despair that young, newly qualified doctors feel when they see their dreams being deliberately destroyed by this little man who has a stated agenda to destroy the NHS then privatise health care in the UK to the benefit of his friends with involvement in delivering private medicine.
He should resign right now, the man if you can call him that is a bare faced liar and he thinks Joe public should swallow his rhetoric.
Why on earth should a man with the intelligence of a centipede govern over the NHS, it is an absolute disgrace.
This so called government have caused so much depression / oppression than I can ever remember in 64 years is a disgrace.
Sadly Mr Angry, I firmly believe that we are lumbered with the corrupt and dishonest Hunt whose sole aim is to destroy the NHS.
What he seems to referring to is outpatient clinics, which as anyone who actually works in the NHS, as opposed to being minister for state for it, are the least well attended of all the days, the whole idea is that people won’t take days off work to attend, but of course like the NHS many occupations work 7 days a week or 6 in some retail outlets meaning that people are more likely to need mid week appointments.
“The Seven Day Week”:
I was ten when NHS began, and I do not recall NHS only working a five day week. Were patients sent home for the weekend? Did ambulances not respond to emergencies cos staff ‘rested’ at weekends? Were women plugged to stop giving birth? Did operations stop midway at 5.00pm Fridays? The mind just boggles at how this stupid bloke can even put his name to this statement.