The Tories claimed in the general election:
"We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS"This may be technically correct, as they have ring-fenced the budget. But they are using some of the funding for a pointless and dangerous re-organization of the NHS and to pay for it they are cutting services.
The latest example of this is the announcement yesterday in the Guardian that the Con Dems plan to scrap NHS direct replacing it with a new budget service called NHS 111.
Currently forty percent of NHS Direct's staff are trained nurses. NHS 111 will have one trained nurse to every 25 call centre staff, in other words only 4% of the staff will be professional nurses. The other call operators will go on a 60 hour training course.
As soon as the public realise that the new call centre is not staffed by health professionals they will start putting extra demand on casualty and out of hour GP services, rather than risk receiving unprofessional advice from call centre operators.
I have used NHS Direct on more than one occasion in the past and was satisfied with the professional advice I received to save me having to put demand on other NHS services. I would not use the proposed new service for health advice.
The biggest risk could come from a member of staff offering poor or incorrect advice to a caller which could result in them not seeking professional medical advice when they do require it.
The cost to the public of NHS Direct is £123 million a year. This is money well spent, which reduces the demand on other areas of the NHS. We must fight to defend this and you can start by signing the petition at http://www.savenhsdirect.co.uk/
There is no need for these cuts. The government would not need to be looking for cuts if it was not for their expensive and dangerous re-structuring of the NHS which is going to cost the tax payer £1.8 billion a year.
We have to fight the cuts and the Con Dem vandalism of the NHS before it is too late and see all the improvements of the past 17 years thrown away.
