With the exception of the Government who believes its own spin, it's rather obvious that the NHS is in crisis right now. As was reported last week, there are likely to be nearly 37,000 job cuts required simply to pay the salary bills. Add to this the crisis of deficits in so many NHS Trusts and basically you have a system that is in a very bad place financially.
And yet whilst this financial nightmare is going on, the Health Minister Andy Burnham proudly announced that the Government was going to spend £100million on energy efficiency in the NHS. Now of course, being energy efficient is undoubtedly important, but is the installation of sensors to monitor natural light levels and adjust internal lighting accordingly really the best allocation of such vast sums of money when it could be being spent on patient services?
2 comments:
I seem to remember that the Tories were excoriated for suggesting recently that there would be 20,000 cuts in the NHS, with a flippant charge of " scaremongering" and " a few hundred at most": " best year ever" etc etc.
And the outturn is.... 37,000.
Oh, and there will be fewer beds, which is a HUGE improvement in services.
Excuse me?
If it's cost effective, then yes. If it can save more money than it costs so that there is more money to spend on patient care.
Not that I think it will achieve that.
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