This article was written by Dr Liam Fox and was first published in the Telegraph on Thursday 15th of January 2015.
This week may well prove to be a turning point in how we discuss the health service in Britain. Ed Miliband’s comment that he intends to “weaponise” the NHS is hugely instructive. Never before has a Labour leader had the temerity (or stupidity) to make such a claim. His views were even amplified by Diane Abbott, one of his health spokesmen, who said “the NHS has the power to harm Tory MPs. It is lethal because the public understand that. And it is actually now our best card."
In neither case was there a semblance, not a hint, about caring for patients or getting the best health outcomes for the country.
I trained as a doctor in the NHS and worked as both a hospital doctor and a GP in different parts of the country with very different patient populations. I did so because I believed that medicine was an important vocation, the same thing that drives numerous doctors, nurses and other health workers today.
Labour does not own the NHS and the views of Miliband and Abbott will disgust and demoralise the many health professionals who do not regard themselves as being part of a party political battle, but who work hard for the benefits of those in their care.
Perhaps these Labour politicians have forgotten what happened on their own watch. The Mid-Staffordshire scandal stands as a testament to the centralised, target orientated approach to the health service taken by Labour in office. Up to 1200 people may have died, needlessly, at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2009 because of poor care. Who can forget the tales of patients being forced to drink water from vases, because they were so thirsty, of patients left lying for hours in their own excrement or those admitted to a hospital bed that had not been changed from the previous patient?
I have never understood how clinical staff could not notice that patients were dying of malnutrition or thirst on their own wards. Did they not perform regular ward rounds? As a junior doctor, I can clearly remember from the outset, the permanent presence of the ward sister who would check regularly on the state of both the ward and the patients themselves.
Were the medical and nursing staff so demoralised that they did not notice these appalling conditions? Or, more likely, were they so obsessed with meeting the targets set by the management on behalf of the government and browbeaten by the system that they felt helpless?
There can be no excuse for the ethical failures of health professionals in Mid-Staffordshire and the bodies who represent them at the highest level should never have gone along with Labour’s target obsessions. Doctors cannot serve two masters, their patients and the bureaucrats.
But the blame ultimately lies with those who were in charge of the NHS and who put politically driven targets ahead of patient interests. That is what it is for a system to be run by those who believe it is their political property. That is what a weaponised NHS looks like.
Of course, there are legitimate questions that need to be asked about how we organise our NHS. Patients, who have become used to quick responses to the needs in a consumer society are not willing to wait extended periods for such simple things as a GP appointment. It is clear that patients would rather wait four hours in A&E to see a doctor than wait a week to see their own GP.
Many hospitals already have GPs at their accident and emergency departments and this should be extended to all hospitals. Those who arrive at the door should be split into those who need to see a GP and those who actually require emergency treatment. This would stop those who are not genuine A&E cases from unnecessarily holding up the treatment of those in greater need. Likewise, we need to ask why we can only see hospital specialists when referred by a GP. Most patients in the rest of Europe have some direct access to secondary care and it is hard to believe that British patients are regarded as being so uniquely incapable of making a decision that they should not be given the same freedom.
Let’s have a genuine debate about how we run our health care system – we will have different ideas about how to improve it – but never forget that it must be run for the sake of the patients and not, Mr Miliband, as your political weapon.