A man of great detail and Queen’s Council precision,

A million coldly clinical words too late.

About 1200 elderly deaths too many.

290 belated recommendations of regret,

Put sticking plasters on a very ill NHS.

But is this a case for sticking plasters,

When the infection has already spread,

Through burdensome elderly no-care wards,

Or does this epidemic need more radical surgery ?

Precision is not a substitute for vision,

But when Francis was commissioned,

Did the Government want him to see,

The  awful and shameful bigger picture ?

Lack of money and courage,

Is what causes Political myopia.

By examining the patient through a microscope,

You do not see the whole person.

This follows on from the previous post “Where to begin with Stafford NHS ?”                         

Nothing short of a disaster has happened at Mid-Stafford NHS Trust, where in the order of 1200 elderly patients died over and above the normal mortality rate.   After a lengthy Public Enquiry, chaired by Robert Francis QC, we have :-

                  290 RECOMMENDATIONS to put the NHS in order !

The aspiration is unbelievably un-aspirational  ——-  ” to do no harm “.

The Francis report took over a year to write, interviewed hundreds of witnesses and then spewed out thousands of words.    Years after the fatal events in Mid-Stafford NHS Trust had taken place.    None the less it could have profound implications for the NHS  IF it is acted upon.

Now the problem becomes :—-

Who is overall in charge of implementing the recommendations ?

The answer seems to be everybody  ——  and nobody.    Everybody, in so far as the recommendations include all those who work in the NHS.    All 1.3 million of them !

And nobody, since no-one will admit to being in overall control.    Certainly not Sir David Nicholson, who is the head of the Department of  Health.    Even less so the Government who will not acknowledge that the NHS is being overwhelmed by frail elderly people and there is not enough money to treat them properly in the way it is currently being done.

So what if anything other than political breast beating and hot air, will happen now ?

My next few posts will compare what I have been calling for over the last few years in my GrumbleSmiles blog with the recommendations in the Francis report.

• 1,200 excess deaths of older people

How much more attention would this have attracted if it had been a plane crash with a 1,200 people dead.

Or another Twin Towers disaster.

Do we need to go to war on the NHS?

• Just in one hospital in Stafford

If there are 100 hospitals like this and there will be.  That’s 120,000 “excess” deaths. 

• Five more are now being investigated

It’s a matter of time before more deaths are discovered.

• Did they not notice?

Or was it easier to turn a blind eye on elderly people.

• 290 Recommendations

So where do you start?

• “No individual is at fault, it’s the system”.

So who designed the system?

• Look for the Head of the Head of the NHS, he was there at the time.

Francis says this is not the right answer but it might be the right place to start.

• Relatives knew what was going on but nobody was listening to them.

Complaints fell on deaf ears.

• This is probably the most important report on the NHS since it was formed.

A stocktake of how well we are doing.

• Meanwhile, we carry on pouring money into the NHS.

What else can we do?  More and more elderly people keep turning up on the doorstep.

• The press, as usual, talked about it for a day.

A battlefield of elderly deaths couldn’t hold their attention beyond a Royal birth or a celebrity scandal.

• The problem is too big.

You can’t eat this elephant in the room.

• But it won’t go away.

The frail and demented older elderly population is going to double in the next 20 or so years.

• The “system” was not designed or resourced financially to cope with this scale of elderly epidemic.

So we need to change the system

• ONE RADICAL SOLUTION MIGHT BE :-

Slow down the ambulances, shut down A&E    …. and ….