BRAINLESS BRITISH AMBULANCE SERVICE

Put your brain out of gear (and forget how to read a map, and don't listen to anybody) when you go to work for the government

An ambulance took almost two hours to take an injured girl to hospital after it was misdirected to the scene of the accident by its satellite navigation system. Chloe Banks, 10, was left lying in the road in the village of Greenside, near Gateshead, for almost an hour waiting for an ambulance after she was injured in a car smash. The crew then took such a circuitous route to the accident and emergency department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital that the child’s older brother, Colin, 20, questioned the driver. He was told that they were following the directions of the satellite navigation system.

Maggie Banks, 39, the injured child’s mother, has complained that Chloe was knocked down three weeks ago outside a new skate park in the village at 1.30pm, but did not arrive at the hospital until 3.20pm. She was treated at the scene by a rapid-response paramedic within six minutes and is now on holiday with her family in Spain and making a full recovery. Mrs Banks said: “Fortunately, her injuries were not more serious. I would not even like to think about how it could have been.”

A subsequent inquiry by the North-East Ambulance Service established that there were no ambulance crews in Gateshead to ferry the child to hospital. A crew from Sunderland were called at 1.54pm after they dropped off a patient in Newcastle. The crew, who were unfamiliar with the area, were further delayed when the satellite navigation system guided them down a road in nearby Ryton that was too narrow for the ambulance. Although within sight of the scene, the crew were forced to back up and find another way, finally arriving at 2.26pm.

Mrs Banks, who travelled in the ambulance, was shocked when the ten-mile journey to the hospital took another 40 minutes. The navigational aide directed the crew along a B-road, rather than the more direct route along the dual-carriageway A695. Mrs Banks, a cleaner, said: “Chloe was lying on the ground vomiting and bleeding and she kept saying to me, ‘Mum, am I going to die?’. We had to wait almost an hour for the ambulance to come and take her. “I thought then we would go straight to the QE but they went around Rowlands Gill and Swalwell. My son told the crew it would have been quicker going to Ryton on the bypass, but the lady who was driving said she was going off the navigational system.” Mrs Banks, married to Colin, 43, a driver, has raised concerns about the system with the ambulance trust.

A North-East Ambulance Service spokesman said that they understood Mrs Bank’s concerns. However, he emphasised that paramedics arrived within six minutes and the child was treated at the scene. It was the transportation rather than emergency treatment that was subject to a delay. The journey from Newcastle to Greenside is 10.3 miles and should take no more than 20 to 25 minutes. A reporter drove from the crash site to the hospital yesterday, using local knowledge, in 22 minutes.

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BRITAIN: RED TAPE FOR CHOCOLATES NOW!

Nurses may be more used to monitoring heart rates, breathing patterns and blood pressure, but a new and rather more surreal target has now been added to their duties. Clearly dissatisfied with the findings of countless annual surveys, targets and inspections, audit-hungry hospital managers in the West Country have hit upon what they believe is a more accurate indicator: chocolate. Bemused staff have been instructed to complete a “chocolate audit” of gifts that they have received from grateful patients — from boxes of Milk Tray and bottles of wine to cards and flowers.

Every time a nurse receives a present — a “gesture of gratitude” — they are now required to fill out a form stating what it is, who it is from, and how much it is worth. While managers at Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust claim that the audit provides a good picture of patient satisfaction, the move has been criticised by staff representatives and health watchdogs for increasing the burden on overworked staff.

Managers said that the “gestures of gratitude” count is already helping to refine hospital care. Records in 2004-05 for the trust’s three acute hospitals — in Treliske, Penzance and Hayle — reveal that there were 8,000 gestures of gratitude, including gifts and letters. There were, however, 316 complaints. “Keeping records of how many boxes of chocolates and thank you cards we get might seem trivial and a waste of time,” a spokesperson said. “But such gestures are a good way of measuring patient satisfaction and receiving feedback. We also carry out patient surveys. “It’s important staff know their efforts are appreciated by the public, and it doesn’t take very long to carry out.”

But the scheme, which is also up and running at Derriford Hospital, a part of Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, has not been universally welcomed. Jono Broad, of North Devon Patient and Public Involvement Forum, described the measure, at a trust that is £8 million in debt and facing 300 redundancies, as “management madness in the extreme”. ”If the staff don’t fill out the forms recording the gifts they get into trouble with management,” he said. “They have to record how much the gift is worth, who it came from and then it’s all shoved in a cupboard.”

Nursing leaders also dismissed the idea. Howard Catton, head of policy at the Royal College of Nursing, said that keeping a log of gifts was “about as useful as a chocolate teapot”. “The process of auditing performance in a hospital is crucial but trying to do so by counting biscuits is completely useless,” he said. A spokesman for Unison, the public sector trade union, described registering gifts as an unfathomable waste of time. She said: “Nurses need to spend all their available time with patients, carrying out their duties. Visit any hospital and you will see nurses rushing around with enough to do. “They work exceptionally hard and that is the true measure of performance, not who decides to give them a box of Maltesers.”

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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