ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

A Queensland farmhand was forced to deliver his dead baby in a car beside the road after his wife - having her first child - was turned away from their local hospital and told to drive to another facility three hours away. An investigation has been ordered into why 34-week pregnant Sharon Walker, 35, was not provided with an ambulance for the 270km journey from Emerald to Rockhampton, in central Queensland, and why she was turned away when the hospital knew she was in labour. The examining doctor had warned her that it would probably be a breech birth because the baby had turned in the womb.

Two hours into the trip, the mother's waters broke and the baby's father, Steven Walker, had no option but to deliver the baby son he knew was dead. "Sharon was in pain and was pushing, and I was just there gripping this little baby tight and the thought came over me that this was my son I was pulling out," Mr Walker said yesterday. My panic was starting to rise. When I looked down and I was holding his foot, and he just looked like a really good little baby - it just gutted me. "But most of all I knew that I should not be there, that Sharon should not be going through this."

Mrs Walker said she was feeling pains on the morning of May 16 and rang the nearby Emerald hospital. The midwife told her to come in straight away. She was examined and told there was no heartbeat. The hospital rang her husband and informed him, and said Mrs Walker had to be driven the three hours to Rockhampton because she was "high risk". The doctor gave her a letter for the Rockhampton medical staff in which he said Mrs Walker had dilated 2cm and that it would probably be a breech birth.

State Opposition frontbencher Vaughan Johnson raised the issue yesterday in Parliament, asking Health Minister Stephen Robinson if this was the sort of treatment women could expect under his Government. Mr Robinson said an investigation had been ordered, but later issued a press release in which he said a decision was made by clinical staff at Emerald for the patient to travel to Rockhampton, and that labour commenced in transit. Mrs Walker denied that yesterday, saying she was having pains seven minutes apart at Emerald, and the doctor had said in his referral letter that she was already dilating. "What I don't understand is why an ambulance was not ordered when they knew I was giving birth," she said. "I knew we couldn't make it and I yelled at Steven to pull over because I could feel the baby coming. "He stopped at a little store, raced in and screamed to call an ambulance, came out, tore my clothes off and he could see the feet already."

Mr Walker said he was "operating on adrenalin but was unable to pull the baby's head out. "I was afraid I would lose Sharon. We knew the baby was dead, but I didn't want to lose them both," he said. The ambulance arrived and officers helped deliver the baby. "We were put in the ambulance and the baby was wrapped in a blanket and put in with us," Mrs Walker said. "He was a beautiful, fully formed little boy. We named him Marshall Henry Walker, and held a funeral service for him in Rockhampton two days later. "I never want this to happen to anybody else."

Source






HUGE INCREASE IN SPENDING ON NHS STILL NOT ENOUGH

Bureaucracy is a bottomless pit

The NHS deficit more than doubled last year to 512 million pounds, the Government announced yesterday. This is more than twice the target of 200 million set at the start of the year and makes it the second successive year in which the NHS has failed in its statutory duty to break even. At least 15,000 jobs are to go in the attempt to cut costs.

However, such was the expectation of an even bigger deficit that Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, was able to announce the figure with a sense of relief. It is less than the 620 million predicted at the half-year and hundreds of millions less than some expected. Ms Hewitt said that the deficit was concentrated in a relatively small number of organisations, was not the fault of reforms and that she would be “held accountable” if the NHS did not return to overall financial balance by next April.

Sir Ian Carruthers, acting chief executive of the NHS, said that patient care was improving, in some cases dramatically, but admitted the deficits were a “blot on the landscape”. Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that the figures would deepen “the crisis of confidence in the Government’s stewardship of the NHS”. He added: “The gross deficit — the figure for NHS trusts and primary care trusts — is 1.27 billion pounds. It is this vast sum that directly gives rise to the serious consequences in cuts in services and frontline posts. “The Health Secretary is living in a parallel universe, in which everything gets better and nothing is wrong. Hard-working NHS staff are in the real world, where they deliver in spite of the Government’s policy failures.”

A breakdown of figures shows that in 2005-06, primary care trusts (303 organisations) were in deficit by 476 million pounds, compared with 272 million in 2004-05. Acute trusts had a deficit of 545 million (246 million), while teaching trusts’ deficit was 62 million (78 million). The overall figures would have been much worse if strategic health authorities (SHAs) had not managed to save money, underspending by 524 million. That surplus, set against the overall NHS deficit, halved the total overspend. Overall, 31 per cent of the 566 NHS organisations failed to break even in the year 2005-06, compared with 28 per cent the year before.

Niall Dickson, chief executive of the King’s Fund think-tank, said that the figures masked the true scale of the financial problems. “The gross deficit has increased throughout the NHS to 1.27 billion and has been reduced to a net of 512 million only by using increased surpluses from other parts of the service” he said. “In fact, more NHS organisations are in deficit than predicted, while the net deficits for primary care trusts and hospitals are worse than last year.” Sir Ian also released his annual report on the NHS yesterday, which highlighted how waiting times have fallen to the lowest level recorded. The NHS was on target for a 20 per cent drop in cancer deaths in under-75s by 2010, and a 40 per cent reduction in heart and stroke deaths.

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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