Generic Virus Thread

[Davkaus]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Amazed how many experts there are on health care system administration on this forum, y'all should set up a consultancy or something .

If that's aimed at my post, I've spent the last 10 years working at two of the biggest UK based providers of clinical systems used in the NHS.

The amount of absolutely bonkers requirements coming from trusts attempting to redesign the wheel has to be seen to be believed.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Davkaus

[bannedfromHandV]

10 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Typically outdated and hugely fragmented.

An insane amount of stuff is still done on paper, and it still blows my mind that each Trust is run like it's own little kingdom, specifying and procuring their own bespoke IT systems instead of there being a common NHS package used across the country. The amount of duplication and waste by it not being centrally managed seems crazy to me.

The national programme was a mismanaged failure, but it's absolutely necessary IMO.

This isn’t meant to cause offence to anyone individually who works within the IT arena within the NHS but I’ve spent 13+ years now recruiting for IT and Technology companies and there is a stigma attached to candidates who have a long history of working in IT within the NHS. That stigma being that they’ve probably never really worked under much pressure, nor will have worked with cutting edge technologies - this is often backed up during conversations you might have with those candidates, in my experience.

Then you add in the absurd amount of money they waste on contract staff (typical of government, see also MoD, MoJ, HMRC, DWP etc) who are brought in to work on projects that often get scrapped - this is also why I don’t feel particularly sorry for the IT contract staff in this country when they’re complaining about the proposed IR35 adjustments as in my opinion, they’ve ridden the gravy train for long enough.

Perhaps amongst the inevitable inquest that will follow this period we’ll see a renewed approach in this area.

[bannedfromHandV]

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Amazed how many experts there are on health care system administration on this forum, y'all should set up a consultancy or something.

I wouldn’t and haven’t claimed to be an expert but having spent 13+ years speaking with and interviewing people who have worked in that field, I’ve built up a degree of basic familiarity, perhaps not adequate for you but nowt I can do about that.

[bickster]

40 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

If IT systems and processes were more modern I’ll wager a lot of admin work may be possible to automate, but I can’t claim to have intricate knowledge of their IT setup.

Not really, it's the admin staff that enter it onto computers, You can't for example just enter a birth for a 0-19 team to deal with, those people have to be allocated to particular members of teams, its not something that can be automated. It really isn't as simple as you imagine

[bickster]

44 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

The paperwork is a big issue. With a decent linked computer system it could probably save millions on admin staff. There are still hundreds of staff filling in paperwork manually. Then it is passed to someone else yo do it again, then passed to someone to put into computer files.

 

Didnt they waste £150 million on a new computer system that didnt work an failed.

I think you'll find it was more like a straight Billion, Gordon Brown's fmed NHS super computer. It proved impossible

[bannedfromHandV]

Just now, bickster said:

Not really, it's the admin staff that enter it onto computers, You can't for example just enter a birth for a 0-19 team to deal with, those people have to be allocated to particular members of teams, its not something that can be automated. It really isn't as simple as you imagine

I’m not for a second trying to suggest it’s simple, but there are some very clever systems and software out there these days which, when used by people far cleverer than I, can surely help to make certain processes more efficient.

[markavfc40]

1 hour ago, sharkyvilla said:

To be fair, wouldn't it be a bit of a waste of money and resources to have enough ventilators lying around unused on the off chance something like this happened? 

There is a balance isn't there. We shouldn't have gone into this with zero slack in the NHS and 6 ICU beds per 100k people when Germany have 29, Italy 13, Spain 12 and France 11. 

I wouldn't expect any government to be completely prepared for something of this scale but we should have been much better prepared than we were.

[bickster]

40 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I would include middle management aswell obviously, if you see my previous posts I know for a fact managers are being paid 100k plus for doing next to fook all.

The titles of some management seem made up out of thin air.

100k isn't "Middle Management". Middle management is bands 4 to about 8

[Villarocker]

I have a German friend who works in one of their big hospitals in the South of the country as an Anaesthetist. I asked how she is getting on and she said its busier than ever but the staff are working normal hours in her hospital, all with full PPE and, they are even being allowed to take holiday that was booked. She took last weekend off although she offered to cancel but the bosses said it was fine to have it as they had enough staff to cope. 

My friend cannot believe what's going on here in our health service. Her opinion is that the government has failed the people and massively failed the health service. She said the key is all about the testing. She has been tested three times in the last month.

My friend's hubby, a part-time fireman in the village they live in, attended a car fire on the Friday and on the Monday is colleague who fought the fire with him was taken ill with Covid-19. My friend, and all those who live at home, was tested for the virus. She was tested again a week later after someone in her hospital that had it was anaesthetised by her and she then got another test from her GP after getting a cough. All tests proved negative but allowed her to carry on doing what she does which is vital. 

If only we had such testing here. 

 

[Villarocker]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

LOL, 'Taxi for Moran!'

 

Busted! 

[Jareth]

6 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

If only we had such testing here. 

There are apparently 3 mega labs working 24/7 about to come on stream to take us up in testing numbers - better late than never I suppose - but I will believe it when I see it!

Three new labs are being set up by the government in Milton Keynes, Glasgow, and Alderley Park, Cheshire; each will have the capacity to test tens of thousands of patient samples each day.

The lab in Milton Keynes is already fully operational, with 150 workers testing thousands of swabs every day, and automation robots being put in place to increase capacity even further. The other two labs will be operational in the next two weeks — but this leaves little time to meet the 100,000-a-day target.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/coronavirus-testing-uk-matt-hancock?ref=hpsplash

Edited April 11, 2020 by Jareth

[markavfc40]

10 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

I have a German friend who works in one of their big hospitals in the South of the country as an Anaesthetist. I asked how she is getting on and she said its busier than ever but the staff are working normal hours in her hospital, all with full PPE and, they are even being allowed to take holiday that was booked. She took last weekend off although she offered to cancel but the bosses said it was fine to have it as they had enough staff to cope. 

My friend cannot believe what's going on here in our health service. Her opinion is that the government has failed the people and massively failed the health service. She said the key is all about the testing. She has been tested three times in the last month.

My friend's hubby, a part-time fireman in the village they live in, attended a car fire on the Friday and on the Monday is colleague who fought the fire with him was taken ill with Covid-19. My friend, and all those who live at home, was tested for the virus. She was tested again a week later after someone in her hospital that had it was anaesthetised by her and she then got another test from her GP after getting a cough. All tests proved negative but allowed her to carry on doing what she does which is vital. 

If only we had such testing here. 

 

UK government aided by our media will deflect from us being compared with Germany and all the other countries who will fair better than us from this instead focusing and comparing us to the handful who come out of it worse.

Amazing how some have over last few years lauded us being the 6th biggest economy in the world and how we can go it alone because of how great we are and yet here we are failing those we are asking to care for us, begging for ventilators, staring down the barrel of being the worst affected country in Europe from coronavirus whilst being one of the ones with most notice of what was coming.

Edited April 11, 2020 by markavfc40

[brommy]

1 hour ago, tinker said:

We haven't got enough now, doctors, nurses and paramedics are all telling us this at every opportunity they have , and they have limited opportunity at that.

Any of the population who watch these daily briefings must be questioning whats going on with all the normal bullshit questions that are answered with the normal bullshit answers .

Once this is all over we need a change. It should start with good honest journalism pointing out problems and asking questions that hurt. But it wont , At the moment we have a press who are scared to upset anyone . 

It will need to start at grass roots level, maybe a celebration of the NHS day that we can all turn out and show these god awful politician's, all parties, that we demand a change in direction .

Any demand for a ‘change in direction’ will exponentially decrease against the rise in cost. Rightly or wrongly, that’s just the way the vast majority (obviously not all) think or have been told to think.

[bickster]

No Words. not the tweet itself, the tweet it's screenshotted.

 

[sharkyvilla]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Absolutely would be a waste of money to have enough provisions of everything to be ready for any emergency.

If the next pandemic arrives in a week and it causes sores, we won’t have bandages for 1,000,000 people. We shouldn’t be storing a million bandages just in case.

But, if we know in January, we are going to need bandages for 1,000,000 people in April, I’d probably get some early orders in, maybe speak directly to the manufacturers and tell them the army will be along in an hour to help them ramp up production 24/7 and we’ll be taking their methods and replicating it elsewhere and we will sort out royalties and profits and copyright at a later date.

What we shouldn’t do, is wait a couple of months, then approach a Singapore billionaire tory party donor to invent a new sort of bandage that will hopefully be ready a few weeks after we need them.

 

I'm pretty sure ventilators are a bit more complex than bandages.  The lack of PPE especially is inexcusable even in these circumstances though.

[sharkyvilla]

37 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

There is a balance isn't there. We shouldn't have gone into this with zero slack in the NHS and 6 ICU beds per 100k people when Germany have 29, Italy 13, Spain 12 and France 11. 

I wouldn't expect any government to be completely prepared for something of this scale but we should have been much better prepared than we were.

Have we actually run out of ICU beds at all since the virus started hitting us?  Genuine question, I don't think I've heard stats about that.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, sharkyvilla said:

Have we actually run out of ICU beds at all since the virus started hitting us?  Genuine question, I don't think I've heard stats about that.

Apart from two brief incidents - I believe they were at Northwick Park in Harrow, and the main hospital in Watford, but I'm open to correction - I don't believe we have. Again, though, I need to stress that this has occurred in large part because we have instituted a policy of not taking care home residents to hospital, and letting them die in care homes, so it is deeply misleading IMO to say that we're 'within capacity'.

[bannedfromHandV]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Apart from two brief incidents - I believe they were at Northwick Park in Harrow, and the main hospital in Watford, but I'm open to correction - I don't believe we have. Again, though, I need to stress that this has occurred in large part because we have instituted a policy of not taking care home residents to hospital, and letting them die in care homes, so it is deeply misleading IMO to say that we're 'within capacity'.

The new Conservative slogan.

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, bannedfromHandV said:

The new Conservative slogan.

Indeed.

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, sharkyvilla said:

To be fair, wouldn't it be a bit of a waste of money and resources to have enough ventilators lying around unused on the off chance something like this happened? 

*cough* trident *cough*