Save Bedford Hospital and the estimable Dr Barry Monk

"Save Bedford Hospital" is the website of the Save Bedford Hospital party, a political party registered with the Electoral Commission which will be fielding Dr Barry Monk, Consultant Dermatologist as their parliamentary candidate .

A well informed, incisive, media savvy scribe and plainly pain in the arse of the Bedford medical establishment . Barry provides evidence that there are sound scientifically minded, intelligent, rational people in the NHS who will raise their heads above the parapet.

Recommended ;
3rd February 2008

The fascinating contacts between Alan Johnson MP , the Health Secretary, and one time wannabe Deputy Leader of Nu Labour and Dr Reg Race who with his wife Amanda Moore runs Quality Health - this family business is one of a select group of “approved contractors” that health trusts must hire to conduct staff and patient surveys and which has contracts with 320 of the 487 NHS trusts to conduct annual surveys introduced by Labour ministers in 2003.

They met on November 13th to chat about the weather, Reg's contracts and possibly the £5,000 Reg (or more correctly Quality Health) he gave to Alan for his failed deputy leadership campaign.

Not for those with an anxious disposition Dec 22nd 2007

Statistics - how the NHS is having problems (and will continue to have) struggling to cope with winter / epidemic events.

And so to bed

HOSPITAL ALERTS
Amber alert: Early warning of pressure increase in the normal activity.
Red alert: Escalating pressure in one or more part of the system continuing to increase.
Black alert: Contingency measures are exhausted and pressures are not sustainable.

Check when you get rushed in this winter - the colours used to code the alert state have a certain mordant quality.

A patient's view
Getting personal
Public opinion

Where's Patricia Hewitt ? 16th September 2007

A very odd tale about the ousting of Peter Reading, chief executive of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, (salary £180K p.a.) is said to be on "unavoidable annual leave" and the trust ..." did not know when he was due to return."

It appears that The Department of Health asked the Strategic Health Authority to carry out a review into what went wrong with the Pathway project, a PFI scheme to transform the three Leicester hospital sites. (Last cost estimate £921 Mn. up from £711 Mn) Zuffar Haq, chairman of Leicester Patients' Group said that "I am very concerned that Mr Reading will be made a political scapegoat"

Anyway they succeeded in making him a ascapegoat and his retirement was announced on 21st September in such a hurry that "Pauline Tagg, our Chief Nurse, agreed to become acting Chief Executive for a limited period" ...

Now the good people of Leicester where Lord Patel spent many happy years looking down a microscope are currently blessed with an Interim Chief Executive Derek Smith former Chief Executive of Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust (For which he will receive £1,500 per day (Personneltoday.com) which is probably slightly more than Pauline Tagg collected doing the same job)

To be followed in May 2008 by Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, the Chief Executive of King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust who will be Leicester’s new Chief Executive. "“Malcolm has led both King’s College Hospital and before that Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals" says the hospitals website biography of this youthful wunderkind.

These NHS Chief Executives seem to collect Chief Executives jobs like some people collect stamps and roam the hinterlands of the service as wildebeest roam the veldt. Interesting that a new member has joined the Board - a Mrs Christine Emmett In addition to a whole roster of fascinating public jobs , she was ...er.... a non-executive director at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Anyway a site that is well worth a root if you are concerned about the black hole that is the NHS ... and if you live in the Bedford area well worth taking the opportunity to go to one of his public meetings, and come the election, put your shoulder to the wheel.

He also mentions the resurgence of syphilis (which comes within his speciality) a nasty, but asurprisingly easily treated problem with modern antibiotics, which has also arrived in the neonatal wards of Rochdale.

Links to other vibrant medical websites documenting the meltdown of what the damn Yanquis call socialised medicine can be found on the foul mouthed and fruity Dr Rant

There seems to a faint whiff of the barricades drifting across the lower ranks of the pill pushers.