Over prescribing and unnecessary procedures, both of which risk patient health; is endemic within the US insurance based Healthcare system whish is about to come to the UK via the Health and Care Bill and the take over of the 42 Integrated Care Systems that the Bill will put on a legislative basis, which will not be able to be undone!
With US health insurance company Centene about to be legally able to take over the 42 Integrated Care Systems in the UK if the Health and Care Bill goes ahead, this problem will be soon evident in the UK too!
However, commercial confidentiality will stop evidence of this coming to light and the public will only know when it happens to them!
Furthermore, the risk to NHS patients is here and now!
NHS England has ordered all NHS Trusts to work with private healthcare and utilise their 50 private hospitals across England to help reduce the huge waiting list of what they call elective treatments and more worryingly, cancer diagnosis and treatment too!
Here is just one example of the experience of a patient on Merseyside, even before this new Bill was even written; and published as a reply to an article showing the degree of penetration into the NHS that private healthcare corporations from the USA already have in this country:
“I was referred to Spa Medical in 2018. The first visit I had my scan and informed there was fluid in my right eye and they would inject my right eye on my next visit.
7 weeks later my eyes were scanned again and informed there was fluid in both my eyes and they would inject both my eyes at the same time. I informed them I was on my own and that after having injection in my both eyes at the same time would leave me vulnerable to a fall. They said you will be fine they had no care for my well being and refused the injection to my right eye.
I referred myself back to NHS Aintree in September 2018. They have injected my left eye approximately 25 times since being back, about 30 months, but my right eye has not needed any injection! So either a miracle has happened or Spa Medical wanted to carry work that did not need doing.
You only find out if you need an injection after a scan so I asked West Lancashire CCG what due diligence they have in place to check scans. They informed me Spa Medical carry out their own checks on scans; and so I asked for a copy of my scans.
I was given copy scans with no name or date when they were taken or who has taken them! They could have been anyone’s scans! This leaves this system open to abuse and once a private provider knows there is no due diligence on their work, leads to no accountability.
As I understand it giving work to a private provider has to be first preferred method.”
Unnecessary medical care is no doubt the major cause of patient harm in a healthcare insurance system such as that in the USA, which this government wants to replace the NHS via its 42 Integrated Care Systems.
As reported by the Hopkins Medicine website:
“Unnecessary medical care is a leading driver of the higher health insurance premiums affecting every American,” says Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the paper’s senior author.
Unnecessary medical services represent the majority of wasted health care resources and costs in the United States, accounting for an estimated $210 billion in excess spending each year, according to the National Academy of Medicine.
Studies consistently show that overtreatment is also directly associated with preventable patient harm and, on a national scale, the issue represents a significant opportunity to make improve patient safety and lower health care costs, Makary notes.”
And this from US based website ProPublica:
“So, the Washington Health Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to making care safer and more affordable, decided to find out.
The group scoured the insurance claims from 1.3 million patients in Washington state who received one of 47 tests or services that medical experts have flagged as overused or unnecessary. What they found should cause both doctors and their patients to rethink that next referral.
In a single year:
- More than 600,000 patients underwent a treatment they didn’t need, treatments that collectively cost an estimated $282 million.
- More than a third of the money spent on the 47 tests or services went to unnecessary care.
- Three of four annual cervical cancer screenings were performed on women who had adequate prior screenings — at a cost of $19 million.
- About 85 percent of the lab tests to prep healthy patients for low-risk surgery were unnecessary — squandering about $86 million.
- Needless annual heart tests on low-risk patients consumed $40 million.
Notice that the private medical records held by the Healthcare Insurance company was made available and that the Health And Care Bill now going through Parliament will make this inevitable in the UK.
Hence the reason why NHS England want to amend the GDPR in England so that ALL patient private medical records can be made accessible by local authorities healthcare insurance companies and the 42 ICS Boards and to those who wish to pay for it!
Source: Call 999 For The NHS / John Hopkins Medical / ProPublica / unionsafety
See also:
All NHS Imaging Services To Be Privatised By Order Of NHS England
NHS Privatisation News Archive
