"Until the 1970s England had public hospitals paid for by local weekly penny contributions."
I wondered if this was just a slip in typing the date?
I didn't explain myself properly. Whilst doing my fam. history I've come across a few different 19th century government dictats concerning working conditions and also of requirements that had to be provided such as educations, hospitals/health by local councils.
Ted Heath's government came into power in the 1970s and he wanted each area to have an extra hospital which would be equipped with the latest surgical equipment to met the needs of modern Britain. This is when the NHS Trusts came into being. I personally compare these NHS Trusts like somebody freezing to death; the first things to close down are the fingers and toes, then he limbs other organs start o close down - in an effort to save the heart of the person.
The NHS Trusts have all been closing down original hospital buildings to save the one main hospital building that should have been in the centre of a number of hospitals dotted about the area.
.Here is an example of a small market town's hospital which was built with money collected from the local people. You'll notice how many changes it has seen over the years.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords/details.asp?id=1372
Trusts did not start under Heath, they were a much later creation 1990 to be precise with Foundation Trusts coming into being in 2004.
I started my 25 years in the NHS in 1974, at that time the hospital was managed by a Hospital Management Committee. They were each semi autonomous but Governed by a Regional Authority.
In the North West there was Salford HMC, Lancaster HMC, Royal Albert HMC, Blackpool HMC etc all reporting to the North West Regional Health Authority, Gateway House Manchester.
Elsewhere in England the NHS was organised in the same manner.
The HMC’s were reorganised and combined in the latter 70’s into larger Authorities and in the case of Lancashire a new tier was introduced between the Town based Authorities and the Regional Health Authority. Lancashire Area Health Authority were based in East Cliffe in Preston. Similar restructuring took place throughout England.
Then came Thatcher and yet more faffing about with the NHS, the disbanding of the mid tier Authorities and the closing of Regional Health Authorities and the local management becoming more self sufficient and reporting directly to London.
The formation of Trusts in 1990 gave the local hospital supposedly more accountability but they also created the Primary Care Trusts which were a total waste of time as they were a bureaucratic nightmare to administer and these eventually were phased out and the staff were put under the CQC banner and they themselves are a nightmare of an organisation. Imagine 50 people turning up at a hospital at the same time demanding that what they are doing takes priority over everything within the hospital, well that happens. Yes they pick up on underperforming hospitals but they under perform because they manage themselves, there is no central Governance, each Trust creates and manages their own.
Moving on in 2004 Foundation Trusts came about and this meant they became isolated and financially, ethically and clinically self governing, well as much as London allows. With Foundation Trusts came instructions from London that new builds had to what was a flawed Contract format resulting in excessive build costs and also the building of hospitals by private companies and the renting of the building at high rental costs for a minimum if 25 years of lease.
If you remember quite a few very large Companies went to the wall in the last 10 years as they over extended themselves in their NHS Contracts.
Now it is rampant privatisation of NHS services that is at the centre of all the Government interference. Centralisation of specialist services is also playing its part with Consultants increasing only dealing with their own speciality and passing the buck on to A.N. Other and all the lack of cohesive treatment that that entails.
Where our Daughter works as a Nurse there is a seriously ill patient and her hospital no longer has the Consultants who deal with the medical condition this patient has and as they are to ill to be transported the family have been told to expect the worst. How many ill patients are in this same situation?
To much Government messing around with our NHS, and I do not bkame the Tories, Blair and Brown were just as bad.
A certain Tory PM once gave the NHS an extra £4 billion, what they failed to say was that two years prior they had taken out £6 billion and and it happened in 2014 the £4 billion would be swallowed up in inflation so the net result was zero change. Trusts were all in a very delicate financial state except for senior management which bloomed in numbers each time a CEO changed.
