IOM DHSC & MANX CARE

[Non-Believer]

5 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

DHSC Minister Hooper, responding to MR on the planned theatre list reductions:
 

"Whilst any significant changes to services would require changes to the mandate, which would require the approval of the DHSC and the Council of Ministers, the decisions taken to date rest within the operational sphere of Manx Care and I would suggest the best people to speak to about this would be Manx Care directly."

…or, if you prefer, “don’t ask me, nothing to do with me, guv…”

Arm's length, serving its intended purpose for the teflon-shouldered politicians.

[Jarndyce]

7 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Arm's length, serving its intended purpose for the teflon-shouldered politicians.

Apparently, Hooper believes that the DHSC mandate to Manx Care allows them to reduce their theatre sessions, but still be within mandated activity.

I wonder how far they could go before Hooper invoked the mandate to stop the slide.  25%?  50%?   ALL the theatre activity?

[Omobono]

Cant see the sense in this saving , the doctors and operating theatre staff will still be  hanging around  and waiting to be paid  , the dressing packs and equipment required are already there , and possibly going out of the use by date ,

All this seems to be is Manx care  kicking sand in the face of the DHSC and flexing its pecks  while at the same time the army of managers  clip boards  and  army of non  essential  medical staff are still there ,

if Hooper does not step in  now and  show some leadership  and issue  a direction to stop this nonsense  then  get rid of Manx care  before it bankrupts us , its just become a monster eating our money ,

[Albert Tatlock]

4 minutes ago, Omobono said:

Cant see the sense in this saving , the doctors and operating theatre staff will still be  hanging around  and waiting to be paid  , the dressing packs and equipment required are already there , and possibly going out of the use by date ,

All this seems to be is Manx care  kicking sand in the face of the DHSC and flexing its pecks  while at the same time the army of managers  clip boards  and  army of non  essential  medical staff are still there ,

if Hooper does not step in  now and  show some leadership  and issue  a direction to stop this nonsense  then  get rid of Manx care  before it bankrupts us , its just become a monster eating our money ,

Yeah I'd agree, I suspect much of the underlying cost will still be there.

Looks like they are just looking for headlines to me.

Dr Allison in particular should know better. He really is a shit politician and should go back to being a Dr.

[Vaaish]

3 minutes ago, Omobono said:

Cant see the sense in this saving , the doctors and operating theatre staff will still be  hanging around  and waiting to be paid  , the dressing packs and equipment required are already there , and possibly going out of the use by date ,

All this seems to be is Manx care  kicking sand in the face of the DHSC and flexing its pecks  while at the same time the army of managers  clip boards  and  army of non  essential  medical staff are still there ,

if Hooper does not step in  now and  show some leadership  and issue  a direction to stop this nonsense  then  get rid of Manx care  before it bankrupts us , its just become a monster eating our money ,

It’s difficult to come to any conclusion about this reduction in elective surgery other than that its purpose is to play poker with IOMG. The level of savings is laughably small relative to the predicted overspend, and yet generates substantial public and political concern. There must be a raft of other cost saving measures that would be further up the  batting order than this. If (incredibly) it’s genuinely what Manx Care identified as its primary approach to cost saving, then the entire management should be shown the door by the end of the day. Except it isn’t - it’s a deliberate attempt to swing the pressure back on to, for example, the Treasury, to cough up yet further funding. Rather than read the riot act to Manx Care’s management, Hooper appears to share this ‘gimme, gimme’ approach. Meanwhile, rather than grasp the issue, the broader government falls back on the ‘arms length’ argument. I certainly don’t want to see politicians meddling in health care delivery as was so evident in the past, but I do expect the government to govern - including in circumstances like this where a public body thumbs its nose at the community.

[Roger Mexico]

22 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Yeah I'd agree, I suspect much of the underlying cost will still be there.

Looks like they are just looking for headlines to me.

This is what I don't understand, because they haven't been.  If you're going to make a big thing about cutting operations, you tell people about it.  Instead the information has only come out because a backbencher asked a written question and they took the maximum time to reply.  They started these cut-backs in mid-September, so it's clearly something they want to happen.

The only reason I can think of is that they want to increase waiting lists.  Then they can bring in some outside company to 'solve' the problem at great expense as with Synaptik, and we'll end up spending £20 million to 'save' £200,000.  No doubt to the great profit of some people.

[WTF]

44 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Yeah I'd agree, I suspect much of the underlying cost will still be there.

Looks like they are just looking for headlines to me.

Dr Allison in particular should know better. He really is a shit politician and should go back to being a Dr.

was he a good doctor ?

[Andy Onchan]

14 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

The only reason I can think of is that they want to increase waiting lists.  Then they can bring in some outside company to 'solve' the problem at great expense as with Synaptik, and we'll end up spending £20 million to 'save' £200,000.  No doubt to the great profit of some people.

I'm sure there's an element of truth in that.

It would be interesting to know how much has spent on sending folk "across" for some elective surgery for which MC doesn't have the in-house expertise or number of consultants to carry them out. That might be where the bulk of the money has "disappeared" to. Is there any of that kind of financial data publicly available?

Edited Wednesday at 09:12 AM by Andy Onchan

[Jarndyce]

47 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

It would be interesting to know how much has spent on sending folk "across" for some elective surgery for which MC doesn't have the in-house expertise or number of consultants to carry them out. That might be where the bulk of the money has "disappeared" to.

Are you suggesting that there are saving to be made in the tertiary care budget?

[Harry Lamb]

1 hour ago, Omobono said:

Cant see the sense in this saving , the doctors and operating theatre staff will still be  hanging around  and waiting to be paid  , the dressing packs and equipment required are already there , and possibly going out of the use by date ,

All this seems to be is Manx care  kicking sand in the face of the DHSC and flexing its pecks  while at the same time the army of managers  clip boards  and  army of non  essential  medical staff are still there ,

if Hooper does not step in  now and  show some leadership  and issue  a direction to stop this nonsense  then  get rid of Manx care  before it bankrupts us , its just become a monster eating our money ,

I've often heard this allegation of a large number of managers and non-essential medical staff, but I've never seen any supporting evidence or figures to substantiate it. There is some obvious duplication in a small number of roles between Manx Care and the DHSC, but an 'army of managers with clip boards'? Aren't most of the managers what were previously called Sisters or Charge Nurses? Where are the 'non-essential' medical staff? How many are there?

[Andy Onchan]

Just now, Jarndyce said:

Are you suggesting that there are saving to be made in the tertiary care budget?

No. Not sure how you came to that conclusion. I was referring to non-life threatening elective surgery. Although you would think that all areas would be under scrutiny.

[Moghrey Mie]

1 hour ago, Andy Onchan said:

I'm sure there's an element of truth in that.

It would be interesting to know how much has spent on sending folk "across" for some elective surgery for which MC doesn't have the in-house expertise or number of consultants to carry them out. That might be where the bulk of the money has "disappeared" to. Is there any of that kind of financial data publicly available?

See pages 37 to 46 Tertiary Care explained and costed.

https://www.gov.im/media/1385371/public-board-100924_papers_compressed.pdf

[Jarndyce]

23 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

No. Not sure how you came to that conclusion. I was referring to non-life threatening elective surgery. Although you would think that all areas would be under scrutiny.

Any “non-life threatening elective surgery”, which takes place across, is paid for out of the tertiary care budget - that’s how I came to that conclusion.

As always, where do you draw the line?  If you employ a specialist locally, it may save money on paper - but if they don’t see enough cases they can lose accreditation.   Hence, we send patients across to centres of excellence.   Not particularly directed at you, Andy - but what procedures/treatments would we stop paying for, in order to save the money?

Edited Wednesday at 10:31 AM by Jarndyce
Clarity

[Fred the shred]

I think this is a blatant attempt by Manx Care to cause public outrage, as it has.    It is patently obvious this saving is derisory but the effect on people waiting for surgery on a non urgent basis is not, more days of work, more doctors appointments, more worry, pain and stress affecting not just the patients but their families.   It is just prolonging the agony, postponing the problem of waiting lists to another day.      As for increasing the population they can’t look after the people that already live here.     Disgusting indeed but this may be the straw that breaks the camels back people are really disallusioned with this Government already something has to give.

[FANDL]

2 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Yeah I'd agree, I suspect much of the underlying cost will still be there.

Looks like they are just looking for headlines to me.

Dr Allison in particular should know better. He really is a shit politician and should go back to being a Dr.

But we are awash with cash that we can’t even bother collecting for the DHSC and Manx Care. For example:

All migrants to the UK applying for UK VISAs have to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge in order to get treatment on the NHS. A UK visa issued for 3 or 5 years will incur the following charge for applications made from 6 February 2024 (shown in this link and the clip reproduced below).

https://www.davidsonmorris.com/update-on-immigration-health-surcharge-increase-in-2024/

Of course the IOM is far too lazy to collect this charge on our VISA applicants as the preference of Treasury is to put up taxes for low income workers rather than charge VISA applicants up to five grand for the right to use NHS services in the IOM for the duration of their VISA.

Of course when you’re getting 4,451 VISA applicants in a year:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89lxzjjkpwo

This is over £10M PA we simply can’t be bothered collecting as it’s in the “too hard” category for our public administrators.

It really is much better for us to screw the poor working population of the IOM even further by way of income tax increases, and withdraw elective surgery support from them, than for anyone to be bothered to do anything that might be a barrier to people moving here to allegedly bail government out of the crap and which might defray costs onto people other than locals. 

Edited Wednesday at 10:49 AM by FANDL