Health cuts services and patient care
Thursday 21st January 2010, 2:30PM GMT.
Health minister Hunter Adam has announced £6m. of cuts. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 0904555)
PATIENTS could struggle to get the off-island treatment they need following a squeeze in the Health budget.
Health and Social Services plans to restrict the number of people sent away for treatment to save it £3m.
Combined with a raft of spending cuts announced yesterday it would enable the department to save £6m. in total.
Money for off-island treatment was ring-fenced last year, but it is now included within the department’s budget of just over £100m.
So it can no longer ask Treasury for more cash.
Health and Social Services chief officer David Hughes said there were two categories of off-island patient – those needing emergency care and those with longer term needs, such as mental health.
‘What we have to do is on the acute side and ensure that people who are sent away are not possible to treat on-island.’
He said that having already saved £3m. in 2006, making this year’s savings would be difficult.
‘Every time it gets harder.’
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More Health Service cuts again.
But we can afford to send £50,000 away overseas last week to help other countries and who knows how much last year.
The saying Charity Begins at Home, needs to start now
Personal donations, fine. Our government giving our health care money away, No, No, No.
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Sorry Steve but I don’t agree.
Guernsey is part of a global community and sending what amounts to less than £1 per member of the population to help a country in dire need is the least we can do to help.
Perhaps one day we will need similar help. However unlikely that might sound, should the unthinkable happen we will be glad that other governments don’t share your views.
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Yes, we can afford to send £50,000 overseas to aid people in desperate need.
Steve has not noticed that Charity began at home, in Guernsey, a long time ago. If it hadn’t, many of us would not be around to comment on GP stories today.
£50,000 in our health care system is a drop in the ocean. In Haiti and many other places in the world it’s the difference between life and death for hundreds perhaps thousands of destitute people.
I suppose we must be glad that Steve will, at least, be sending his personal generous donations overseas.
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Get Real Steve!
That money for Haiti is like a flea bite in a hedgehog. Just think lucky you not trapped, wondering where the food or sip of water may come from if at all!
What its all about is our excellent government now forcing essential departments to cut back!
Why? OMG zero 10 can it be? –
Is our Guernsey States Policy going to collapse like a pack of cards? It already is!
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Steve
Charity begins at home is a saying which applies to those who are charity cases themselves. Guernsey may be retrenching a bit but is still a very wealthy island yet it is not very generous with overseas aid. The UN target is for countries to give 0.70% of their gross national income (GNI)
In 2007 Guernsey gave 0.11% and is at the bottom of the table shown in the Facts & Figures book on the States website. There was an increase in 2008.
For private donations income tax can only be reclaimed on Deeds of Covenant made out to charities registered in Guernsey. In the UK they have Gift Aid where charities can claim back the tax paid by donors.
Many of us would not exist now but for the international aid which kept our parents and grandparents from starvation during the German Occupation with the food parcels sent on the Red Cross ship Vega. What goes round comes round and can repay this debt by helping others.
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Steve – you should be ashamed of yourself for your post of 4.31pm. I am appalled, although not entirely surprised, that such attitudes exist in this island. You are factually incorrect in your final sentence – H&SS has a budget which is entirely independent of any funds set aside for overseas aid.
Have you any idea of the scale of what has happened in Haiti? Where pretty much the whole infrastructure of the country has collapsed meaning they don’t have hospitals at all??
Charity begins with those who need it most. If you want to rail against something, consider the ill-advised zero 10 policy. But let’s be honest – Guernsey could have sent far more than the paltry £50,000. Let’s hope the good people of this island continue in their fundraising efforts to make up for that embarassment.
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I really get sick and tired of hearing stuff like this.
Do they really think the public are that thick we can’t see through it ?
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The building blocks of a caring, safe and prosperous society is having a good health service, excellent education facilities and excellent law and order. All of these three services should be for everyone. It seems in Guernsey we are very very quickly running towards a system and an island of only the wealthy are cared for, educated and protected. Is this not what our government and some locals want. Destroy the middle to low earners (i will not include those on benefit who get everything paid for) and bring in the more affluent.
The health cuts should come from the corridors of power up at the HSSD. The high volumes of none locals which are brought over and paid hundreds of thousands when we have locals that are qualified to do the job but bypassed because of the systematic racism towards Guernsey people which is endemic in both the private and Public sectors.
Other areas that can be cut back or paid by the wealthy in the island are:
1.Cut back on the levels of abortions offered or indeed make them pay.
2.All none locals pay a supplement for their health cover –after all all tax and SS payments made during their time in the island is given back when they leave.
3.Sell the new figurine in the grounds of the new extension – what a waste of money that was.
4.All monies recovered by drug busts and possessions seized sold to fund the treatment given to the increasing drug addicts in the island.
5.Outsource gardening, cleaning, hospital food, charge staff for parking, increase the charge put on our so called superb medical specialists for using the hospital
6.Renegotiate the millions given to the MSG for what is a second rate service creating in some cases instant millionaires
7.Charge 65% in the pound tax on those wealthy who choose to hide their ill gotten gains in Guernsey via different financial means and a similar tax on those wealthy who choose to live here and a 45% in the pound tax.
8.Introduce a 45% in the pound tax on individuals whose annual income is £65,000 & over and the same tax on a couple whose annual income is £80,000 & over.
The island is in a mess never seen before. It is a disgrace that we can realign our financial structure from giving to all and realign it to give to those who have plenty.
Those hard working good locals need to stop whinging and act before it is too late and Guernsey is lost forever. Equally, those Deputies who have sat back and let the island slip into this abyss who do not want to get kicked out in 2012 do what they should have done when elected and fight with their head held high and have the guts to stand against their fellow Deputies who regularly secure their seat of power by supporting the rampant capitalistic, open market brigade hell bent on turning our wonderful island into their Hong Kong and a play ground for the corrupt.
Of course, we can just sit back and do nothing and the poor locals will die out the wealthy locals and none locals will just get fitter, better educated, free from prosecution and richer.
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For many years the island has effectively had health policies of the left and tax strategies of the right.
Understandable when we had a 50million surplus and could spend like drunken lottery winners.
Everything has now changed. Hunter Adam now has to have one of the toughest jobs in the island. I don’t envy him.
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Neil Inder
Health policies of the left? How many left wing societies have to pay to see a GP? Or have no free dental care for children (with the odd exception admittedly)?
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I’m with Neil on this. We have to face the fact that we have to live within our means and that the days of a ‘gold plated’ health service have gone. Our health service is still the envy of the UK and Hunter Adam and his colleagues are making a good fist of keeping it that way, despite embracing the realism (which some posters on here are blind to) of the budgetary restraints that we are all now having to get used to.
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will there be any reduction in the overloaded civil service?like all states dept. vastly overstaffed
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I think if they want to save money they should have a long look at the sickness level within the Board of Health. Some people are abusing the system big time. One example is a elderly establishment which had a ward shut last year.One ward there has more staff ratio to clients then any other, but then the ward always have beds empty.The sickness level is unbelievable, with the same people off sick on a regular basis. at one time you would be referred to occupational health,but that seems be ignored. I agree with Martino we do have an excellent health service.
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“3.Sell the new figurine in the grounds of the new extension – what a waste of money that was.”
I’m afraid I have to correct you here, the statue “Island Spirit” was organised by the Guernsey Arts commission and was supported by a considerable donation from a member of my family in memory of her late husband.
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Cuts means just that.
I agree with Neil, we just have to get on with it, and support Hunter Adam. A slightly less than gold plated health service is still better than a lot of other places, and perfectly acceptable.
Can you envisage the uproar when Education announce their cuts? This will no doubt go further than the inevitable closure of St Andrews and St Sampsons schools
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My sincere apologies headbanger for an incorrect statement with regards who paid for island spirit statue in the grounds of the new clinical block…….
I laugh at the statements of Gsy having ‘a gold plated health service’……You try telling that to the poor patients whose care is appalling and who live with the cock-ups made by some of the so called specialists……Stop comparing our health service to the NHS its such a stupid comparism. Just look at the mental health service we have, totally in tatters with lives ruined because of the complete lack of will to address the outdated laws and inject the millions needed to put it right. Of course, we can spend millions on an incinerator, airport runway and bail out the finance industry but not look after the locals who need looking after…….
What about those who do not have health cover, who will pay their medical bills. Of course the likes of Mr Inder and the like don’t really give a dam and why should they. We are after all living in an island which increasingly mirrors a town in england with the selfish arrogance and ‘I’m ok Jack’ attitude……
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I’m afraid the H&SS savings do not go far enough. I suppose it is understandable that, as a former medical practitioner,our health minister is unwilling to make any major reduction in the health budget. However that is what the States has decided is needed across the board in all departments.
I would ask those who are against any cuts in their particularly favoured department, where should cuts be made? And, don’t forget, we need savings of many millions in total – not the odd few thousands here and there.
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@Pete, Much appreciated Thanks
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Health should be one of the last areas to suffer in any cutbacks. I find it amazing that the policy Council has almost doubled its budget for 2010 to enable more travel by our chief minister next year and still intends to spent £125,000 for a lunch for 20 politicians in June for the British Irish Conference which could just as easily be held by video link. Someone has to start getting their priorities in the correct order.
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How much is spent on agency staff.
Is there a subsidized rent agreement for private dwellings,for non local staff.
How much is being spent on long term sick pay.
Anyone know the answers?
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Good questions Donkeys Life. I think the agency staff are being drastically reduced according to Hunter Adam. There is subsidized rent or mortgage allowances for non-local staff – which is why so many local staff are becoming demoralised as they don’t get it.
There should be a level playing field for all staff – earn your money and live within your means. Centralise a lot of things too instead of each department having their own like recruitment and pay and ordering stock etc. Lots of States departments appear to be overlooking local staff who are applying for jobs/promotion and yet bringing in licence holders which puts a huge burden on the cost of staff (probably the largest cost the States has). Hopefully the WAO will be looking at this …… or will their report be watered down by those licence holders who are, in a lot of cases, in charge of departments and holding the purse strings. Even the new bloke in charge of health is from the Uk – surely there was someone locally capable of doing the job …… and if not then why not?
In todays paper there is a new job for a private patient liason officer – what the heck is that about?
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