Value for money?

Politicians love to appear to save money. Our current Party has constantly boasted about how much of our money as taxpayers it has prudently (trousered), sorry, spent on itself, sorry, us.

After all the NHS is awash with money benefiting patients now we have slowly caught up with what the rest of what Europe spends on is residents’ healthcare.

We have even slipped down the league tables in catching up with the former Communist countries.

The medical blogosphere has produced some interesting figures in the last week.

We at ND Central, being thick and up North, can’t work out what the following figures mean as to how much money is actually being spent on health care and, given how much we GPs trouser, if we represent value for money?
Perhaps some one could help us with these figures here?

NHS Management Costs £ 12, 600, 000, 000 note 1

General Practice £ 7, 000, 000, 000

PCT HQ costs £ 2, 128, 000, 000 note 2

Midwifery £ 1, 800, 000, 000

NHS Dentistry costs £ 1, 800, 000, 000

Accident and Emergency £ 1, 700, 000, 000

% increase in managers last year 9%
% increase in nurses last year 2%

Note 1: This figure is just the Department of Health, Strategic Health Authorities and quango costs.

Note 2: taken from a local PCT summary accounts and multiplied by 152 PCTs to give a guestimate probably on low side.

Sources are here and here (last one is a slow loading link).

How many patients have used any of the services above?

Average GP consultations per person are 4 per year rising to 7 a year for children aged 0-5 years and adults aged over 75.

Remember no one ever sees their GP which is why we are expensive to run. They always run straight to their NHS manager for free healthcare.

A&E attendances for 2006-7 in England were just under
19, 000, 000
versus
250, 000, 000 for GPs a year in the United Kingdom.

If you want to see the problems a shortage of nurses has check out the Militant Medical Nurses blog here. We hear the same from our patients so it is not just one voice saying we need more frontline nursing staff not bureaucrats.

Praise be to the Party as we never realized how frugal it is in squandering our cash on the important areas of healthcare in a recession. NHS management value for money as every patient who sees them knows.

PS there is a rumour that £ 15 billion might be saved in the forthcoming budget. We was not good oop North at mafs sums you ner adds, take aways, times and share by sums but is £ 12.6 billion + £ 2.1 billion almost £ 15 billion?

We live in hope.