PEN PUSHERS UP 35,000 IN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE???

Another 35,000 pen-pushers were hired by the NHS last year, ministers were forced to admit yesterday, Friday 7th May 2004.  That compared with only an extra 24,000 Doctors & Nurses.  The new staff helped increase the total spent on health service pay by a huge £2Billion, figure revealed.  That is one third of the additional £6Billion which has been spent on the NHS.  The revelations will fuel fears that tax-payers'  cash is being soaked up in staff costs instead of going to the wards.  NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp revealed in his annual report that staff numbers increased by 59,000.  That included 18,840 more nurses and 5,640 doctors - leaving an extra 35,000 managers and admin workers.  Chancellor  Gordon Brown ordered a 1p rise in national insurance payments two years ago to fund NHS improvements.  Sir Nigel Crisp said figures for March showed only 48 patients had been waiting for longer than nine months for surgery - down from 19,400 in February.  His report also boasts the average waiting time is now ten weeks and has fallen from 992,000 last year to 906,000.  But Tories pointed out the true figure is over 1million when Welsh NHS figures are included.

The number of Cancer and Heart Deaths continues to tumble and the number of people waiting six months for hospitals has dropped a further 60% since last year.  Sir Nigel Crisp denied the NHS had seen an explosion of Pen-Pushers.  He said: "Managers are just 3%".  "Of the 1.3Million people working in the NHS in England, half are clinically trained and 84% are involved in hand-on care".  Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Paul Burstow accused the Government of being "smug" over the figures.  He said  "The claim that few patients are waiting over 9 months will not ring true for those patients languishing on hidden waiting lists".

Comments:

Most people believe that the present Government do-not reveal true and accurate NHS health figures for fear it may will incriminate them?  The people in the front line are the patients; the tax-payers who have paid into the NHS for many years and are now denied the much needed treatment entitled to them.

Do away with Pen-Pushers and release vital monies the NHS needs in order to survive; do away with post-code medicine and give people a fair chance; a chance to live; put more money into saving life; give all the pen-pushers cleaning materials and overalls and let them set -too and give our hospitals a make-over.

The Government sing it's praises for getting the waiting lists down to 9 months; sing your praises when you have got it down to 1 month and peoples lives are been saved!  We hear of so many people who could have been saved if only the waiting lists were not too long; the plain fact is; you are taken off waiting lists by one means and put onto another; the true and accurate figure is then fudged over by pen-pushers; the very people who gobble-up NHS money.

The very people in the front-line are: the Doctors & Nurses; these professional people are denied good wages; vital equipment and a sound working environment; when the Government have sorted this out then and only then will the NHS run smoothly.

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