UKC

We often hear about the problems facing the NHS on the matter of finances and funding.

A while ago I had to have a bronchoscopy and the doctor was telling me that the equipment they were using was the only one of its kind in the hospital. Consequently the demand for it outweighed its availabity and they were have to fight tooth and nail in order to fund another one(£60000)

It occurred to me that it's a pity that some businesses couldn't provide sponsorship for the NHS in the same way that they sponsor sporting events and the arts.

Is there any reason why it couldn't be done? Surely it would help the NHS and the businesses.

In reply to mypyrex:

There are lots of reasons why private sponsorship should not be used to fund NHS equipment. The ethics of the sponsoring companies. Do we want Mc donalds sponsoring bariatric equipment. The companies wont do this out of kindness, they will want something back. Maybe we get a clothing company to sponsor a children's ward, maybe the clothes are made using child labour. Maybe a drug company would be a better sponsor? Maybe the company would expect the Doctor to favour prescribing their drugs as part of the deal?

In reply to Rebecca V.:

Also it would set a precedent where Nhs funding is reliant on charity not taxation.

Regarding private funding, you'll find a large number of hospitals have a Costa or similar in a purpose designed area in the main building, but the MRI scanner is in a trailer round the back near the bins. Not exactly prioritisation of care.

In reply to mypyrex:

P.S Mrs Ridge reckons about 20k for the scope only, but about 125k for the full system.

In reply to Ridge:


It is used at the moment by some hospitals though to buy additional equipment amongst other things.

In reply to Ridge:


Given that the Costa will be paying for the privilege, with the money adding to the hospital's budget, why is that not a prioritisation of care?

In reply to Ridge:

Really, don't Great Ormond and many others already do this?

In reply to Coel Hellier:


I suspect, like car parking charges and vending machines, the money may well be going to Serco or similar. That's certainly the case with Pinderfields in Wakefield.

In reply to mypyrex:

In many ways I actually think this is a good idea. Not as a replacement for state funding but as a supplement. In the past all health care was provided by charitable donations and gradually became state funded as such a reliance on charity was insufficient. Indeed even today charities raise money for hospital equipment. With regard to businesses what they got out of it was the publicity for being seen as a philanthropic organisation

In reply to Postmanpat:


Great Ormond is an exceptional case. It has little sick kiddies, Peter Pan, it was on the Olympics, celebs use it for publicity and it's in the richest city in the country. It's unlikely that a unit in Accrington will attract a similar level of donations.

Now if the funding is such that Hospital X gets £10 million in charitable donations and £10 million from the NHS budget is redistributed elsewhere then that would be excellent. I suspect what is more likely to happen would be "Hospital X achieves the same patient outcomes as Hospital Y, but spends £10 million a year less. Hospital X is clearly a centre of excellence and deserves additional funding at the expense of Hospital Y". Perhaps overly cynical of me, but that's the sort of manipulation of a situation used to great effect when rival hospitals are after the same funding.

In reply to mypyrex:

The NHS was predicated on equality of access.

Taking a bronchoscope for instance, in the majority of cases this will be used to investigate diseases associated strongly with smoking (lung cancer, pneumonia etc). It's well established that childhood cancer and breast cancer get all the money and lung cancer gets nearly sod all.

G.O.S.H. could probably whistle up a bronch in sponsorship in a day or two. Doncaster Royal Infirmary asking for a sponsor for a bronchoscope? No chance. Not picking on Doncaster of course but raising money for rare children's diseases = easy, raising money for lung cancer care = much, much harder.

There are some interesting possibilities for matching sponsors with diseases though I grant you!

b

In reply to mypyrex:

Is the 60K just to buy the machine, what about a room to put the machine in, and a team of staff to operate the machine and other ongoing funding. Is the machine they currently have running 24 hours a day 7 days a week or 9 til 5, Monday til Friday.

In reply to Ridge:


My point was that the precedent already seems to have been set. GOSt is a high profile example but I'm sure I've seen numerous things in other hospitals with a sign saying they financed by donations.
GOS may be exceptionally successful for the reasons you cite but lots of them do it don't they?

In reply to SCrossley:

Exactly, folk often don't understand that the biggest cost in setting up new scanning capacity is not the purchase cost of equipment but the recurrent running costs. The vast majority of NHS scanning equipment is currently not running at full capacity. The main reasons for this are the extra running costs required, particularly being able to afford the additional key staff and then being able to get them to actually work different shift patterns.

I doubt sponsors would want to get tied into supporting the recurrent running costs!

In reply to Graham Mck:

Valid point. Purely anecdotal, but in every hospital Mrs Ridge has worked invite basements are full of perfectly serviceable kit like batiatric beds with defective powerpacks, (or in the Ops example, endoscopes with worn out light sources), with no budget to replace or repair. You might be able to raise £60k for a shiny new scope with attendant publicity for the sponsors, but not £10 to refurbish the unit in the basement.

In reply to Graham: Absolutely valid point. The reason why MRI units are in trailers is so that they can be towed to different local hospitals. Very few hospitals have the demand for a permanant one.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Yup - Guy's has a charity, Leeds has a charity, I'm sure many others do.

I think it would be a great idea - lots of companies are desparate to show how "socially responsible" they are, they get to put a sign up, the NHS gets free stuff, everybody wins. Unfortunately apart from the politicians who allow it, who would get viscerally attacked for not doing the same work with taxpayer's money, so it would never fly.

In reply to mypyrex:

I think it's a damn good idea. The only problem with it may lead to the NHS shifting funding away from that provision and into more middle management, which seem to be the highest priority for the NHS now. If it could be guaranteed that the provision by the private company would not affect current or future finacial allocation by the NHS then it would be a way of improving services.

In reply to mypyrex:

On a similar vein, when I was accompanying a relation having radiotherapy, it was on a brand new £million+ machine, and we were told it was a huge advance in treatment as they could programme and target multiple doses of radiation in complex and variable 'bursts', as opposed to the usual single blast from one direction.
The consultant said it was such an advance, helping them to treat much more complex cases, and patients were coming from all over the North of England to be treated on it.

I asked if they would be looking to get another one, and she replied, 'oh we do have another one, in the next room, but staff cuts have meant we have no-one to operate it.

I believe (across the NHS) there are usually funds available for acquiring whatever equipment is required, but they can't afford to operate them.

In reply to Fredt:


Indeed. As an example, when people raise funds for the NHS, they do so on the understanding that their contribution is made as a desire to improve services rather than a binding use of any funds.
Managers may then decide to leave the funds in a bank account for years rather than implement a dying wish:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-28015923

On the other hand, NHS Trusts employ fund raisers on higher salaries than many specialist clinicians. People gave to charitable funds in the past without the need for such an intermediary. Now, if they give, part of that gift is diverted to the salary of a 'chugger'.

In reply to bleddynmawr:

Demand isn't actually the reason - there's huge demand for MR scans (I've spent plenty of time arguing with radiologists about why patients need an MR and being told the next available time in the scanner is weeks away).

The reason is that MR scanners are expensive to buy (more than half a million quid I think), need highly trained staff to run and are quite delicate and temperamental compared to CT scanners.

The lorries are there to decrease the wait time because demand is too high...