Clinics a ripoff: critic ; HEALTH: Private health clinics cost more, former UK health m... - 0 views
www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|sust|20150916|229381229
from heather cupe Ontario hospital private clinics privatization campaign
shared by Govind Rao on 16 Sep 15
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The Sudbury Star Wed Sep 16 2015
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A former health minister from the United Kingdom says he believes "private clinics are a bad option for the people of Canada." Frank Dobson, who was health minister from 1997 to 2000 in Tony Blair's Labour Party government, made a stop in Sudbury on Tuesday. Dobson was invited by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) to speak about the pitfalls of privatization of health-care services in the United Kingdom. He is visiting eight other communities in the province to give his take on health-care privatization and how it may affect the health-care system in Ontario. "I wouldn't recommend the British model to anyone because it has basically been a rip off," Dobson said.
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"The money going into running the system (in Britain) has gone up from between four and six per cent of the total National Health Service spending to somewhere between 12 and 15 per cent of NHS spending going on this semi-commercial system and that is somewhere around 8 billion pounds a year extra going on the cost of running the services (that are) not going on patient care, Dobson said. Dobson also provided other examples of why the system is flawed in the Britain.
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"The problems we found is the private sector genuinely believe they will be more efficient and when they discover they can't be much more efficient than our National Health Service, or for that matter, your public health services here, they have to start cutting back on standards and in quite a number of cases now in Britain, they've taken over a franchise (clinic) and can't make a go of it, so then hand it back because they can't cope with actually running a decent service," Dobson said. He also said that drawing up contracts with private clinics is complicated and costly. "The people creating the contract try to cover every eventuality in the contract, and they need to do that because in Britain we had a case where a woman had a major hemorrhage in a small hospital and they didn't have an emergency blood supply, so they sent someone to the nearest NHS hospital to get some blood.
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"By the time they got back, the woman had bleed out and died. When (officials of private clinic) were pressed about this, they said, 'Oh well, it didn't specify in the contract that we had to have an emergency blood supply,'" Dobson said. He said the contracts "have to be water tight, and it means legions of lawyers, accountants and management consultants" drawing up contracts and "that is money that is not going" into patient care.
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Kevin Cook, of OCHU, who is travelling with Dobson, said that the Canadian Union of Public Employees and OCHU oppose the Ontario government's plans to expand the use of private specialty clinics to deliver services currently being provided by local hospitals. "First of all, this isn't about the job losses (with our members), this is about patient safety and the patients come first," Cook said. "We are concerned with infection control issues" ... there are different measures in hospitals then there are in private clinics. Hospitals have an infection control team, they have the department that cleans the instruments, then it goes to the doctor, so there is a different chain within the private clinics.
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"They are not going to have the same standards" as a hospital, Cook said. Cook gave an example of how things can go wrong in a private clinic. In September 2007, a patient bled to death undergoing liposuction surgery at a private clinic in Ontario. The tragedy happened a few months after Dobson visited Ontario and cautioned the provincial government on allowing private surgery and procedure clinics to open in Ontario. "We are asking the Ontario government to stop the private clinics. It is not cheaper; it will cost us in the long run. And they keep saying it is a savings, but it is not," Cook said.
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Dobson agreed. "The thing I try to get across is this ... everyone in Canada knows that you spend, roughly speaking, half as much as the Americans spend in their health-care system. So the idea that a competitive system like theirs is cheaper, doesn't make a lot of senses. And it also means that the private sector is trying to come in and take over what is essentially in Canada and Britain, a very, very, cost-effective health-care system. "Always remember, with private businesses, their primary duty is to provide their shareholders with profit," Dobson said. sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca
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Frank Dobson, right, a former health minister in the United Kingdom, spoke to reporters about the pitfalls of private clinics during a visit to Sudbury on Tuesday. Looking on is Kevin Cook, of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.