NHS bureaucracy is impeding a cure for cancer

Cut out NHS bureaucracy to cure cancer - quite a long article by Professor Karol Sikora in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Our cancer tsar, Mike Richards, has done a great job - and a terrifically frustrating one at times - putting in place the infrastructure for a responsive, patient-centred service. But it has cost the taxpayer a huge amount of money, money that is now running out fast. So where is it all going wrong?

Cancer diagnosis and treatment is complex, and it requires the integration of many hospital departments: imaging and laboratories, outpatient services as well as treatment services.

And as we all know, the NHS is hopelessly inefficient. The last bastion of communism in Europe, it is obsessed with political correctness, multiple and complex targets and inter-professional disputes about working practices, and it boasts a hugely over-bureaucratised management system.

Imagine, if you can, how the money "flows" through the system: the Department of Health gives it to strategic health authorities which then pass it on to primary care trusts which use cancer networks to advise them before commissioning work from hospitals. And that's only the beginning of the bureaucratic nightmare.

The Healthcare Commission, the Royal Colleges and other professional bodies all vie for a slice of the paperwork action. All of these bodies are well served by secretarial staff while hospitals are cutting back. Several consultants now regularly share one hard-pressed secretary who tries to juggle all the demands. And that's before the patients call in sick.

Entrepreneurship and innovation is rapidly stifled and many of my colleagues simply give up trying to improve services.

No commercial consumer-focused industry behaves like this. If it did, it would go bust. Imagine a pizza chain creating a waiting list, developing complex rules of inequitable access to salads and sauces, and offering no choice in venue.

Just like delivering an excellent pizza, cancer care is a global business. Good cancer care is the same in Bombay, Boston and Bognor. Global organisations are emerging to deliver the necessary components of care in all environments. Stripping away the redundant paperclip pushers within the NHS is now essential.

There are huge challenges ahead for Britain. Despite spending several billions of pounds more on cancer, all the short-term metrics remain poor.

Access to diagnostic scans, outpatient clinic appointments for those who don't immediately obviously have cancer (who make up to 60 per cent of all patients), time to biopsy, time to first treatment, the availability of radiotherapy and access to new cancer drugs still compare unfavourably with the rest of Europe.

Perhaps the biggest scandal is that we are spending more per head on cancer than France, Italy or Germany. "

Most cancers are linked with obesity, which is often caused by sensitivity to salt, and fluid retention. You can lower your risk of most cancers by avoiding salt and salty food, because by doing this you reduce any excess fluid in your system and thus reduce any excess weight you are carrying. You can read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt.

Lose weight and improve your health by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! - How to Lose weight!

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Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

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