Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is used by corporate strategists to this day, and explains a great deal about what’s happened to UK healthcare over the last 40 years. Here we examine the possibility that COVID-19 has finally provided Sun Tzu’s “extraordinary moment”, and what that means for the NHS. COVID-19 presents an “extraordinary moment” in NHS …
Back in 2018, a landmark crowdjustice campaign saved the career of a young doctor who was scapegoated for systemic clinical and management failings in one of the UK’s largest NHS Trusts. The Bawa-Garba case exposed the serious internal rot which threatens the heart of NHS patient safety, but was diverted by the UK medical establishment into an “educational issue” about …
Back in April 2020, the New York Times reported that the UK Government was on the verge of publishing a triage plan for rationing care during the C19 pandemic. The Government later backtracked, for “fear of a public uproar”. Medics on the front line battled on, heedless of political calculations made by the Department of Health. To put …
The British Government, the ICU cover-up and Exercise Cygnus The story of Dr Day’s protected disclosures about a dangerously understaffed intensive care department has taken on new urgency during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We now know that the Government – specifically an agency reporting directly to Jeremy Hunt– was sweeping Dr Day’s patient safety concerns under the carpet, …
In 2017, NHS England submitted one of the most significant documents in its history to the Chief Medical Officer – the NHS Surge and Population Triage briefing paper. Population Triage – what’s the big deal? Why was this document so important? Following Exercise Cygnus, Dame Sally Davies – the former CMO – had realised that NHS capacity, after …
Close your eyes if you’re squeamish, but this graph from John Hopkins University shows that the UK’s COVID-19 deaths are rocketing up at an alarming rate. We gave Newton and Shakespeare to the world – now we are the home nation for a new highly transmissible COVID variant which is spreading like wildfire through England and will likely expand through …
Simon says “We’re back in the eye of the storm,” said NHS Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens. Yes we are. He made no admission of how we got into this storm, nor explained how we’re going to get out of it. His Five Year Plan for the NHS lying in tatters, his most decisive contribution to the COVID-19 …
Later this week, I will be starting night shifts on site at one of the busiest NHS hospitals in London. The NHS is close to hitting the “surge capacity” mentioned in an Official Sensitive report of the Health Department – and I need to bring this to your attention because the healthcare establishment is keeping remarkably quiet. For …
Surge Capacity – what if COVID-19 overwhelms the NHS? Read More »
