Like all countries with government-run health care systems, the UK has a limited amount of resources to fund its National Health Service while trying to meet an infinite demand. The result is low quality care, waiting lists, and rationing. In most areas of health care, that means longer waiting lists for procedures and treatments. The NHS would love to be able to tell pregnant mothers that they will have to wait another three months to deliver, but of course they can't because nature won't wait.
Babies are born whether the hospital and its staff are ready for them or not, which means the hospitals must then make do with what they have for these laboring mothers, and that is a frightening prospect. According to a UK report, the maternity care in London was so understaffed that women were pushed into waiting rooms, where they were required to stand for hours while they were in labor because no beds were available. A 23-year-old was turned away by midwives only an hour before she delivered because there weren't any beds. She said she was reduced to going to the bathroom where she slapped herself to keep her mind off of her labor pain. Another in a labor and delivery room was horrified to see cockroaches in her "eating area." One woman said she "cried" when she walked into her room to find a filthy shower and paint peeling off the walls. This is in the United Kingdom, not some third-world nation.
Even worse than long waits and filthy labor and delivery rooms is that hospital maternity departments are so woefully understaffed that they must close their doors and send laboring women to other hospitals. These diversion procedures cost time, which increases the risks of tragedies happening. Rachel Canter was pregnant and in the late stages of labor with her third child, a boy she had planned to name Jake, when she was turned away from Barnet Hospital because its maternity department was so full they had to close their admissions. Rachel was told to go to Chase Farm Hospital, 20 minutes away. Unfortunately, baby Jake suffered breathing difficulties and died shortly after he was born. She blames the understaffing of the hospitals for her son's death. The midwives at Barnet Hospital concede that the facility has serious understaffing issues and report that the maternity department must close its doors three times a week as a result. You would think in 21st century Britain pregnant women would no longer get the very old line: "sorry, there is no more room at the inn."
Because there are limited funds that need to cover all areas of health care, the NHS has found itself in a yo-yo pattern of increasing and then decreasing maternity care funding over the years. The Royal College of Midwives said the erratic funding has made it very difficult for maternity departments to provide consistent care that keeps pace with the increase in birth rates.
With midwives stretched thin and unable to provide the one-on-one care that is necessary during childbirth, inevitably, tragedies occur. Unfortunately, they seem to happen so often that according to figures released by the NHS, half of all the £2.2 billion (about $3.6 billion) of negligence payouts since 1995 are for cases involving deaths and injuries that take place in maternity care. That is £946.5 million (about $1.5 billion) in payouts since 1995 that have been paid to parents whose babies either died or were injured by the care they received from the NHS.
Negligence claims are only going to get worse, too. According to the BBC, these claims are expected to increase by 80 percent next year. This year £400 million ($653.7 million) were set aside for negligence claims; next year, however, the NHS will be required to set aside £713 million ($1.2 billion). Conservatives in Parliament say that in order to pay these claims, health care funding that is already inadequate will have to be cut by one third, which will certainly drive negligence claims even higher as doctors, nurses, midwives, and hospitals will have to cope with a significant loss of funding.
Rather than taking a close look at the inadequacies inherent in its government-run system, and making the changes necessary to improve it as the Dutch did a few years ago by infusing much needed free market reforms, the NHS is circling the wagons and blaming the lawyers instead for the rising costs of negligence payouts. In the mean time, they continue on as usual with their failing system. There's a name for this kind of insanity. It's called the Ford Pinto school of cost analysis.
Kim Priestap's Bio
Kim Priestap is a business owner, freelance writer, and contributing editor at Wizbangblog.com. Kim has been published in the Washington Examiner and Pajamas Media. She lives in northern Michigan with her husband, Steve, their three kids, and two dogs.
Posted
06-26-2009 12:05 AM
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