No, I don’t tire of this topic.
In March 2020 NHS England’s Type 1 A&E departments saw 76.% of patients within 4 hours up from 73% in February.
The March average for NHS Scotland has not yet been published but it is easily worked out from the four weekly reports, at 83.8, 87.1, 92.2 and 92.7%. The average was 88.95%
Thus, the Scottish service was 17.03% better.
Reporting Scotland, of course, saw this as a massive failure as far fewer people were turning up yet they could not hit the 95% target.
BBC 1 News did not, of course, mention any of this. They’ve given up.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Surely, surely after all that has been disclosed about this horrendous Tory government that speaks for and rules England , the Scots will be wakening up . I don’t mean the Scots that already have had their eyes open since 2014 but the ones that cannot get past UKOK being a roll model for us to follow , surely ! .
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John Is it up those whose eyes are opened to help those who canny see.
O/T. Ref PPE Suppliers Not Supplying
Dept. Of Health & Social Care
Published 10th April 2020
“Covid-19: Personal Protective Equipment (POE) Plan
1.38 We recognise that the social care sector operates differently to the NHS and we need to take different steps to ensure that providers can continue to access PPE . . . . .
We have made arrangements with 7 wholesalers to supply PPE to the Social Care Sector, namely. Careshop . . . Thru . . . Gompels will all provide supplies to care providers Registered With The Care Quality Comission
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Good on you for tracking this
NHS was cleverly set up to fail in the future by deliberate but subtle underfunding over the last 12 yrs by ensuring the monies could slowly but surely could not keep pace with
a. Growing population
b. Advances in technology and medicine
c. Demographics and the increase / capita of the elderly
All along with the proviso that large chunks of procurement being offered up for free market tendering but in a very fractured manner that ensured that the NHS could not use their critical mass to drive tender prices down
But alas a SNP majority laid waste to the Devil,s plans and that is the main factor
Now shining through in the statistics in comparing NHS Scotland /England
Especially now as this virus rages on
Oh how the plans o men and mice aften go aglay
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Thank you for deriving the figure for March in Scotland for A&E. One thing which stands out, although it is only over a four week string of data is that week-on-week there has been an increase from c83% to c92% (I know that rounding would say 93%, but we must abide by the BBC Scotland protocol of trying to make data look bad).
The beginning of March was when the Covid-19 concerns were recognised as ‘serious’ by Westminster and so all the NHS services of the UK, since there is (was?) and agreement to actin concert, began to reorganise to meet the challenges. This might have entailed a temporary redeployment of some A&E staff and services to facilitate the development of intensive care units. This might be an explanation for the ‘low’ figure for the first week of March. I do not know if this is correct, but, it is a possible hypothesis, certainly more plausible than SG baaaaad.
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I’d like to follow on from the post by Clydebuilt @10:48 am concerning supplies of PPE. I’d like to share, in a few separate posts, the results of some digging around today. ’Not anoraks’ may wish to skip them!
(1) MANDATED PPE STOCKS
After its statements yesterday, the medical supplies company, Gompels seems to have changed its position today. And it all gets very complicated when trying to tease out what is actually going on.
“Stocks of PPE are at a record low in the UK ….. This has meant that the usual supply channels are unable to fulfil the requirements. PANDEMIC FLU STOCKS HAVE BEEN RELEASED under the Department of Health & Social Care Covid-19: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Plan.” (my emphasis)
“These PANDEMIC ENGLISH FLU STOCKS are MANDATED for supply to CQC (Care Quality Commission) registered settings operating in England.”
This suggests that a stockpile which was already in place to supply needs in England in the event of pandemic flu have now been released from storage for use during the Coronavirus pandemic. They are to be used only in England, as ‘mandated’ by the Westminster Government.
Source: https://www.gompels.co.uk/latest-news/doing-our-best-to-supply-ppe.html
However, there is more to this.
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Post number two:
RESTRICTION ON SUPPLIES TO SCOTLAND
The medical supplies company, Gompels goes on to explain more about the ‘mandated’ – restricted – supplies.
“Currently there are only 3 products from over 2000 that this relates to. We continue to supply on a daily basis our full range (less these 3 products from Public Health England) to Care providers in Wales and Scotland.”
So all but three products are being traded outside mandated restrictions. But how significant are the three? And if these were part of a pre-existing pandemic flu stockpile why are the same products – i.e. OTHER those already stockpiled in warehouses – not being traded with customers outside England?
Source: https://www.gompels.co.uk/latest-news/doing-our-best-to-supply-ppe.html
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RESTRICTION ON SUPPLIES TO SCOTLAND
The medical supplies company, Gompels goes on to explain more about the ‘mandated’ – restricted – supplies.
“Currently there are only 3 products from over 2000 that this relates to. We continue to supply on a daily basis our full range (less these 3 products from Public Health England) to Care providers in Wales and Scotland.”
So all but three products are being traded outside ‘mandated’ restrictions applying to pandemic flu stocks.
But how significant are the three? And if these were part of a pre-existing pandemic flu stockpile why are the same products – i.e. those that were already stockpiled in warehouses – not being traded as normal with customers outside England?
Source: https://www.gompels.co.uk/latest-news/doing-our-best-to-supply-ppe.html
Possible reasons may become clear!
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The avoidance of adding to confusion, a correction is required: the text under RESTRICTION OF SUPPLIES should read “.. i.e. OTHER THAN those already stockpiled in warehouses ..”. Apologies for this error.
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This is the third of my posts on this topic.
WESTMINSTER REQUISITIONING ALL PRODUCTION?
Elsewhere on its website Gompels explains about its supply of alcohol gel.
“Take for example alcohol gel. We stuck our necks out early and ordered 50,000 bottles. In normal circumstances that would be many years of stock. It sold in less than a week, …. We ordered even more as early as we dared, but NOW ALL PRODUCTION HAS BEEN TAKEN BY THE UK GOVERNMENT.”
Having captured all production, is the UK Government now taking responsibility for the distribution of this product throughout the UK? Is this type of requisitioning of all production capacity happening with other products?
Source: https://www.gompels.co.uk/coronavirus.html
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‘PANDEMIC ENGLISH FLU STOCKS’
So what are the small number of ‘mandated’ products that Gompels is referring to as ‘Pandemic English Flu Stocks’? This may give us a clue.
Source: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nhs-england-pandmic-influenza-operating-framework-v2.pdf
“The stockpiles are composed of pre-identified key items of personal protective equipment (PPE) (including hygiene consumables) as well as clinical countermeasures such as antivirals and antibiotics, and the consumables necessary to deliver pandemic specific vaccine (PSV).”
An then notably: “Many of the items are already in place in warehouses (termed ‘just in case’ stockpiles), while others will be procured through ‘just in time’ contracts (meaning they will be ordered when needed).“
So some of the ’stockpiles’ are not really stockpiles at all but rather ‘ready to initiate’ contracts with suppliers. This begs a number of questions. Were manufacturing volumes pre-set and unchanged under such ‘just in time’ contracts or has the Coronavirus pandemic demand in England been such as to mop up the available ‘just in time’ manufacturing capacity of the contracted supplier?
And specifically on PPE the same NHS England document notes:
“The bulk of the stockpile consists of PPE designed to protect healthcare workers from contracting pandemic influenza while caring for patients. This includes surgical facemasks, FFP3 respirators, gloves and aprons, plus hygiene consumables.”
So perhaps the unspecified three ‘mandated’ products Gompels refers to could be rather crucial ones!
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And finally:
ABOUT THE CONTINGENCY
On 12 April The Guardian reported this: “Revealed: value of UK pandemic stockpile fell by 40% in six years: £325m wiped off value of health department’s emergency stockpile including PPE.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/revealed-value-of-uk-pandemic-stockpile-fell-by-40-in-six-years
Unfortunately it’s hard to know whether The Guardian really means ‘UK” or actually just ‘England’. Anyway this also begs some questions.
Was a separate stockpile assembled as a contingency for pandemic influenza in Scotland and if so, is it now available to health and care workers facing the Coronavirus pandemic here?
Has Scotland relied on ‘just in time’ supply contracts; have these contracts now been triggered; and is it proving possible to access the necessary manufacturing capacity to fulfil these contracts where the supplier is in England and it is also contracted to NHS England or the DHSS?
Or alternatively, does Scotland share the pandemic flu stockpile with the rest of the UK? And if so, is it also reliant on the very same ‘just in time’ contracts? Is the capacity to meet the required product volumes under these contracts being appropriately distributed to meet the needs of all nations in the UK?
I trust someone followed me through these posts!
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With you all the way! 🙂
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Re.all this i impart the following
Truth is a record of the facts and what,where ,when and how something arose
Nothing else can possibly exist other than reality
Anything else are lies,propaganda,being economical with the full truth
So WESTMINSTER is playing with a loaded shotgun that just might backfire in their face
It is up to us all to out the facts
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