First up, the “news” that Public satisfaction with the NHS has dropped by a record amount, the British Social Attitudes Survey suggests.
The poll indicates satisfaction fell from 70% to 58% last year – the largest annual drop since it started in 1983.
And who sponsored this poll? Yes…
The King’s Fund think-tank sponsored the NHS questions put to more than 1,000 people and said their answers appeared to be a comment on reforms and spending squeezes and not care quality.
The King’s Fund being a raving agitprop lefty pressure group much favoured by the BBC.
Next up, Labour weigh on the back of this, claiming it is all Cameron’s fault that parts of the NHS are poor at providing a decent service. I watched the pouting Susannah Reid leading the charge on BBC this morning….parroting Labour talking points.
The King’s Fund, Labour, the NHS and the BBC…ALL linked and all doing a job in further undermining this government and bringing about the return of the Government that almost bankrupted the United Kingdom.
The King’s Fund being a raving agitprop lefty pressure group
The board of trustees includes people who are, or were: Chairman of J P Morgan Smaller Companies Investment Trust, a Chairman of English Churches Housing Group, Managing Director of BT Health, Chief executive at West Middlesex Hospital, investment director at 3i, The current Lord Mayor of the City of London and a partner in Allen & Overy LLP.
In their reports and comments available on the Health and Social Care bill I never saw any ‘left wing’ bias. I did however hear plenty of selective (mis)quoting of their reports by Andy Burnham that was then repeated by the BBC. The King’s Fund aren’t the problem.
Odd how the left often favours privatisation. Bent, perhaps?
About time they privatisied IBBC
BBC cooking the books again. The full quote from Kings Fund wonk John Appleby’s
“This is the biggest fall in one year since the British Social Attitudes survey began in 1983, although this still remains the third highest recorded level of satisfaction in the history of the survey”
The third highest satisfaction score in twenty eight years or the biggest fall, which interpretation would you expect from the bBC?
Interestingly the survey isn’t due to be published until September. You may wonder wonder why we are being treated to an advance chapter on the NHS. A stick with which to beat someone perhaps?
Click to access public-satisfaction.pdf
Interesting organisation
Reading the trustee 2010 report I note that with an average staff of 128 in 2009, no fewer than 20 members of staff earn in excess of £60k
How does that measure against NHS averages?
Anyway, I think they do have some interesting thing sto say and should not be dismissed
A survey that the CEO admits is designed to report how the general public ‘feel’ about the NHS does not seem to be very obective, especially after a year in which the media (especially the BBC) has been shouting from the roof tops about how severe and far-reaching the eeevil torrees’ plans for the NHS are and amplifying the views of producer interests
I don’t know anything about The King’s Fund, but whenever I see/hear an item which starts, ” A poll reveals…” or “A new report suggests…”, my first thought is, who commissioned the poll and why? There is almost always an underlying premise that someone wants to support by means of a “poll”, so its usually a matter of framing the questions to get the required answer. “A new poll suggests that 68% of chickens would be happy to leave henhouse security to the foxes” (poll commissioned by The Fox Foundation)…..you get the idea.
Indeed. Some however seem to feel simply listing titles alone is persuasive. Bless.
The commentary seems pretty balanced I’d say (although BBC reporting needless to say is cherry-picked from it)
An interesting point made on page 14:
“In 2011 the health care questions were asked of a third of respondents (1,096), whereas in previous years they were asked of two-thirds or the full sample (which equates roughly to 2,200 and 3,300 respondents respectively). Thus the margin of error associated with the results obtained in 2011 is higher, at +/- 3 to 5 percentage points, compared with around +/- 1 to 2 points in previous
years. Nevertheless, even at the extremes of this margin, the satisfaction results for the NHS overall, for example, remain statistically significantly different from those in 2010.”
The conclusion (again strangely unreported by the BBC)
“While absolute certainty is not possible in interpreting results from any survey, technical and statistical issues are very unlikely to account for the change in
satisfaction in 2011. The extent to which these results reflect a real reduction in NHS performance and the things the public value is hard to judge. However,
triangulation with actual performance measures such as waiting times and health care acquired infection rates and with other surveys of patient experience of the NHS do not suggest an actual drop in performance. While this
does not rule out a perception of a poorer service or variations in performance at local level, a more likely explanation is a combination of other factors.”
and (ignoring the political comment)
” It may be that the answer lies in the question. This asked how satisfied people are with the way the NHS runs. The word ‘runs’ may commonly be understood
to refer to performance, but may also capture views about the management and stewardship of the NHS (ie, in the sense of how is the NHS run). It may be that a combination of ministerial rhetoric to justify the reforms, concern about the reforms themselves and reaction to the funding squeeze combined to create generalised worries about the NHS and to dent public perception that it
is being run well.”
As I understand it this was not a survey of patients – people who have used the service in a specific period, but an opinion survey of the general public, run last year when the debate and political argument about NHS reform was at its height.
I would guess therefore that rather than a comentary on the experiences people had, this was a reflection of people’s anxiety about change.
And where would peope get those opinions and anxieties from. Any ideas BBC?
Key points both.
The BBC now seems to run ‘news’ based on ‘reports’ by ‘sources’ that seem more reflective of their malign monopolistic influence on public opinion more than anything else.
Not, I’d say, a connection that serves their ‘we’re speaking for the people’, ‘just reflecting the national mood’, ‘not at all trying to skew policy’ claims at all.
The BBC is the de facto opposition party, but only when certain parties are in power and/or certian other parties are not up to the task.
That… is not their remit… and they need calling out on it.
Even, Helen, dare one say it, being ‘held to account’, and not by some risible internally-concocted, rigged old-boys & girls’ club.
My own experience of the NHS recently was 33 minutes (according to my car park ticket) getting a sports injury x-rayed. My opinion, had they polled me would have been
‘Relieved to get in and out without contracting MRSA’.
I was one of the lucky ones. It was a close call mind as some nasty minuscule thing chased me all the way back to the car park.
The report tries to explain the different results between their survey and actual patient surveys. For me, page 12 has the answer:
What may have coloured people’s attitudes towards the NHS were views about the government’s proposed reforms for the NHS in England. Fieldwork for the British Social Attitudes survey took place from 4 July to 10 November 2011. This followed a sustained period of negative media coverage driven by concerns
about the Health and Social Care Bill.
Congratulations, Beeb, another win.
Bullseye.
Swings in opinion polls are often accounted for by 5-10% reflecting back what the media have been telling them is happening. Or speculating about what might happen. Part of the echo chamber.
The NHS “being run” is a managerial concept. It is a moot point whether “running it well” means bankrupting the economy in order to give unlimited treatment to everyone in the world who cares to drop in and ask for it, which is currently currently Labour policy since it is terrified of “rationing”, which it accuses the Tories of doing.
“Under Tories you wont get care, you’ll die, we are all doomed” say Labour/bBC.
Lansley of course jumps up and denies rationing, in fear of Labour’s NHS Kryptonite. Time to blame the managers (again)
Without a hint of irony Sarah Montague queried on Today what could have caused the change in peoples attitudes even though actual outcomes were relativley unchanged. Did it occur to her that it was all down to the BBC’s relentless negative campaigning over the health bill?
Yeah………but isn’t Susannah a sweetie.
All this dissatisfaction would not have anything to do with all those public sector strikes would it.?.and, as has been said; with the relentless moaning about anything to do with NHS reforms.
As if the last lots-Hewitt, Johnson and other disaster zones…did one jot to improve the NHS.
All they did was put doctors and dentists into BMWs on ludicrous contracts, make C.diff endemic on our wards and saddle the nation with generations worth of Private Partnership contracts that were scandals then…but not so to the BBC.
As if Andy Burnham has a f***in clue about any of it-him and his gremlins tipped bedpans over the lot of us, but the BBC blame Keith Joseph for it all….”w666ers”
I’m an ex-Tory, now UKIP, voter.
I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for Cameron. He knew what the BBC would say about his Government, but chose the path of appeasement.
The BBC / NewLabour axis is a powerful mchine, but could have been defanged.
Mr Cameron, you’ve got 3 years left to wild the hatchet
The King’s Fund has, possibly just by coincidence, always been ‘supportive’ of Labour policies…and funnily enough, John Wilson, Chief Exec. in Fife, who recently declared that it was one of his staff who gave information to the Sun about Brown’s son Fraser, is also a King’s Fund member….and is, naturally enough as NHS chief exec., working closely with the Labour countrolled council in Fife….http://www.alexrowley.org/health-and-social-care-top-of-agenda.
The BBC do not seem too concerned to delve further into who at the NHS Trust in Fife spilled the beans……or the fact that Wilson has no proof of this claim…..”With the passage of time it has not been possible to identify all the circumstances.”
It seems just as likely that the Sun’s version is true…that the story came from another patient.
Regardless I fail to see where the Sun has acted in anyway improperly….if it was an NHS staff member then it is they who acted improperly in breach of trust.
Brown claims publishing the story was utterly wrong….’Mr Brown said no ‘parent in the land’ would want such detail of a child’s illness to be published in a tabloid newspaper.’
However he was fully prepared to cynically use the death of his daughter, Jennifer, for political advantage a short while before the election and try to garner sympathy and votes in an interview with Piers Morgan.
‘Reality television’s Piers Morgan last night confronted his toughest underdog challenger since Susan Boyle first opened her mouth on Britain’s Got Talent. Yes, Gordon Brown was also dreaming a dream: one in which he wins the next election.
Never mind, there is an election to be won, and Brown’s handlers had persuaded him to try to impress voters by showing more of his elusive “human side” – being less like “a kind of robot figure from Thunderbirds”, as Morgan helpfully put it the other day.’