Hospital Still Spending £138,000 Paying Two People to Stand at Door and Hand Out Masks and Sanitiser
A hospital is still spending £138,000 employing two people to stand at the door and hand out face masks and hand sanitiser, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.
Frustrated by the continuing presence of mask ‘requirements’ at his local hospital, Mr. David Davies submitted a Freedom of Information request (FOI) to George Eliot NHS Hospital in Nuneaton. As part of this FOI he asked the hospital the amount spent on staff tasked with monitoring visitors for face-covering compliance and handing out masks and hand sanitiser at the entrance. The answer he received surprised him.
Every month at George Eliot NHS Hospital, two members of staff are assigned to COVID-19 door duty. According to the FOI response shared with campaign organisation Smile Free, the hospital is spending £11,500 per month on this, an annualised expense of £138,000, equivalent to £69,000 per person per year. This sum would cover the wages of four nurses.
Were this repeated at all U.K. hospitals, rough calculations suggest something in the region of £167m across the entire estate, enough to pay for around 5,000 nurses.
How much do the masks themselves cost the hospital, Mr. Davies also asked. He was refused an answer on the grounds that “retrieval of the information would require manual review of invoices from all suppliers during the period”.
Worryingly, given the known harms of masking, especially in healthcare settings, George Eliot hospital revealed it has not conducted any risk assessments for compulsory masking, instead citing “national guidance”. But as Mr. Davies points out in a follow-up letter, the very “national guidance” cited states clearly that “the exact interpretation will depend on your local risk assessments”.
At a time of extreme pressures on the health service, isn’t it high time such costly Covid theatre, which has never been shown to reduce infections, was abandoned?
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We have known for a long time that the problems with the NHS are nothing to do with lack of money. It’s what they spend it on that is causing the problem.
Not enough on front-line and primary care, far too much on bureaucracy, excessive layers of middle management, pointless ‘training’ courses and other wasteful spending, the proliferation of woke non-jobs and a general mood of complacency and far left posturing.
I’ve worked as a Paramedic for 21 years and seen the problem first hand, The first thing to understand is that we have far too many staff, not enough of them. That’s because the vast majority of ‘patients’ we see have little or nothing wrong with them. Easily 90% of the incessant 999 calls we get are a complete and utter waste of time. Extrapolate that to the wider NHS and you can see that we are just incinerating taxpayers money for very little result. The root of this goes back to 2004 and the GP pay deal which saw their wages double overnight from approx. 50k to 100k. Unfortunately it had the entirely unintended consequence that GP’s logically realised it would be much wiser to work part time for 50k instead of full time for 100k. That’s why today we have something like 9/10 GP’s working pat time and no one can see a doctor. Since 2004 the excess demand has simply taken to going to A&E or calling Ambulances instead. It’s this overwhelming unnecessary demand which is causing the hospitals to burst at the seams. As paying GP’s even more is not an option the only solution left,… Read more »
That’s a very very good point, the law of unintended consequences. I think the other issue with GP’s is the personal allowance taper above £100k. Why work for between £100k and £125k when your marginal tax rate is about 80pence in the pound. And then you have the cap to the lifetime pension allowance on top.
Thanks for the post and front line common sense 👍.
Three problems: 1. Too-casual use of the NHS by people who are variously thoughtless, ignorant or entitled. 2. Too-secular attitude by clinicians that have their responsibilities diffused by bureaucracy and who take a cash-wage. 3. The NHS is the premier symbol of a non-hierarchical state, with a strange simultaneous low and high status. “..the only solution is charging £50 for a GP appointment, £150 for A&E, £500 for an ambulance. Before anyone starts howling about granny being too frightened to call 999, there is a fair way to do it: anyone genuinely ill would not pay, the decision dependent on 2 or 3 clinicians agreeing, for example an A&E doctor, nurse and paramedic.” Is there some universe in which this could possibly work? The clinicians would have to readjust to being custodians of their expertise in a way larger than just secular-scientific competence. They would need to be metaphysically superior, like priests. Think James Robertson Justice as an Old Testament clinician. The hospital would have to take on a sacred aspect, instead of being a secular public space. But since it’s our NHS etc etc, that’s looks impossible. In the current framing, equal disfunction is preferable to unequal function. Hierarchy… Read more »
Anything that is free is worthless. Even charging $5 for a doctor’s appointment changes the attitude of both the client and the doctor. The last point is crucial.
Everybody who’s paying taxes is paying for the NHS, ie, mostly paying for other people’s medical treatment. Only particularly obtuse people would fail to understand that.
Actually it’s NOT free the taxpayer their children and their children’s children fork out huge sums of money each year to pay for it. But you’re right charging for services when they are clearly being abused is a fine idea but difficult in practice. Years ago I received a letter from the NHS requesting payment for an ambulance I’d “used” after an RTA. I ignored the letter and heard nothing further.
You’re idea with the charging is based on two misconceptions: Patients ought to be able to assess their ow medical problems without the help of qualified medical practioners and medical equipment, ie a patient who cannot see a GP who doesn’t know that he isn’t sick is culpably responsible for that, and medical practioners will always objectively assess patients, they’ll never send someone away just because they don’t want to care for his demonstrably existing medical problem. Real-world example which should be mentioned here: The guy who died of pneumonia after a COVID infection because he didn’t want to burden the health service irresponsibly.
Can’t call an ambulance unless you have £500 to spare simply means no medical emergency support for poor people. Classically Malthusian, so to say: If we keep them alive, they’ll just multiply and we’ll need to keep even more of them alive.
Well said. The problem arises as the NHS is “free at the point of use”. This means that people put no value on the time they take up when attending appointments which they don’t need.
Some years ago I was a regional manager for a pharma company, covering SE England. Most of my time was spent visiting GPS along with my reps, 10 in all. Naturally I could recognise doctors who I had seen previously. But I could also recognise the same patients in the waiting rooms.
And don’t get me onto those idiots who don’t bother to turn up for appointments
There’s something a lot worse and just as costly – these Trusts do not recognise medical exemptions for staff. My brother-in-law is currently being paid to sit at home as he cannot wear a mask for health reasons. How many more like him? Of course agency staff will have to be employed to cover these people. An example of the utter incompetence and stupidity of NHS management. I have over thirty years of working in health and social care, most of this in management. Now moved on – not prepared to work in such dystopian conditions. Not alone. Factor in the discrimination and the cost to us the tax payer, an absolute insult. These people who manage the NHS are morally and intellectually bankrupt – factor in the Government here.
“the exact interpretation will depend on your local risk assessments”
I recently spent all night in A&E waiting for treatment. Nobody commented on my lack of mask and of the people waiting only one couple were masked. Most of the medical staff wore them, but when the doctor examined me he pulled his mask down and it re.main off for the entire consultation. I was left wondering what he thought the purpose of the mask was
This latest article from HART is written by a Trade Union Official who goes to tribunals to defend workers against the Nazis who want them to wear masks for lengthy shifts. He sound kick-ass! 🙂 Since 27th Jan this year there has been no legal requirement to wear a mask. If I’d only had this info when they booted me out of the dept at Hull Royal Infirmary for refusing to comply with their cult-like mentality!
“According to the Health and Safety Executive it states; fluid resistant surgical masks do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols. That is, they are not regarded as personal protective equipment under the European Directive 89/686/EEC ( PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144.)
https://www.hartgroup.org/the-facts-about-mask-requirements/
Morning, Mogs.
Did they boot you out as a patient or were you on the staff?
(Used to work there in Outpatients)
We were visiting the UK and had to go to the Plastic Surgery Trauma Unit as my daughter jammed her finger in the door and broke her finger tip, so needed a repair op under local anaesthetic. I was with my husband, who is Mr Compliance personified, so he stayed with her. To be honest only one of us would have been able to accompany her in theatre anyway so I didn’t mind leaving on that basis but it was the fact that when I refused to wear a mask or visor the nurse then went and brought the Sister in who said if I didn’t comply with guidelines she’d have to ask me to leave the dept. I did, but not before kicking up a bit of a stink ( mindful not to escalate things too much as kiddo is sat there with her finger tip hanging off and upset and scared anyway. She didn’t need mammy throwing a wobbler in to the bargain ) but every time I tried to explain things, such as why should a perfectly healthy person wear a mask to protect others from an illness they don’t have, the lack of evidence-based practice they… Read more »
“How much do the masks themselves cost the hospital, Mr. Davies also asked. He was refused an answer on the grounds that “retrieval of the information would require manual review of invoices from all suppliers during the period”.
OK, so they are spending money on a medical intervention without quantifying either the costs or the benefits. Definitely what a professional public health institution should be doing.
They don’t have their invoices stored electronically?? Really, in the 21st Century?? What are they using to manage their accounts then, quill pens and owls?!!
£69k a year is a pretty good salary for handing out masks. If they are prepared to pay that much I think what they should do is repurpose some of the management tier, or perhaps some diversity officers, to handing out masks. They would do far less harm than in their current roles because anyone with any sense will just ignore them.
Presumably, that’s the trainee post for aspiring diversity officers.
🙂
Strong the Covid is, in this one. Hrmmm.
There’s the Russian Bats scenario now!
An ACE2-dependent Sarbecovirus in Russian bats is resistant to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1010828&fbclid=IwAR3ChkejUX0-LLgFOdQhVh7RIyESMM1aRTiX5iSbVAHc5C5cmC4NBA-mfkE
That will be the Russo-Sino Bat Alliance.
Russo-Sino Bat Ecohealth Alliance.
😀 😀
The Australian situation is identical and the points raised here equally as valid in Oz.
Modern GP’s also seem to make more money doing surgical assisting or filling in Government forms than seeing patients, therefore follow the money.
Any socialist system delivers maximum garbage at maximum cost, and health is the best example of verisimilitude.
I have just asked Boots if I can have my hearing review at one of the Beauty Counters next to their consulting rooms so I don’t have to impair my speech and hearing by wearing a mask or failing that a face-shield. Also why their consulting rooms are so hazardous you need PPE while the rest of the store is considered quite safe. I even offered to have my appointment at the coffee shop next door….What is it about the Covid years that has made people part with their powers of reason?