
Scientific management
Thank goodness our hospitals are now run by properly trained, highly qualified professional managers and accountants. Just imagine what a mess doctors and nurses would make of them!
North Bristol NHS trust has confirmed it has overspent on its IT budget by almost 100 per cent in recent months as a consequence of the rollout of its Cerner electronic patient record (EPR) system. The trust has spent £4.5m implementing the Cerner system to date, the majority of which was spent during this January and February …
I'm confused about where Holby City even is.
Casualty used to be filmed in Bristol, but set in the fictional Holby. As a result, Holby just happened to share a number of landmarks with Bristol, even having its very own Clifton Suspension Bridge. (My, Brunel was busy that week!). Now it's moved to Cardiff, and suddenly all of Holby's familiar landmarks have vanished, to be replaced by others.
Holby City, on the other hand, as far as I know isn't even filmed in Bristol to start with, except exterior shots, which are - or were. If they're still using Bristol, are the two shows not somewhat inconsistent now?
God help me if I ever have to be admitted to these hospitals in an emergency! For those who live in Bristol, they already know that you should refuse to let the ambulance take you to some of the hospitals (particularly the BRI) as due to horrible MRSA infection rates and the like you are going to come out worse than you went in! Throw in dodgy electronic records and your survival rates do not look good.
That BUPA hospital must be doing good business with this lot in charge of NHS care!
Cerner and its main competitor EPIC are used in hundreds of hospitals in other countries, every day, without major incident. Of course where it's used successfully the hospitals also have downtime procedures that they exercise regularly (it is a computer system, after all) and nobody dies when the computer goes down and nobody gets turned away from treatment.
Of couse those hundreds of other hospitals are not part of The Best Healthcare System In The World.