The “ I’ve got something to say, but it doesn’t warrant its own thread “ thread.

[The Year Of The Fox]

1 hour ago, CornwallFox said:

Ok I'll bite. 

There'll never be any system anywhere where you couldn't find tiny savings due to human errors. None 

But the idea that there's huge waste in the NHS, or anywhere else in the public sector, after 14 years of cuts and cost improvement programmes, is really just silly at this point.

The one thing you could look at if you want the public sector to spend less is the private sector companies that overcharge to the public sector because they can, and because the other companies doing the same work are also playing that game. 

I look forward to replying to this properly later

[The Year Of The Fox]

20 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

What do you think they've been doing for 14 straight years? Every NHS trust has had fully audited schemes running the entire time to cut costs. It absolutely drives me nuts when people with zero knowledge just say there's loads of waste, or lots to go at, with literally no idea what's actually been happening in the NHS.

I’ve absolutely tonnes of knowledge built up over the years. Of being a patient and of working at one of the Leics Hos

[The Year Of The Fox]

48 minutes ago, kenny said:

I always enjoy visiting a hospital record room that I converted from a ward 4 years previously back. It means I get to convert it into a much needed ward.

 

I sometimes then get the job of converting a different room to a record store.

This resonates a lot with me 

 

Funny though, given the labour voting nurses clamour to get them back into power 18 months ago. I thought all was going to be rosey from then on. How much have the NHS demanded within the last 7 days? £3bn or £13bn?

 

I forget

 

 

 

Ill come back to this thread later anyway 

[leicsmac]

To repeat something said before:

 

"I guess a large part of the debate around NHS reform comes down to whether or not one views the life and health of a human being as more than the proper position of a full stop in an expenses spreadsheet."

 

If you try to make such a system more "efficient", sooner or later you will affect health outcomes and the cost will be felt in both health and lives. Don't get to attribute perfect judgement in such a situation - that's simply not possible with a system of that size. 

 

How well that sits clearly is down to the beholder

[CornwallFox]

50 minutes ago, kenny said:

Pre-covid probably. 2019 I expect.

 

It was just one example.

 

The amount spent on feasibility studies and business cases that never go anywhere is weird as well.

If you run a company of 20,000 people, with a million customers, would you think sometimes you might want to look at potential changes? And can you imagine that sometimes after doing some initial work it becomes apparent that they won't have the outcome you hoped, or effectiveness, or there's some other issue.... So that initial study was beneficial in that it's stopped you completely a major project only to then find it failed.... Why do you think of that as a negative? 

Public services are not the private sector. There's very close control of everything in the centre. There's far more governance around what happens because senior managers have to be able to account for things. The idea you can't ever try anything or test an idea really is crazy. 

[kenny]

3 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

If you run a company of 20,000 people, with a million customers, would you think sometimes you might want to look at potential changes? And can you imagine that sometimes after doing some initial work it becomes apparent that they won't have the outcome you hoped, or effectiveness, or there's some other issue.... So that initial study was beneficial in that it's stopped you completely a major project only to then find it failed.... Why do you think of that as a negative? 

Public services are not the private sector. There's very close control of everything in the centre. There's far more governance around what happens because senior managers have to be able to account for things. The idea you can't ever try anything or test an idea really is crazy. 

Your description of the feasiblity studies is not reflective of what actually happens. They are done as if there is a department with a budget to spend on the studies, that is totally separate from the department that has to finance the works.

 

None of it is not a negative for me. You know the age old expression, 'one mans chronic waste of money is another mans cash cow.'

 

I can hear the golden moo right now.

[Parafox]

4 hours ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

But of course the NHS don’t waste money

 

I was working at a retirement village yesterday. Ambulance arrived at the reception as I was there collecting keys. Returned said keys an hour later and the ambulance engine was still running, with the medics still inside the building treating the patient

 

3 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

TBF, that's not standard practice. In my job I see plenty of ambulances at homes and houses. Don't think I've ever seen one running unattended. Maybe they needed to charge some equipment or initially though they'd just be a few minutes?

 

I'm sure @Parafox can enlighten us.

 

As far as I'm aware it's actually a criminal offence to leave a vehicle running unattended.

Ok.

 

Leaving your engine running while parked can be illegal and is an offense under UK law, potentially resulting in a fine of up to £80. While there are exceptions for necessary equipment or vulnerable passengers, you must switch off your engine when stationary for more than a minute,

 

Emergency vehicles have an exemption allowing the engine to continue running when the vehicle is unattended in order to maintain power to lights and equipment.

 

Ambulances have a system called run-lock whereby upon arrival at scene a button pressed and the system allows the keys to be removed and the vehicle locked with the engine running. Once again this keeps all the power going so there's no chance of battery/equipment failure.

 

In the modern ambulance the equipment that needs batteries charged are:

 

Powered stretcher, (requires power to raise and lower without the need for staff to bend and straighten).

Defibrillator. 

Suction unit

Lifting equipment to assist getting a casualty off the floor.

Tail lift/powered ramp

Heating/Aircon

Winch to pull a stretcher up the rear ramp when the patient is extremely heavy (bariatric).

 

 

 

Edited 28 October 2025 by Parafox

[The Year Of The Fox]

Back in 2010 a Leics hospital was having ward refurbishments aplenty. These involved ripping out the basins and taps to replace them with what they call Radar units. £1k a pop. For one reason or other, the wards where the refurbs first started were having their stuff ripped out and thrown away within 6 months of installation 

 

I was at a clinic (working) last year in another county. The rear entrance to the clinic was for staff, and there’d been a structural issue with what’s best described as the brick porch entrance, that housed the staircase to get onto the clinics main ground floor level (the clinic was built on a slope so the floor levels were out front to back of the building)

 

Rather than repair the structural issue, the NHS in their wisdom had opted to build a completely new separate metal staircase out of the back of the building, by knocking through a wall at the end of a corridor (it was a dead end) This plan led to a ridiculous set of circumstances 

 

1. The corridor that was now going to be utilised as the new entrance/exit wasn’t wide enough to conform to wheelchair regulations 

 

2. This meant knocking down the corridor wall to make it wider.

 

3. ‘Unfortunately’ the other side of said wall was part of the staff kitchen, wall and base units and worktop ran along the whole length of the wall. The kitchen was 3 year old. A financially conscious organisation would’ve quite easily been able to salvage the kitchen which was to be relocated in the room next door

 

4. Not our NHS though. Nah, let’s have a brand new kitchen in the room next door

 

5. Said new kitchen room didn’t have water or waste supplies which is where I came in, getting supplies from the Disabled WC below. 
 

6. Of course, where the new kitchen was going to be installed there happened to be 2x radiators which had to be relocated on walls adjacent to the new kitchen unit installation 

 

The project ran into thousands. If you’re a business owner in that premises and you’re spending your own money, there’s not a cat in hells chance of you spending all that for that. I sent the lads who are very much ‘fund the NHS properly’ a video of the above and absolutely none of them could believe it. The only person who believed it all happened to be a paramedic who confirmed the NHS ‘pisses money up the wall’
 

I came down with tonsillitis at the start of last year, which developed into something worse. On the Friday I took myself to A&E but was released with some Cocodamol. I think from that original visit to finally being admitted to the hospital on the Monday I’d visited A&E 3 times and two different walk in centres, as well as an ambulance call out before they finally admitted me.

 

As a patient at LRI I was diagnosed with quinsy that Monday. On the Tuesday after a horrendous procedure of draining the back of my throat, I felt quite a bit better.
However I still felt like there were some bits the consultant had missed. I pointed these out to her, but she told me to wait until the next day for them to be sure. Sure enough, they had missed an area, so had to complete the same procedure again (Wednesday) 
 

I was eventually released on the Friday despite being absolutely sound by the Thursday morning. Knowing I was going home on the Friday (missus was on the way in to fetch me) the woman came around taking our lunch orders. I told her I wouldn’t need anything as I was leaving- her reply was- Well order what you want and if you’ve gone by the time it comes then we’ll just throw it away. 
 

On the day of being admitted I was given some hospital PJ’s despite telling the nurse my missus was on the way in with my own and that I wouldn’t be needing them. She still threw them down on the chair next to the bed, which is where they remained (still in the wrapper) until the Friday where they were then thrown away. 
 

A couple of months later I was admitted for surgery on my head/inner ear and an overnight stay.

 

The morning after, the consultant (happened to be that the same woman who helped perform that surgery also carried out my procedure a couple of months earlier) took off my head band after talking me through the operation. I needed her to sign my insurance form to cover my bills whilst off work the next month. She told me she’d do it later. Literally needed her signature. 
Eventually I was discharged but almost immediately started to have shit drilling out of my ear and down my face. Knowing they’d stitched my ear canal back together I was pretty worried to be fair. It took me two days to get an answer that it was perfectly normal, but if it didn’t stop in another couple of days then to contact the Ward. Now it was described as ‘major surgery’ what I had. Why then, have I had better aftercare instructions after having a tattoo? I don’t really want to think of how many people I clogged up on those phone lines for those two days

 

 

The PJs, the food being unnecessarily ordered will no doubt seem trivial in the grand scheme of things. 
 

But this was one hospital on one visit for one patient. How often does that happen across the country? The nurses attitude was clearly ‘it’s not my money’
 

What about being denied hospital treatment for a full weekend- how many appointments and A&E time did I waste? To say nothing of the ambulance call out at 3am on a Monday morning?

 

Maybe it was a lack of beds. But when you’re forced to occupy a bed for a needless two hours waiting on one signature before being able to leave, then that doesn’t surprise me.

 

The NHS is fcuked and is in dire need of a complete overhaul and retraining of nurses to start treating hospital property as if it’s their own. They don’t seem to see that actions like the above across the country have a bearing on their pay rises. Just blame the government- it’s easier. 

 

 

 

 

Edited 28 October 2025 by The Year Of The Fox

[Samilktray]

I work in the NHS and have been told we can’t order new pens, so I have to buy my own biros at the moment. Not ideal 

[Parafox]

11 minutes ago, Samilktray said:

I work in the NHS and have been told we can’t order new pens, so I have to buy my own biros at the moment. Not ideal 

 

You can claim tax allowance for the pen. 

Edited 28 October 2025 by Parafox

[Parafox]

19 minutes ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Maybe it was a lack of beds. But when you’re forced to occupy a bed for a needless two hours waiting on one signature before being able to leave, then that doesn’t surprise me.

 

Nor me. The discharge process is unnecessarily long winded.

 

The doc's that need to sign off your discharge are so busy doing other things that are a higher priority, that it can take hours to get to your notes and sign off.

 

It could be shortened with a few simple changes. A staff nurse or other suitably qualified clinician could access your notes, read the doc's recommendation for discharge and sign it off whilst the doc gets on with the more important stuff.

[grobyfox1990]

One of our key clients redid the whole first floor of their office, must’ve cost tens of thousands. They didn’t really like it so ripped it out and did it again, must’ve costs tens of thousands. Looks great now though.

Does this mean the entire private sector is wasteful and a joke. 

[The Year Of The Fox]

5 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

One of our key clients redid the whole first floor of their office, must’ve cost tens of thousands. They didn’t really like it so ripped it out and did it again, must’ve costs tens of thousands. Looks great now though.

Does this mean the entire private sector is wasteful and a joke. 

Does your client go cap in hand to funders pleading for more money? 

[Parafox]

6 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

One of our key clients redid the whole first floor of their office, must’ve cost tens of thousands. They didn’t really like it so ripped it out and did it again, must’ve costs tens of thousands. Looks great now though.

Does this mean the entire private sector is wasteful and a joke. 

 

No. But the obscenity of this kind of example is odious to many other private sectors that are struggling.

Edited 28 October 2025 by Parafox

[Trav Le Bleu]

26 minutes ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Does your client go cap in hand to funders pleading for more money? 

Ah... The USA way of doing it.

[grobyfox1990]

46 minutes ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Does your client go cap in hand to funders pleading for more money? 

Yeh of course. Equity and bond holders where financing always has a risk rating and can be subject to a haircut. Am I missing an obvious trap here Lol 

[CornwallFox]

5 hours ago, kenny said:

Your description of the feasiblity studies is not reflective of what actually happens. They are done as if there is a department with a budget to spend on the studies, that is totally separate from the department that has to finance the works.

 

None of it is not a negative for me. You know the age old expression, 'one mans chronic waste of money is another mans cash cow.'

 

I can hear the golden moo right now.

Without specific, recent examples it's kinda hard to respond to that

[CornwallFox]

4 hours ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Back in 2010 a Leics hospital was having ward refurbishments aplenty. These involved ripping out the basins and taps to replace them with what they call Radar units. £1k a pop. For one reason or other, the wards where the refurbs first started were having their stuff ripped out and thrown away within 6 months of installation 

 

I was at a clinic (working) last year in another county. The rear entrance to the clinic was for staff, and there’d been a structural issue with what’s best described as the brick porch entrance, that housed the staircase to get onto the clinics main ground floor level (the clinic was built on a slope so the floor levels were out front to back of the building)

 

Rather than repair the structural issue, the NHS in their wisdom had opted to build a completely new separate metal staircase out of the back of the building, by knocking through a wall at the end of a corridor (it was a dead end) This plan led to a ridiculous set of circumstances 

 

1. The corridor that was now going to be utilised as the new entrance/exit wasn’t wide enough to conform to wheelchair regulations 

 

2. This meant knocking down the corridor wall to make it wider.

 

3. ‘Unfortunately’ the other side of said wall was part of the staff kitchen, wall and base units and worktop ran along the whole length of the wall. The kitchen was 3 year old. A financially conscious organisation would’ve quite easily been able to salvage the kitchen which was to be relocated in the room next door

 

4. Not our NHS though. Nah, let’s have a brand new kitchen in the room next door

 

5. Said new kitchen room didn’t have water or waste supplies which is where I came in, getting supplies from the Disabled WC below. 
 

6. Of course, where the new kitchen was going to be installed there happened to be 2x radiators which had to be relocated on walls adjacent to the new kitchen unit installation 

 

The project ran into thousands. If you’re a business owner in that premises and you’re spending your own money, there’s not a cat in hells chance of you spending all that for that. I sent the lads who are very much ‘fund the NHS properly’ a video of the above and absolutely none of them could believe it. The only person who believed it all happened to be a paramedic who confirmed the NHS ‘pisses money up the wall’
 

I came down with tonsillitis at the start of last year, which developed into something worse. On the Friday I took myself to A&E but was released with some Cocodamol. I think from that original visit to finally being admitted to the hospital on the Monday I’d visited A&E 3 times and two different walk in centres, as well as an ambulance call out before they finally admitted me.

 

As a patient at LRI I was diagnosed with quinsy that Monday. On the Tuesday after a horrendous procedure of draining the back of my throat, I felt quite a bit better.
However I still felt like there were some bits the consultant had missed. I pointed these out to her, but she told me to wait until the next day for them to be sure. Sure enough, they had missed an area, so had to complete the same procedure again (Wednesday) 
 

I was eventually released on the Friday despite being absolutely sound by the Thursday morning. Knowing I was going home on the Friday (missus was on the way in to fetch me) the woman came around taking our lunch orders. I told her I wouldn’t need anything as I was leaving- her reply was- Well order what you want and if you’ve gone by the time it comes then we’ll just throw it away. 
 

On the day of being admitted I was given some hospital PJ’s despite telling the nurse my missus was on the way in with my own and that I wouldn’t be needing them. She still threw them down on the chair next to the bed, which is where they remained (still in the wrapper) until the Friday where they were then thrown away. 
 

A couple of months later I was admitted for surgery on my head/inner ear and an overnight stay.

 

The morning after, the consultant (happened to be that the same woman who helped perform that surgery also carried out my procedure a couple of months earlier) took off my head band after talking me through the operation. I needed her to sign my insurance form to cover my bills whilst off work the next month. She told me she’d do it later. Literally needed her signature. 
Eventually I was discharged but almost immediately started to have shit drilling out of my ear and down my face. Knowing they’d stitched my ear canal back together I was pretty worried to be fair. It took me two days to get an answer that it was perfectly normal, but if it didn’t stop in another couple of days then to contact the Ward. Now it was described as ‘major surgery’ what I had. Why then, have I had better aftercare instructions after having a tattoo? I don’t really want to think of how many people I clogged up on those phone lines for those two days

 

 

The PJs, the food being unnecessarily ordered will no doubt seem trivial in the grand scheme of things. 
 

But this was one hospital on one visit for one patient. How often does that happen across the country? The nurses attitude was clearly ‘it’s not my money’
 

What about being denied hospital treatment for a full weekend- how many appointments and A&E time did I waste? To say nothing of the ambulance call out at 3am on a Monday morning?

 

Maybe it was a lack of beds. But when you’re forced to occupy a bed for a needless two hours waiting on one signature before being able to leave, then that doesn’t surprise me.

 

The NHS is fcuked and is in dire need of a complete overhaul and retraining of nurses to start treating hospital property as if it’s their own. They don’t seem to see that actions like the above across the country have a bearing on their pay rises. Just blame the government- it’s easier. 

 

 

 

 

Some of the examples there - the lunch and pjs for example - may be due to it ending up being far more costly to have to get a fresh dinner and pjs if you haven't gone, and the nurses being well aware things don't tend to work to schedules in healthcare. The dinner is already paid for whether you have it or not. They haven't made one specially for you. It's already there and paid for, you realise that? The pjs does seem more wasteful and if it was still wrapped I'm less inclined to think it would be thrown away? 

 

Beds and occupancy is always an issue but the issue in healthcare is you might need one signature but you've no way of knowing what issue might befall another patient or patients that lowers your priority level. Parafox has suggested possible changes to process - these are looked at regularly. The need to move elderly patients on into care homes or community care is a big one, freeing up other parts of the system before the acute trust can send patients home quicker. 

 

Clinical issues leading to more appointments - hard to go against clinical judgement on this one. It goes wrong too often, but still a tiny amount relatively. 

 

The system is so complex, so changeable, so gargantuan, that you may see individual examples, and yes they may be replicated, but they are still minute costs in the grand scheme. The kinds of costs you're talking about would fund the NHS for about fifteen seconds. It's immaterial to an organisation on this scale. Every single business on earth has these costs but very few are as complex as a national health system. 

Edited 28 October 2025 by CornwallFox

[Trav Le Bleu]

9 hours ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

 

As a patient at LRI I was diagnosed with quinsy

He's a coroner, not a doctor.

[kenny]

9 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

Without specific, recent examples it's kinda hard to respond to that

I can't give you any either unfortunately. All I'll say is that it's a lucrative business to be in.

 

Also that investment in healthcare under this government is as bad as the previous if not worse. In fact, investment in public services under labour is remarkably bad. I expected tax increases but also lots of new public construction projects as well, so far they are cancelling, postponing and mothballing contracts.

 

I listened this morning to a government minister who is dead sure on their commitment to 1.5m homes in 5 years. If they can hit 1m I would be surprised.

[grobyfox1990]

26 minutes ago, kenny said:

I can't give you any either unfortunately. All I'll say is that it's a lucrative business to be in.

 

Also that investment in healthcare under this government is as bad as the previous if not worse. In fact, investment in public services under labour is remarkably bad. I expected tax increases but also lots of new public construction projects as well, so far they are cancelling, postponing and mothballing contracts.

 

I listened this morning to a government minister who is dead sure on their commitment to 1.5m homes in 5 years. If they can hit 1m I would be surprised.

If it's a lucrative business and a cash cow, how do I get in it, and why aren't you in it. You seem to be in the know.

[kenny]

2 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

If it's a lucrative business and a cash cow, how do I get in it, and why aren't you in it. You seem to be in the know.

I'm on the periphery. Wrong discipline for me and I'm not interested in re-skilling.

 

I work with many businesses that are in 'it'.

[grobyfox1990]

17 minutes ago, kenny said:

I'm on the periphery. Wrong discipline for me and I'm not interested in re-skilling.

 

I work with many businesses that are in 'it'.

How do I get in on it? And when you say riches, what is the actual margin, taking into account the additional risk of a public contract which will erode profitability? And can I outsource all the work to Mauritius?

[kenny]

2 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

How do I get in on it? And when you say riches, what is the actual margin, taking into account the additional risk of a public contract which will erode profitability? And can I outsource all the work to Mauritius?

For consultancy terms the margins are high, I would guess 30-40%. My experience of public contracts is that they are more profitable than private. Payment is often slower.

 

Risk is low as there is essentially no liability attached, which is very different to other consultancy work.

 

My knowledge of the Mauritian workforce isn't what it could be so I would hesitate to comment.

 

It sounds like you have the bones of a business plan though, a little sprinkling of ChatGpt and you are away.

[grobyfox1990]

28 minutes ago, kenny said:

For consultancy terms the margins are high, I would guess 30-40%. My experience of public contracts is that they are more profitable than private. Payment is often slower.

 

Risk is low as there is essentially no liability attached, which is very different to other consultancy work.

 

My knowledge of the Mauritian workforce isn't what it could be so I would hesitate to comment.

 

It sounds like you have the bones of a business plan though, a little sprinkling of ChatGpt and you are away.

That is interesting, other way round in my experience. Way too much risk in public contracts and onboarding costs are too high. If you are making 30-40% in PROFIT that is unbelievable. I price jobs to make a 60% recovery. Break even is fantastic, consistent profit is unheard of IMO.