One thing is for sure the best way to provide a better service for patients able to pay (and on higher incomes and with careers where the employer subsidises private health insurance) is by reducing the amount the government and the NHS on the NHS, and more on private hospitals – lol

I suspect management priorities have a lot to do with it, getting patients home without infections they came in with not being one of them

Giving birth to my beautiful boy was so stressful I just don’t want to remember it; generally speaking the midwives seemed to consider any inmate in need as a nuisance. Before the birth I had many scares and it was touch and go whether I would loose him. After one near thing I pulled the curtains and quietely had a little cry. A nurse came behind the curtains and I explained and I was told in no uncertain terms how stupid I was (this view was relayed to another nurse in front of me) and I was told not to break the rules of the ward again. The midwives ignored everything they could and never answered a call for help. When I couldn’t walk I was left in stale blood and after dragging myself to the bathroom found them filthy. I was eventually moved to a private room because I’d developed an infection.

Nursing shouldn’t just be administering drugs or giving injections and the like, it’s caring for people, it’s helping them, gently, to wash and to eat and to get the things in life that are necesarry to maintain health and want to keep living. In my opinion that includes having authority over cleaning staff. The chain of authority over cleaning staff should be with the matron who should have responsibility for a hospital ward. IMHO the matron should see to the behaviour of her staff and that should include cleaning staff.

The real answer is to empower patients, and that means an insurance scheme where patients choose the hospital and the money goes to that hospital. When I can tell a hospital manager that next time, I’ll take my operation and my money elsewhere, then we’ll get cleaner hospitals. The worst hospitals will simply have to sort their act out, or get eliminated.

Add to that the fact that a lot of the time cleaning contractors have to resort to casual workers – who may or may not turn up for work because they may or may not get paid or fair pay.

The irony is that most of the savings if any that are ever the reason or excuse for contracting out cleaning and other services, soon translate to higher costs and lower standards (caused by cost cutting) it is the nature of the beast.

When we had doctors working exclusively for the nhs, the world may have not been perfect, but privatisation may have offered ‘choice’ the choice to charge more, there is no proof that it has offered the patients a better choice. Except those who can pay now have more people after their money, and there are less doctors to treat those who cannot pay.

Whatever ‘petty’ savings might have originally been envisioned from contracting out cleaning services – ie no guaranteed job, no guaranteed holidays and no guaranteed pensions for the cleaners – has been lost by the increased costs of contract cleaning by cleaning firms. Of course the contracts can be changed and given to a new firm, but all the cleaning firms are faced with the same dilema – not enough regular and committed staff.

Of course the world is not perfect, but shifting responsibility – in this case from hospital management to a cleaning contractor – does not guarantee improved services. Whereas as we know a well paid staff with job security (good holidays, pensions & health insurance) is the secret of any & every successful firm.