Back in 2006 a friend and I started a small website and blog about the changes the NHS was going through at that time. Such as Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges.
It’s amazing after all the years in which we have had five different Prime Ministers and four different governments and massive amounts of money having been spent on the NHS; the very same problems of staff shortages, bed shortages and car parking charges continue to weigh down the NHS.
One of the reasons we started the website was that there did not appear at the time one central source where one could look at to get a snapshot of the then ‘current’ situation.
It took a bit of collating, but it was surprising how much information could be gathered over the Internet at the time. However, there were a lot of phone calls made and surprisingly we did gather a lot of data by simply ringing the hospitals directly and asking; and simply being given the info we asked for! I am sure today; there’d be lots of Freedom of Information (FOI) forms to fill out and lots of refusals given back to us.
We also set up a contact page on the website and received quite a bit of information that way, slowly building up the data across the three main areas of Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges (changes)
Sadly over time and due to both our jobs – we were independent IT consultants (not in the NHS) – suddenly getting very busy with new contracts (not with the NHS) so the website and the Blog started to fall by the side. We did look at raising money via donations, but sadly that did not happen. Not really focused enough due to our jobs I suppose. Today, ‘Crowdfunding’ might be the answer!!
However; I have kept the Domain name which I may revive (when I have time) at some stage when we see the current governments’ direction. I do still publish a daily (Mon-Fri) newsletter of NHS related stuff that grabs my eye at https://www.scoop.it/topic/nhswatch.
It is sad to see the struggles the NHS has gone through over the years; yes it has improved in many areas as I can confirm when I have needed to use it on two occasions. However; it seems of late, that no one person really has an single answer to the staffing and bed problems that have continued over the 14 years that I have been looking at it.
As a guide to any links you might see associated with this post. I ‘ported’ over all the past Blog entries from the ‘NHS Watch’ original Blog platform quite a while ago. Needless to say any related comments you see will be very old and of course very out of date.
Beasley's Place 