British gov't-run health care: "Putting patients last"

Civitas, a British think tank, essentially calls Great Britain's government-run health care, the National Health Service, a failure, as the London Telegraph reports:

The Civitas report, Putting Patients Last, concludes that the NHS has put into practice the 10 Commandments of Business Failure as drawn up by Donald Keough, past president and former CEO of Coca-Cola.

Among these commandments are "assume infallibility" – the report says politicians talk of the NHS as "the envy of the world." However its outcomes are worse than other universal health care systems and the NHS ranks low in international surveys.

Another commandment is "isolate yourself" – healthcare is conducted in separate "silos", particularly regarding communication between GPs and hospitals.

A further commandment, "be inflexible," is met by hamstringing units with state control: staff pay is set centrally, capital expenditure is constrained, IT is a top-down programme and availability of drugs, such as expensive cancer treatments, is centrally determined.

The Telegraph is a conservative newspaper, meanwhile the liberal Guardian is whining that American conservatives have made the NHS "the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks."

I guess that includes me. But hey, what I excerpted came from a British newspaper.

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UK doctor's new book: "Putting Patients Last: How The NHS Keeps The Ten Commandments Of Business Failure"
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