Funding

Name: Charles Lister
Comments:Our local hospital - the Great Western Hospital, Swindon has now been open nearly 3 years. It inherited a in-patient waiting list of over 2000 patients fromits predecessor -the Princess Margaret Hospital, which is of a very similar size today. Despite this there has been at least one ward closure to deal with the financial problem, as well as staff lay-offs. There is relatively little room for enlargement of this unit despite the fact that this is one of the fastest growing towns in the southwest. Many clinical staff (particularly nurses) are poorly paid and overstretched, which tends to lead to poor performance and little job satisfaction whilst the system carries an enormous load of highly paid administrators. The cost of healthcare in France and the UK per head of population is not vastly different yet access to healthcare, particularly hospital care is very different. Why? The answer is, I believe, that in France as elsewhere on the Continent healthcare provision and healthcare insurance come from totally different sources. We should not be too proud to learn.