A Rose by any other Name

The government has decided that the best way to conceal the cracks in their healthcare strategy is to generate enormous amounts of paper. (Paper ... cracks ... OK??) For the past few weeks we have been the recipients of a blizzard of spin from Patricia (a.k.a. Mummy knows best) Hewitt, the politician who is supposed to be in charge of it all.

This weeks classic was the announcement of the new "health campus" plan. Groups of health professionals will work together in purpose-built facilities so that the public can enjoy all the benfits of a "one-stop shop". The rationale is that many relatively minor conditions can be treated much less expensively in smaller and less specialised clinics. Now where I have I heard that before?

Fifty years ago, this sceptered isle was covered by health campuses where local doctors could send patients for the routine operations for a hundred-and-one minor-ish ailments. They weren't called anything quite so sexy. We knew them as "Cottage Hospitals".

Starting in the 50s, the big-is-best brigade eliminated them because it was so much more efficient to group everything together in jumbo hospitals. You know them; they're the ones that the goverment have decided are too big, too inefficient and too expensive for treating "ordinary" illness.