YP Letters: Making our NHS the best bar none

AS Health Secretary, it is my ambition to make the NHS the world’s safest and highest quality healthcare system. With the values we share across the NHS, the dedication of our brilliant staff and by harnessing technology to improve patient care, I believe that ambition is within our grasp.

The use of bar codes is commonplace across all major industries – from retail to aerospace – and plays a crucial role in improving efficiency, saving time, and most importantly reducing errors. It is this technology that I am pleased to announce is set to revolutionise patient safety across hospitals in England, as the NHS becomes a world-leader in the field.

Every week – in common with all advanced healthcare systems – the NHS faces the tragedy of a patient dying because they were given the wrong medicine, or severe complications because the wrong implant was put into someone’s body. But by introducing barcode technology in hospitals, we can eliminate these unacceptable errors while also saving the NHS millions of pounds.

Hospitals such as Leeds have already been piloting the introduction of barcodes on items like as implants and replacement hips, medication and surgical tools. The success we’ve seen here means the programme could be rolled out nationally as early as next year.

We know how effective this approach is – staff have told us that it is already enabling them to quickly and easily track each patient through their hospital journey. A nurse spends an hour on every shift looking for medicines and equipment – barcoding will help slash this wasted time.

From the uniquely barcoded wristbands patients receive when they enter hospital, to the barcodes used to record their medication and the equipment used in their treatment, each code is scanned to show exactly which member of staff administered each treatment, at what time and where. Simple but potentially devastating errors are avoided and patients get even higher standards of care.

The introduction of barcode technology is a huge opportunity for hospitals. I am grateful to the staff at Leeds who, through these pilots, are showing how we can raise standards still further in delivering the safe, compassionate care that everyone deserves.

Time to back small builders

From: Brian Berry, Chief Executive, Federation of Master Builders.

IT’S great to see the Housing Minister kick off 2017 by giving the green light to the first starter homes (The Yorkshire Post, January 3).

These homes will help some first time buyers get a foot on the housing ladder, and our small house builders are enthusiastic about delivering on that vision, but starter homes will not be a panacea.

A wider set of measures aimed at increasing the capacity of the house building industry are needed to overturn the long-term under-supply of new homes. Central to this must be getting small and medium-sized (SME) builders delivering more new homes. For instance, the announcement of 14 ‘garden villages’ and more garden towns needs to be backed up by implementation plans which provide opportunities to SME builders as well as the large companies.

These are positive messages to start the year with and they show that the Government is putting housebuilding at the front and centre of its ambitions for 2017. With a Housing White Paper expected in the next few weeks this will be an important year for housing policy and its success or failure will be a key part of the new PM’s legacy.

Recovering call-out costs

From: Claire Brown, Public Information Co-ordinator, West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service.

FURTHER to your editorial comment ‘Life and death – false economy of fire call-outs’ (The Yorkshire Post, January 2), it is important to note that all cost recovery charges are made under Section 18C of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 (as amended), which states that a fire and rescue authority may charge a person for responding to a report of fire when:

(i). The report of fire is at premises that are not domestic premises;

(ii). The report is false;

(iii). The report is made as a direct or indirect result of warning equipment having malfunctioned or been mis-installed, and;

(iv). There is a persistent problem with false reports of fire at the premises that are made as a direct or indirect result of warning equipment under common control having malfunctioned or been misinstalled.

Clearly in this case point (iv) is material to your piece. “Persistent problem” is defined by the West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service as more than three occasions within a rolling 12-month period, and our entire policy in respect of this issue is based around these ‘rules’.

Boycott EU and quit now

From: Terry Watson, Adel.

IT’S time Theresa May stopped talking about what kind of Brexit we want and did something positive about leaving the disastrous EU. Dithering is a sign of weakness and does not command respect from the Brussels mafia.

We are threatened with all kinds of punishment for daring to leave the worst trading bloc in the world, to deter other countries lining up to do the same.

Any threat of trade sanctions should be ignored. If they impose them, we should ban all exports from Europe. We can punish them much harder than they can hit us. We have had a massive trade deficit every year since we joined. Instead of triggering Article 50, we should repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and be out in weeks, saving us millions in membership fees.