What do you think. Should the Taxpayers subsidise the Quacks with cheap rental of the Facilities ?.

No

No F*cking way

My mate's lass does work for consultants and they pay her £50 to type and send one letter out. So they must be making a few quid.

If they do use NHS equipment they should pay a rental fee.

Maybe they do, I've no idea.

I have never worked for a consultant who does not fulfill his/her nhs contract and a considerable amount more so the odd private case is justifiable payback in my opinion. If all consultants just worked to the terms of their contract the NHS would be in an even worse state than it is already. Perhaps if they were paid an equivalent amount to other professions such as lawyers and accountants there would be less need to take on private work.

It's not the consultant's responsibility to pay for it any more than it is my responsibity to pay for the machine I'm typing away on now (working Saturdays sucks).

" the odd private case" you may find they do alot more than the odd case and get payed very hansomely for it... i know of many consultants at the hospital where i work who get payed alot for private work including pathologist's e.t.c

My granfarther was a consultant too..! the question you have to ask is do NHS patients suffer due to the amount of private work consultants under take...

Imagine this if you can a histopathologist has a certain amount of work to look at and private work has financial benefits over NHS work.. This is an example of what ive seen first hand.. histopathologist have tissue sections to look at and often have numerous slides to investigate... If they have private patient work come in, everytime this work gets done first, now is this fair on NHS patients.. And what happens when consultants undertake more and more private work which is what will happen.


Dan:D

[Edited by dhorwich - 25/01/2003 13:00:25]

I am a Consultant.

If the facilities are standing idle, no NHS cases are booked for the period in question, and there is income to be generated for the NHS by renting them out for private use then there should be no problem.

It is entirely different thing from using NHS time to see private patients or using NHS facilities when NHS patients could be instead. That abuse is virtually eliminated nowadays, and was anyway never on the scale the politicians would have had you believe.

I do private work out of hours in the evenings and weekends, at fully private facilities, just for the record.

jlaing, I worked this morning for 5 hours (before many people got out of bed) for my company. I wasn't questioning that they should pay for the equipment in their contracted time, but their use of it to do 'foreigners'(not asylum seekers :D). This equipment shouldn't really be used to line the pockets of the Consultants should it, and if it is used for their private patients, shouldn't they pay the going rate for its use (say the same as using BUPA's Private kit?).
If they equipment is idle, it demonstrates bad management of resources. My local Hospitals (X4) announced that they were closing A&E as they had no beds. I bet one could be found for private patients though !.

DnO... When they talk about 'beds', what they actually mean is staffed beds. The real shortage is the number of nursing staff. I take your point about the NHS charging for use of equipment, but companies like BUPA etc should pay any charges - the consultants are just paid for their time

I've worked in a few hospitals where the Consultants take the p*** when it comes to private patients. The trust I work in at present turns a blind eye to Consultants operating on private patients on NHS lists. They always do the private patients 1st meaning if the operating list overruns the NHS patients get cancelled. Now its usually my job as the junior doctor to tell these patients they've been cancelled. I never tell them they've been cancelled because a private patient has been done instead but increasingly I think I should because I resent NHS patients having the p*** taken out of them. I know I'm guilty because as yet I haven't informed appropriate people this occurs (e.g. local press, hospital chief executive).
Unfortunately some doctors(only a minority) still abuse the system.

Is their not a little bit of hypocrisy here ?
It's presumably OK for the vast majority of Scoobynet users to use their employers Pc's & time, but not for Doc's to pay to use their employers resources. ?????

D

I think you missed the point. This machine and my time isn't being bought and paid for with Public money. The Consultants who abuse the system. Get the use of public funded facilities for a song or free, and putting NHS patients off in the name of private profit and personal gain is IMHO a serious misuse of their position. Name & Shame ! Greedy Gits :(