_NOT 97 IT SEEMS that whizz-kid handshake and a hefty pension, just before the report was just can't find a way to get published, leaving others to good news out of the NHS. take the flak. A frustrated despite Gordon Brown's Department of Health refused belated niection of extra cash to get involved, leaving the since last year. new Trust bosses to be slowly The normal winter media roasted by a hostile media as fare of headlines on hospital they tried to cover up the scale trolley-waits, bed shortages, of the problem. and unfiled nursing posts, now But this crisis was immedi Lately followed by head. runs all year round. But it has been supple elderly patient on a mented by trolley waiting for reports of filthy treatment at Whipps hospitals, and Cross Hospital and more recently year-round crisis condithe first full-scale condemnation of hospicals in Liverpool a Trust manage- macross the count ment regime by But Milburn's latest the Commission for Health "Id like to see : you - buying more opera answer to the problem Improvement. dorin reat week for a post-mortem" tons from the private The CHl report sector and exporting panned the Epsom and St felier Trust in SW London as Germany and elsewhere. the worst in the country, point- (which have spare capacity ing to high death rates for because their health services emergency surgery, dirty wards and urine-soaked car- Britain in frone line care) - simply rubs in the point that New pets, and stalf not ory cernor alised but intimidated by blun- Labour has failed to grasp the scale of the problem. bering trust posses. out it mat only examined a few Trusts: In each case the solution actually compounds the probcome! lem by siphoning cash OUT of Epsom/St Heller Trust chief the NHS, leaving the most executive Nigel Sewell opted hard-pressed Trusts without for the easy option of early the resources they need to retirement, pocketing a golden cope with local need.