To: Don Wise

From: Paul Servant

Re: Chuff huff huff

Dear Don,

The DGH model is dead, which is rather unfortunate as we run three of them.  Three bunches of nice, well-meaning people doing their best to provide mediocre outcomes to local people whose only demand is that care is available on their doorstep, whatever its quality.

Given that we will go bust (well have been for 10 years, but the bungs cover it up), especially if we follow the planning guidance (I wonder if that is the secret agenda) we need to get out of this business fast and find new opportunities. So here’s the conundrum, how to provide DGH services locality to keep the natives quiet, but have the economies of scale and concentration of excellence? 

Simples!! We present NHS2, the saviour of HS2!  High Speed 2 is never going to work without more of a compelling demand case and the DGH model can’t work without greater scale and catchments. National High Speed 2 is the answer. With trains running at millions of miles an hour, if we plonk a whopping big hospital on the line in the middle of the country, you’ll never be more than an hour from a hospital.  NHS will now stand for National Health Station. These will provide outpatients, diagnostic carriages with labs and scanners will zip up and down the lines, and inpatients will be sped to the NHS2 Centre for anything serious. We can even run A&E trains like the old post office sorting ones and scoop up casualties as we whizz past.

It’ll pay for itself from the closure of 100 DGHs, and give the line a purpose.  And if that doesn’t work, have I mentioned my idea for those big empty aircraft carriers the government’s building which won’t have planes?  Think how many DGHs you could get in one of those, with helicopter pick from home!