COVID-19: Autistic support group 'told it needed DNR orders'

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Yes, even with the most generous interpretation applied what these selection of GPs surgeries have been doing is outside their legal remit: DNR orders are only meant to be applied when the patient in question is judged likely to
be impervious to CPR due to an illness they actually have.
Not blanket applied to people by age/disability: that’s illegal.

Solicitors Page on DNR in UK law

Hyperlink to AgeUK article

The British Institute of Human Rights
Good overview of the situation written by the BIHR director Sanchita Hosali

If so, that's also heinous IMO - not that I'm saying you suggested otherwise. Anybody encouraging the sacrifice of human life could at least have the common decency to make quite sure they know who they're encouraging, rather than just sending out a glib blanket directive.

I see they're not in a hurry to identify the surgery responsible. Strange. Llynfi Surgery in Wales wasn't similarly protected when it did a similar thing. So now people in Somerset have grounds to be suspicious of all surgeries in the county, until the culprits are named. Though frankly I've long suspected the NHS generally has no great problem with leaving people to suffer or die when its money sums aren't adding up.

Derbyshire and East Sussex surgeries too. The residential care homes are dotted about in various locations in each of the areas mentioned, this would suggest multiple surgeries in each area, except East Sussex, they have only one voyage care home there.
Derbyshire has different residential locations in different villages/towns.
Somerset has multiple voyage care services across different towns.

Then there are the care homes for the elderly, that situation seems, in currently highlighted locations (eg East Sussex), to be deeply disturbing.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1835770 ... are-homes/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... cases.html

Yes, I did check up on UK law on the application of DNR notices: blanket directives are illegal, they are only meant to be drawn up on an individual case basis. Even then there are limits on how and when they may be used.

Indeed with the non-identification: it adds to the injustice by creating a situation where any and every GPs surgery is a potential target of suspicion.
Although, technical point, GPs surgeries are not part of the NHS: they’re private businesses that operate under contract from the NHS. However, since Andrew Lansley’s resurrection of the early 90’s “internal market” policy failure under a new name GPs surgeries have had healthcare commissioning budgets imposed on them from Westminster, and are required to stick within those budgets.
So yes, the GPs in question have illegally abused their power, but it’s power they were given by central government over the head of the NHS itself.
In part at least we are also looking at the byproduct of wilful resurrection of a failed, falsified and ethically inadequate managerial system on the part of our government in it's post-financial crash, pre-referendum form.

Holy Horse Dung!
That’s the funding body of an entire county illegally applying blanket DNRs!

One could also note that at the last updating of wikipedia’s page on the National Insurance Fund it was in surplus by £114 billion, although that page’s referencing is less useful than I’d like.

It sure does.

I know that there is a strong push for this in the U.S. because of COVID19. The actual issue is related to respirators. If a person on a ventilator has all their other organs failed, that ventilator will keep breathing for them and most likely keep their heart beating for a LONG time after there is any hope for recovery. This breathing dead person could be using a ventilator and bedspace that could instead be used for someone who has hope of survival. This has nothing to do with autism.

Long time no see, Vicky

This *is* something that needs to be discussed. The survival rate for people on ventilators with this disease ranges from 6-33%, and it's very traumatic to be vented. If you're at the end of your life, you really need to think about whether you want to go through that to have a small chance of gaining an extra few months of suffering.

But, while this should be explained starkly to people, they shouldn't be pressured to sign a DNR. Nor should MPs, such as ones called David Morris, accuse local GPs of trying to do that when they release a video explaining that these discussions need to be had and that their GPs will be making calls to have those discussions...

I didn't know those details, though I was aware that there's been a steady erosion of the NHS and that GP surgeries were becoming more like businesses because of government ideology. I guess the idea is that the gov knows that most people don't understand bureaucracy, so they quietly make complicated-sounding changes without anybody noticing the resultant deterioration of service until it's too late, and even then it's hard for them to figure out how it happened and who did the damage.

Does anyone know why the number of care home deaths aren't being recorded in the official figures?

^ I think this came up in Ezra’s covid 19 stats thread: the on the day figures released by the Cabinet Office are NHS hospitals deaths reported that day, the figures released by the Office of National Statistics are rectified figures which assign each death to the day on which it occurred, and add in deaths outside of NHS hospitals.
ONS figures are two weeks behind CO figures, and average a bit over a third higher.

In the US, deaths from care homes MUST be recorded. Any morgue admission must be recorded. Any funeral home admission, too.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 13 Apr 2020, 5:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thanking you!

The NHS, like the Catholic Church, isn’t so much an institution as it’s a complex network of interlocking institutions which operate under a single brand.
It’s been like that from the beginning: Nye Bevan had to set it up like that to get all the various professions to play along nicely.
That’s why there’s always been a shifting internal line within the NHS between public and private sector, and a multitude of local and national authority wielding bodies.