Suggesting an Airbnb-type service for NHS patients is another example of how out-of-touch its leadership is

The NHS lurches from one crisis to another. Winter looms, and with it an inevitable rise in admissions, leaving hospitals full of people who should be elsewhere.

This week’s “blue sky thinking” proposed a wacky way to free up beds – asking families with spare rooms to operate like Airbnb members, receiving around £50 a night for hosting patients recovering from surgery. For that pittance, hosts would have to cook and clean, and I’m not sure what toilet facilities would be included.

Who would monitor and police the scheme? Would licences be issued? Will hosts be rated on social media and websites like TripAdvisor? What about visitors? Can recuperating guests have access to the living room and the telly for an extra fee?

The pilot scheme called CareRooms, founded by a doctor and supported by a former deputy medical director of the NHS, was negotiating a contract to carry out the plan in Essex, but after extensive media coverage and criticism from Unison the project has been paused.

Southend Hospital says it will not commit to the scheme until “the necessary safeguarding and quality arrangements are in place”. Please note, they did not say “we’re dropping the plan”. After all, it could be a handy way of offloading patients, if they can tick the requisite health and safety boxes.

The NHS is overburdened with elderly users with complex medical and social needs. One of the causes of bed blocking has nothing to do with the NHS or under-funded social services – it is the refusal of many modern families to take care of elderly relatives.

Put bluntly, we have become a me-first callous society, with families living hundreds of miles apart. For every caring son or daughter who takes time to visit and support their ageing parents (and many of you write to me), there are twice as many who can’t be bothered and think it’s the NHS’s problem to find a home for granddad or grandma.

Sooner or later, all users have to take responsibility for the NHS, be prepared to pay more and not make unreasonable demands. There can be no justification for cosmetic surgery for example, or weight-reduction surgery on the grounds of mental health. We must pay a flat fee to visit a doctor and to attend A&E if our symptoms are not life threatening. Free flu and shingles injections should be means-tested.

Going forward, the NHS needs to be driven by charismatic chiefs who can enthuse and champion staff and lead by example, who can sell us a new vision of the service for the next decade. The NHS should be staffed with people with passion and commitment. Sadly, that is not currently the case.

You wouldn’t expect the head of Range Rover to drive a Fiat, or the chief executive of Tesco to buy groceries at Aldi, but the Government is determined to appoint someone to run NHS Improvements (a key role in charge of cost cutting and efficiency) who uses private healthcare.

Questioned by the Commons Select Committee on Health (a phoney job interview), Baroness Dido Harding refused point blank to give up her private health scheme. Committee member and Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: “She is hoping to head the organisation that is responsible for improving healthcare for the population of England, 95 per cent of whom don’t have access to private healthcare.” Precisely.

The appointment smacks of cronyism – a Conservative peer, Baroness Harding is married to a Tory MP and studied at Oxford with David Cameron. During her time in charge at Talk Talk, a cyber attack cost the company £60m and left over 156,000 customers’ banking details vulnerable to hackers.

In her new role, she will be in charge of streamlining the NHS technology, which was the subject of a massive cyber attack by North Korea earlier this year. A report by the National Audit Office has outlined the failings in the system during the attack, which disrupted 236 NHS Trusts and 595 GP practices, and claimed they could have been avoided if “basic IT security” had been in place.

As for double standards at the top of the health service, it has emerged that the GMC – the regular for doctors – pays for private medical insurance for more than 550 senior members of staff at a cost of more than £860,000 over three years.

According to the GMC, it’s the only way to attract the best calibre of person from similar positions in other organisations. The GMC and Baroness Harding clearly have no faith in the services they are meant to be delivering.

Every doctor I know says that private medical healthcare is fine, until the patient has an emergency. Go into a posh private clinic to have a baby, and for several thousand pounds you get a nice bathroom and a pretty pastel colour scheme in your room. But if the birth develops complications, you’ll be whisked by ambulance to the nearest A&E where a full staff trained in obstetrics will take over.

All medical emergencies are best dealt with by the NHS, not in a clinic staffed by agency workers and no 24-hour emergency care.

Why should the NHS mop up the inadequacies of private medical care? And is Baroness Harding the right person for the job?