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A top doctor has hit out at the NHS for wasting money, claiming the Health Service offered to deliver him a 50p pill in a £70 taxi.
Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s former deputy chief medical officer, warned that Britons were losing patience with overspending in the health service.
The public health expert, who gained fame during the Covid pandemic due to his regular appearances at Downing Street briefings, was speaking at a conference on NHS fraud and inefficiency.
He revealed how a hospital pharmacy offered to courier a single tablet after running out of stock.
Staff initially asked him to return to the hospital pharmacy at a later date, but that would have involved a 60-mile round trip so he declined.
In response they offered to deliver the missing pill in a taxi, costing around £70.
Sir Jonathan said: ‘Of course, knowing what I know, I knew that the cost of that tablet was at worst 90p, at best 50p.
‘And so I had to manually phone my GP and say, look, can you possibly prescribe me one tablet of this and it will save another bit of the NHS this heap of money that they’re going to throw at the problem in the most inefficient way?’
The public health expert, known from his pandemic briefings, was speaking at a conference session on NHS fraud and inefficiency.
Professor Van-Tam said that the incident shows the lack of shared data within the health service, which is wasting taxpayer money.
‘Had pharmacy data sets been linked up, for example, in a much more intelligent, maybe AI-assisted way, I could have been directed somewhere else to pick that up rather than having to solve the problem myself,’ he said.
‘But most people don’t bother to solve the problem. They’ll just take the solution that’s offered, which would have been very costly for the system.’
In response, former health minister Lord James Bethell, said patients increasingly believed the health service tolerated ‘mad, crazy, extraordinary arrangements’ that would never be accepted elsewhere.
‘The general public can smell that fraud is apparent,’ he said.
‘As the next election approaches, this is going to be a very potent election issue.
‘If you don’t get on top of it between now and then, I fear that it’s going to be hitting the headlines, leaflets stuck through your door and populist politicians will take advantage of the weaknesses of the NHS.’
