Feb 07 2007
Clearer thinking needed for a healthier Britain
At a meeting with the "NHS Confederation" to discuss "Primary Care Trusts" I kept a note of some of the jargon which replaces clear thoughts expressed in straightforward English. Many in the NHS bureaucracy now speak in a complex language which cuts them off more from the patients and taxpayers who sustain the institution.
The meeting was about how good a service our constituents receive from their family doctors. We were told beforehand that "This briefing is an opportunity to air your concerns and hear about the often undervalued role that PCTs play. PCTs work on the public health agenda, tackle access to services, deliver out of hours services, and hold contracts with GPs and other health professionals to ensure effective primary care". Who could refuse such an invitation, to a love in with these paragons?
We were told of the advantages of "clustering practises", the importance of "Quality and Outcomes frameworks", we travelled through a "matrix" of possible health ??outcomes and were asked to admire "a new financial system" in "a very challenging year". I think that meant they felt they were short of money.
My constituents and I talk about going to the doctor. We would like to know that he or she is available if we need them, and would like reassurance that they have the training??and the facilities to look after us well.
Instead I was told by way of reassurance that it was wrong to assume "the major issue default position where the public think change is the result of cuts". Apparently all these changes to family doctors and Primary Care Trusts are necessary and should not be feared.
Was nothing wrong in a world where you might find it very difficult to arrange an appointment to see your doctor, and where services have been farmed out in the evenings and at week-ends? Of course everything is just fine, and the mergers of some PCTs will make it even better.
The briefers did admit to one problem. They confided in us that the complex system for sending the money around the NHS could create "perverse incentives and gaming" in some hospitals. That I think means a hospital could start to find more things to treat in any given group of patients if there is more money for doing so. Our hosts did not go on to name hospitals or treatments where this was happening.
We were relieved to hear that "PCTs bring systematisation and rigour to General Practise" and over the moon to learn that PCTs "create performance management systems in the public domain".
I just hope all my constituents who need a doctor’s appointment can get one when they ring the surgery.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I am not one of your constituents and I am very happy with the service at my local doctor’s surgery. However, the PCT has issued a notice telling diabetics that they are using too many blood test strips and that they are expensive. Do they imagine that diabetics enjoy taking more blood tests than they genuinely need?
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am not one of your constituents, but I can tell you here and now there are problems in the NHS but there are going to be a damn site more.
My medical records were released without permission, The doctors told me no-one was to blame. So I checked, with the BMS,GMC,Info Com, DPA, PCT, Icas, NHS etc. No body knew anything. Everybody had different ideas on what was and was not acceptible.. (The tax payer is paying all of these institutes). I eventually found out it was the Doctor who held the Data Protection policy. There practice is to change its policy!
Whilse I was trying to find out about the above I saw on the screen a comment from a receptionist which was liabelous. Asked how she was allowed to put it on without supervisory checks I was told it was perfectly acceptable. Yet again they have adopted a new code of practice!
I hasten to add at this point that several of the above mentioned bodies have advised me to sue! but being one of these nice guys that value the NHS I have not, merely put operating practices in place for any other problems. (And Tony thinks I need to have an ID card - because I’m such a bloody criminal).
Thinking that this was finally in order I find that after 2.5 years of waiting for a pysiotherapist one actually turns up (only after all of the above hassle) but in turning up the Doctors sent out my patient care summary, which contained no info pertinent to my injury but a lot of info which was not. This once again broke my privacy and confidentiality agreement under the DPA.
I had to argue, place 93c3 and 93c1 do not upload to spine do not share locally to my record!
This I’m told is a problem for the Drs because the more they load onto the spine the better their finances! I’m told they like all the details on because drug companies are allowed to trawl through our patient care summaries, nurses need to see your full medical records in order to take blood? and the chemist needs to have access to all your doctors records to be able to hand out your prescription.
Talking to my Drs was like talking to Tony Blair and alas David Cameron, spin, lies, and no substance.. It has taken me 3 weeks to sort the truth from the lies, to check my rights against so many quangos I’ve lost count.
And today I came across another brilliant idea for another database for blood! - Which will mean that all blood donors who volunteer f.o.c. and for the benefit of their fellow Britons will suufer DNA testing and the blood and the person will need to be barcoded so that they can be matched up!
And yet another British success will be on the scrap heap!
We have had one of the best blood donor services in the world and now voluntary donors will end up on the NIR and DNA databases for helping their fellow man?
What constitutes not breaking a law these days?
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I quite agree. Some of these cuts are painful and wrong. When did you hear them order a cut in the glossy brochures?
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