GP service, lazy bastards

[sasguru]

You have no idea .

That is sufficient when talking about Lord Haw Haw.

[woohoo]

It's surprised me with my recent NHS experiences that there isn't any follow up. I do a council run french evening class, and with this being the council they constantly get us to fill out forms to rate them, the teacher, and most of all whether you feel like your sexual orientation and/or disability issues are treated with respect. But with the NHS they never ask if you're satisfied that having waited 3 months to see a specialist, you then have to wait another 3 months for the test/scan they ordered, and another 3 months to see the specialist again to find out if you're going to live. Everybody just accepts the crapness and mindless inefficiency of it all.

Well the response to our complaint (I'm not even sure if its been recorded as a complaint) is that we can take it further to the ombudsman.

So not interested in knowing our thoughts or if anything had been misunderstood.

[scooterscot]

You have no idea how it actually works though.

Equipment is useless without people to use it, so you need to look at the nurse / patient and doctor / patient ratio. You also need to look at the handover between organisations (because there are a LOT of them involved, the NHS isn't monolithic) and it's almost entirely based on writing letters. For a GP to book an appointment for a scan or to see a consultant takes ages because that's how long sending all the letters and faxes takes. In the hospital I was in it usually happens on the same day or day after, or as soon as medically practical, because they have direct access to the booking systems that the GP doesn't.

Why write a letter for a MRI. Just write a prescription as you would for drugs. GP to patient: take this paper across the road to get you scan, this afternoon okay with you?

This happened to myself last year or so with the cyst on my foot, I got sent across the road from the GP to the MRI unit the same day. No letters not nothing. And returned to my GP with MRI CD in hand the next day. Of course this is in Germany.

We in the UK like to make the most simplest of things complicated. There's no blinding need for it.

[doodab]

It's inefficient if the goal is to keep people healthy.

Efficiency is defined by two things, the resources you consume and what you get when you consume them.

It might be considered ineffective if you aren't getting what you would like, but you can't say it's inefficient without also looking at the resources consumed and it turns out the NHS although not the best is actually about average in terms of results achieved per pound spent.

[doodab]

Why write a letter for a MRI. Just write a prescription as you would for drugs. GP to patient: take this paper across the road to get you scan, this afternoon okay with you?

This happened to myself last year or so with the cyst on my foot, I got sent across the road from the GP to the MRI unit the same day. No letters not nothing. And returned to my GP with MRI CD in hand the next day. Of course this is in Germany.

We in the UK like to make the most simplest of things complicated. There's no blinding need for it.

No there isn't, but until the systems and processes are put into place to make it more efficient (which is what I was advocating, you seemed to pooh pooh the idea) the letter writing remains necessary.

[d000hg]

It's inefficient if the goal is to keep people healthy.

Our increased (and increasing) life expectancy suggests otherwise. Our health continues to improve, except where we screw it up with terrible diet choices, etc.

[Old Greg]

Why write a letter for a MRI. Just write a prescription as you would for drugs. GP to patient: take this paper across the road to get you scan, this afternoon okay with you?

This happened to myself last year or so with the cyst on my foot, I got sent across the road from the GP to the MRI unit the same day. No letters not nothing. And returned to my GP with MRI CD in hand the next day. Of course this is in Germany.

We in the UK like to make the most simplest of things complicated. There's no blinding need for it.

Did your GP interpret the MRI scan CD in the absence of a radiologist's report?

[woohoo]

Why write a letter for a MRI. Just write a prescription as you would for drugs. GP to patient: take this paper across the road to get you scan, this afternoon okay with you?

This happened to myself last year or so with the cyst on my foot, I got sent across the road from the GP to the MRI unit the same day. No letters not nothing. And returned to my GP with MRI CD in hand the next day. Of course this is in Germany.

We in the UK like to make the most simplest of things complicated. There's no blinding need for it.

At the Spire, private hospital in England, the consultant picked up the phone and asked the lady in the MRI department if it was free. She said yes and we walked down there, I had coffee whilst I waited. It was nice.

[scooterscot]

No there isn't, but until the systems and processes are put into place to make it more efficient (which is what I was advocating, you seemed to pooh pooh the idea) the letter writing remains necessary.

Well I'm just saying there's other countries here in Europe that don't write letters for a x-ray or MRI. The less there is in the system the more efficient it shall become.

We're masters in bureaucracy.

[woohoo]

Our increased (and increasing) life expectancy suggests otherwise. Our health continues to improve, except where we screw it up with terrible diet choices, etc.

Just because our life expectancy increases does not mean the NHS/GP service is efficient.