When you can't see a GP

[Briar]

In today's Guardian:

When you can't see a GP

Privatisation and crude targets are creating havoc in the health
Service

Jenni Russell

Tony Blair seemed astonished to be told on television on Thursday night that many NHS patients are unable to make an appointment with their GP more than 48 hours in advance because of government targets. His bafflement that his waiting-times policies really had had a perverse effect on people's ability to see doctors when they need to has given many people working in the health service a certain grim satisfaction. That's because there's a widespread unhappiness within the NHS about the way that many of Labour's interventions have worked in practice -creating difficulties that their creators didn't foresee. As one senior doctor said to me: "Change is always necessary. But what's happened here is an interference with the way the health service has evolved. We've had several sudden changes to the way we work, and the cumulative effect of those has been catastrophic."


The sudden changes are no accident. Underlying them has been the
government's determination to allow private companies access to the
NHS. Its new contracts are making fundamental changes to the way GPs
and hospital doctors work. It is opening up swaths of general practice to profit-seeking healthcare companies, and outsourcing hospital services and simple surgical operations to the private sector at the same time. The government believes that these changes are in patients' interests. But the evidence is more equivocal.

...


There is no doubt that the government has made healthcare a political and financial priority. But in doing so it has been convinced by the arguments of the giant private companies who make money out of health. It believes, just as Mrs Thatcher did, that market-driven public services will be more efficient and responsive - and that the profits the NHS will have to pay for will be outweighed by the gains. The result is that the NHS, which is being reshaped under our noses, is being designed to suit the requirements of the private companies as much as the needs of the individual patient. The government believes there need be no clash of interest but there frequently is. Markets have never delivered universal healthcare or equity - both core NHS principles to which the government insists it still subscribes.

More at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1473715,00.html

[non sociopath skin]

1. Our excellent Health Centre seems to cope OK.

You phone in the morning for a same-day appointment or in the afternoon for an appointment on a specific day and time. Haven't let us down yet.

The Skin

[sweetheart]

2. Healthcare is excellent, dental sucks rocks

The NHS does not have a functioning practice in the north of scotland,
so people are asked to be part of a private insurance scheme, that
is kinda a waste of money, and many people cannot afford it.

I would much rather simply pay for treatment at a private dentist if
there was one that did not charge the extortion rate of "membership"
at the clinic.. and i'm thinkin' id rather drive 120 miles for
dental treatment than be subject to the 180 pounds/year membership
fee.

Medical is excellent, brilliant... i've nothing but respect for the
NHS and its people.