I’ve had two shocks about the NHS in the last day or so and will be arguing about our healthcare next week when visiting France.
The first jolt was reading that between 1979 and 2005 and compared to 18 other western countries, our health service was more cost-effective at cutting mortality rates than 16 of them: the USA was the least cost-effective and France’s score nothing to envy.
When I stopped laughing over the news that
a former Cosmopolitan centerfold model, who
posed for the magazine semi-nude in 1982, had won deceased Edward Kennedy’s
seat in the US Senate more serious thoughts sprang to mind.
Like all NHS users, I’m scared that filling
the black hole in the economy will be achieved by Nick Clegg’s infamous ‘savage
cuts’ to public services.
Taking a slash and burn approach to the
NHS, is political suicide, according to received wisdom. But the horrid feeling
that the Lib Dems’ leader may be right won’t
leave me.
GPs in England who are waiting fearfully to find out if the new polyclinic up the road will decimate their patient list may be thinking how different their practices’ prospects would be if instead ‘I’d decided to practise in Scotland.’ For the Scottish Government is taking steps to prevent commercial companies from running GP surgeries, although not even one Scottish practice is currently run by a private provider.
When I turned on the TV yesterday evening, it was not my intention to watch BBC One’s Panorama programme on the postcode lottery for NHS treatment. After a working day filled with nothing but the NHS and its travails, my idea was to relax by watching ‘New Tricks’, a drama series with moments of high comedy about three old coppers (policemen) reinvestigating cold cases of murder most foul that had stumped younger colleagues.
I sometimes think that reading the weekend
papers – the bits not about lifestyle and travel- are bad for our health. Of
course for a journalist to say this is sacrilege. But the jolt to my system of
a distressing news story can ruin my attempts at de-stressing after a busy
week. Perhaps you react the same way too.
In South Africa the hunt may still be on for a few hospital escapees with drug-resistant TB who, two days ago, broke out of hospital in Port Elizabeth after one of their number – a patient with untreatable XDR-TB – was allowed out on a shopping trip.
Security guards refused another 19 TB patients’ cries of ‘Me too’ only to be overpowered. While some rushed off to the shops, others wanted freedom – in spite of the pool tables, soccer and netball kit, etc – that had been brought in to deter breakouts. Of the group, 12 patients returned to the hospital and three went home to their families. Four remained at large and a search by a team clad in protection gear was to get underway.
In the London area I live in, most patients going to the local hospital would be delighted to get suited up in protective clothing first. And a lot more than ping-pong balls or online poker free at the point of delivery is probably needed to keep the walking wounded inside it for any length of time. Mention its name and locals starting talking about MRSA and C difficile. We dread being run over in case its A & E is the nearest.
The hospital’s reputation for poor hygiene long predates the Healthcare Commission’s inspection regime – and, yes, the trust does languish on the list announced on 16 July of NHS facilities to get nine months to clean up their act or else.
So if you ask my neighbours and I about visiting a GPSI in a local surgery rather than going to outpatients at (to be on the safe side, a more distant) hospital, guess which we choose. Treatment by GPSIs is convenient and skilled, and waiting lists are short. The more GPSIs the merrier, is what we say.
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