Matt Hancock has pledged to improve access to GPs after family doctors complained they were being overwhelmed.
Doctors say they have been set an 'undoable' task by ministers, with pent-up demand from the pandemic creating a 'tsunami' of patients.
The numbers visiting GPs increased by 20 per cent last month, according to analysis of NHS England figures by the Health Foundation.
Wait, despite this 'deadly pandemic' the population has increased by 20%..? Really?
In the first year of the pandemic, 31million fewer GP appointments were carried out than normal...
No, didn't think so! It's just the system reverting to normal, and the lazy bastards having to go back to working for a living!
...as patients put off seeing doctors over fears of catching Covid or burdening the NHS.
I'm pretty sure the majority of them didn't have a choice, as GPs closed up faster than speakeasy owners in 20s Chicago when Elliot Ness and his men hove into view...
If there is one good thing that has come out of the covid pandemic or rather the Govts response to it is that it has helped to make more and more people aware of just how crap the NHS really is. Previously when, for most people, the NHS was just there in the background and available when they needed it (mostly), the populace tolerated the piss poor service that they got from it and kept silent about the piss poor service, on the grounds that it is 'free'.
ReplyDeleteNow people are starting to realise that the 'free' health service that they pay for is stuffed with people who are not that interested in doing the jobs that they are paid for by the taxpayer. I pray that at some point inthe near future when people start to realise that we are being short changed by the NHS the public will start to ask awkward questions about the NHS and demand something better.
The NHS is unbearably shit. Recently my son developed a minor digestive complaint which meant that it overreacts to certain fruits causing explosive diarreah and we had to wait two damned weeks just to get a five minute appointment with a GP who prescribed a medicine that wasn't available to pick up for another four days. A friend who has been called for a Mammogram is being forced to travel to a town twenty miles away as the mobile screening van needs to be cleaned thoroughly after each use which it cannot be as it is normally sited in a supermarket car park. However that supermarket is literally two or three minutes walk from the local general hospital and the useless pen pushers in the local healthcare group has deemed that it would be too difficult to send cleaners from the hospital to the mobile unit. Siting the screening van in the local hospital grounds is also off the agenda due to contractual difficulties between the hospital and the Trust that operates the screening van. Oh and another friend living in another area was misdiagnosed and given medication for a completely different condition and this prescription was allowed to continue for five bloody years.
We have a health service that is run along the lines of a Soviet era department store and it shows. Clap for that shit? No thanks.
"If there is one good thing that has come out of the covid pandemic or rather the Govts response to it is that it has helped to make more and more people aware of just how crap the NHS really is."
ReplyDeleteI'd hope so. Because it really is, yet all we get is 'Do you want to be like the American system?' when we complain.
No. What about the French system instead?
Well, I read the 2 comments above, and of course, there are segments in the NHS that are completely bloody useless, but there are groups, individuals and units within it that are truly first rate. That there are some that don't match up is an inevitable result of the size of the thing, and the fact that the management and administration is so bloated.
ReplyDeleteWhenever the subject of the NHS comes up, I always like to compare the standard of healthcare that I enjoy with the standard enjoyed by my cat. No waiting list for Max.
ReplyDelete