NHS - TIRED OF WAITING

Regular readers of this blog will know there are 2 topics guaranteed to instantly rile me into revolutionary mode – these are Energy and the NHS. When these subjects are on the blogging agenda, look out!

Neatly shoehorned on the front page of today’s Telegraph between Trump and Tehran was this little gem:

Today's  Telegraph

It’s not a crime to tidy up information on a company database. Getting rid of unnecessary data, duplicate or defunct records is considered good housekeeping to ensure your golden records remain exactly that - current and uncluttered.

The tabloids are right to cast aspersions on NHS record keeping because when it comes to anything health service related, it’s not always what the doctor ordered.

Since the hand grenade has already been lobbed then I’m going to take this opportunity to add the view from the pleb on the street free and gratis to the mix.

I’d like to focus attention on some of the reasons quoted in the reportage as contributing to removals from waiting lists. Here goes:

Going Private – It’s no surprise that private healthcare insurance or treatments are on the increase given the length of time most of us are expected to wait before we can access the NHS. It’s completely unreasonable to expect patients to grin and bear it for months even years when pain becomes so excruciating that it begins to impact mental wellbeing and quality of life. Believe me, I know what it’s like to live with daily chronic pain as I’ve been doing so for around 20 years.

Pathways to care are as long as the Great Wall of China, many offering a whole host of ineffective remedies or self-care advice when what is needed are physical medical interventions or surgery to deal with the root cause. Wait and See is the NHS mantra. What for? Going private not only gives you a fast-track pass to wellbeing but does so in a way that is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. What’s more, you don’t even need private health insurance because most private hospitals/clinics offer interest free self-funding options for treatment.

The other reason peeps are going private is not always through choice but because over the years, the NHS has been sneakily offloading treatments into the private sector (ear syringing/dentistry etc). Bean counters decreed that GPs should no longer treat or prescribe for small, routine ailments forcing us all into the hands of private pharmacies who are more than happy to empty your purse for you. Although sometimes this can work in your favour especially if the over-the-counter remedy is cheaper than the average cost of a prescription which is now almost £10 per item.

Expect this trend to continue particularly when care is fully offloaded into the community. Any ailment categorised as being a result of natural ‘wear and tear’ or due to old age such as arthritis or conditions for which the NHS currently see as having no cure are likely to be added to this heap. The list of what you’ll be required to pay for will just grow and grow and grow leaving hospitals to deal with emergency life-threatening care only. All routine stuff will eventually be privatised.

Death – A direct consequence of the ‘Wait & See’ approach to healthcare and probably the NHS’s preferred outcome since it results in a permanent solution to any further expenses being incurred. The House of Lords may be deliberately scuppering the Assisted Dying Bill but who needs a trip to Switzerland when you’ve got the NHS. Almost everyday there’s one story or another about some poor bugger who died as a result of poor untimely diagnosis by doctors ie Sepsis. Sad but true.

Technology – Can’t kill you but it sure as hell contributes to a digital death since most of us lose the will to live trying to grapple with the whys and wherefores of new online portals to access healthcare.

It wouldn’t be so bad if someone actually phoned you to ask if you still needed a place on the NHS waiting list but most of the time, your spot has to be re-confirmed using a URL link sent to a smartphone. The elderly, techno luddites or even those peeps like me who don’t want a smartphone fail to understand why they suddenly aren’t in the treatment queue anymore all because they didn’t know what to do with a text message or couldn’t respond electronically.

I appreciate the NHS need to find out if anyone’s fallen into the first two categories but generic texting is not the answer for everyone.

There’s something this reportage hasn’t touched upon but I’m going to throw this out there anyway now I’m on my soapbox and that is a move towards more ‘evidence based’ treating of conditions.

Many a time I’ve read reports in the media about some new drug, therapy or treatment for specific conditions which NICE (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence) has decreed is either too expensive or doesn’t have enough specific concrete evidence to back up using it.

I have to chuckle every time I see NICE mentioned because it’s the only corporate entity that fails to live up to its name!

How much ‘evidence’ is enough to warrant prescribing new medications or treatments? How is this ‘evidence’ gathered? And how long a period should it be gathered for before NICE can make a decision on whether or not to offer it to patients? How many more questions can I squeeze into one paragraph?

Everything ultimately boils down to money, something the NHS struggle to manage almost as ineffectively as their patient database. Health outcomes should not be determined by an ROI (return on investment) algorithm. For someone with a chronic or terminal condition, an improvement even by a small percent can have a huge impact on their quality of life, something which I feel NICE fail to take into account because they’re too busy staring at the bottom line.

Fiddling patient waiting lists is the least of our worries. What is more important is challenging the status quo to get speedy diagnosis and access to effective treatments.