We all know the National Health Service is under tremendous strain.
Staff shortages; not enough time for GPs to spend with patients; hospitals having to leave new patients on trollies because there are not enough beds on the wards.
Who is to blame for all this?
In fact that should be who is responsible for the current state of affairs because we know the blame gets laid on the shoulders of those in the front line.
The GP receptionists take the brunt when they have to tell patients there are no face-to-face appointments with a doctor within two weeks.
The doctors themselves are accused of not giving enough time to their patients, or do not pay enough attention to those they do see.
Higher up the chain doctors or consultants are accused of spending too much time dealing with private patients.
What we must remember is that the receptionist can only offer appointments when they are available; GPs have to allot a specific period of time to an appointment, if they go over even a minute it builds up to six minutes in an hour and over a day could take up an hour which means six patients lose out.
Although I do not condone private practice if hospital doctors and consultants are not allowed time out for such moneymaking activities then they are more likely to drop NHS work and go completely private.
The real problem lies with the politicians, politicians of all colours, who believe that by gradually putting more and more effort into slicing off sections of the NHS and giving them to the private sector.
Of course the politicians are not the only ones to blame. There is a large chunk of pencil pushers at the heart of NHS management.
Forms must be filled in and then need to go to another department to be verified, after which they get passed to another division for a signature and finally to the department which files the forms.
Details of appointments also take a circuitous route. From being written (when a date goes on it) a letter might not even go out for delivery for a few days.
How else could a letter dated 6 January only get delivered on 11 January?
Yet this is a problem which crops up time after time after time.
Why not email the appointments on the day they are made? Or send them by telephonic messaging services?
It doesn’t take a genius to cut the waste.
Robin's Nest 