Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Well they have to fund the bargain basement upcoming tax policy somehow.

When people vote for low taxes what do you expect?

---------- Post added at 18:14 ---------- Previous post was at 18:04 ----------



You are correct to a point, the NHS has 2 problems, a combination of bad management and under funding. A good way to check how well funded it is, is to compare the funding per adult to france, germany and even america, we are behind all of them significantly.

On the management side I think a lot of issues are down to employees, particularly the skilled ones like GPs, consultants etc. been used to current very good employment terms and as such resisting more realistic terms.

e.g. my GP only see's patients 3 days a week, what is she doing on the other days? other GPs around here are commonly the same, not often available 5 days a week. At my old GP surgery where it was pretty much impossible to see a full time non locum GP, I was surprised to find one of the GPs who worked there at my DLA tribunal about 4 years back. So that explains what that GP was doing instead of seeing patients. I think a lot of doctors, do private work alongside their NHS work to maximise their earnings, the issue I have is this compromises their availability for NHS work which is why I think any doctor employed by the NHS should agree to doing no private work.

There is also a lot of hidden information which to some people may be a wake up call, e.g. in some areas a GP refferal has to be vetted by a middle man department to get the referrals approved, a cost management exercise. Many GPs have limitations on referrals they can carry out per financial year, again a cost management exercise. Many people do not get the support they need to lead better quality of lives as a result of the NHS not been able to cope.

This varies heavily from area to area which is why some people find it hard to understand how bad it is, e.g. my sister can ring her GP surgery at 1pm and get an appointment the same afternoon, my surgery opens its phone lines at 7.45am and by 7.55am the appointments are gone for the entire day. They allow advanced appointments to be made up to 2 weeks ahead, but 90% of the time there is none available. If you ring and say its urgent they tell you to goto A&E which is actually against NHS guidelines to try and reduce load on A&E departments. Once an ambulance took me to my GP surgery after I was refused an appointment due to lack of slot, and they had claimed there was no such thing as emergency appointments, the surgery manager was embarrassed when the paramedic explained the obligations they have to fullfill with everyone in the waiting room listening. They of course never changed their policy tho.