NHS, can they get anything right?

I'm still waiting for a reply from the hospital about the complaint I made beginning of January.

I would suggest she sees her GP and asks him/her to write to the Department concerned and also to the surgeon, asking him/her to back the GP's letter up. The surgeon should know whether funding should have been applied for in the first place. Unfortunately things like this happen all the time in the NHS. Good luck!

Galen that is poor. DD was so angry that the department concerned couldn't even be bothered to read her notes and understand what operation was planned, she rang the hospital to speak to the consultant's secretary and in his absence the secretary put her through to the department that sent out the letter.

However she has just rung to say that her consultant was back from holiday today and has already started to sort things out. We have a lot of confidence in her consultant, he is not a man to take administrative error kindly. Someone previously cancelled one of his operation sessions, when DD was on it and forgot to inform not just DD and anther patient, but the consultant himself. He just said 'since no-one had told either him or the two patients about the cancellation, the operations would go ahead as planned - and they did!

Redrach, all her treatment has been hospital-based. Although copies of all correspondence goes to the GP, she hasn't seen him since she had the accident over 2 years ago and he hasn't even seen her arm and has had no involvement in treatment.

FlicketyB, it doesn't matter if she hasn't seen the GP recently. I've been a GPs' secretary for over 20 years and they are happy to act as a go-between in these situations. I'm glad the surgeon is now sorting it out. Hope the ops go well.

Had a letter today to say our village surgery was closing down; it's @ 6 miles to the main surgery. The next village has a surgery and the practice wouldn't dream of closing that one down [but no public transport to that surgery for our residents]. Think we've got a fight on our hands. There is a public meeting [5 pm so difficult for working people to attend and the opposite end of the village from where most of the elderly patients live].

Was that the one you worked in Tegan? Has it all gone to pieces since you left?

I have had a letter from doctor's surgery to say that I have been on high dose statins for a number of years and they are going to change my prescription in an attempt to avoid muscle weakness. I have not complained of problems so someone is doing their homework.

It was always on the cards, kitty [it was obvious when they took all the heating out a few years ago !]. Thank goodness I left when I did and didn't put up with another winter of working in appalling conditions only to be told the job was finished. Whenever they told me about the 'plans' for the future of the place I just laughed and said that we all knew it was never going to happen. I despair of what's happening to rural communities these days.

Our village is suffering because a pharmacy has opened on an industrial estate within a crow's mile of half the village. There is no transport from village to pharmacy but it means that the half of the village can no longer use the dispensary at the surgery but have to go elsewhere to get their medications dispensed.

One of the arguements is that, as our village has hardly any amenities anyway everyone obviously has to drive elsewhere for other things therefore what's to stop them driving to the doctors surgery ie you've got next to nothing so you might as well put up with zero.

Do you think it's the practice making this decision Tegan or are they being leaned on by NHS management/

Six miles to the nearest surgery?! They can't do that!

They've known for years that alternative premises needed to be found and the current one [which has been a surgery for @ 50 years] is now 'no longer fit for purpose' eg there's mould on some of the walls. I reckon a taxi to the other surgery will cost £10 return; we do at least have a bus service now [used to be a couple of buses a day] but when you're not well [or you have a small child with you] you don't really want to travel on a skylink bus. It's a dispensing practice as well so people will have to travel 6 miles to pick up their prescription. Housebound people will get a delivery service but sometimes you can be short of housebound but not very mobile. I'm fuming.

Our small surgery in the village which also provided Chiropody and Baby clinics, was closed some years ago so we have to go to the nearest town. We also lost our little Police office and resident Officer about the same time and were told that we were within the required 4 miles to a new police station in a neighbouring village although there is no bus service between the two villages. Now the counter is to close at that new police station because it is within 4 miles of the next one in the County town. But we are not within four miles - we are now 5 or 6 miles away. The only direct bus to the County town is the one that goes on to the nearest hospital 15 or 16 miles away. When our local hospitals were closed, in the face of campaigns to keep them open, we were assured that there would be a regular direct bus service for visitors, outpatients and admissions but now this is to be discontinued through lack of numbers using the service. We all know, and have told the Health Board, that the scheduled times do not dovetail with visiting or outpatient clinic times, nor do they coincide with staff shift changeovers and as the bus takes detours through all the smaller villages en route, the journey takes well over an hour, instead of half an hour by car.

Meanwhile, the village has more than doubled in size due to extensive 'dormitory' house building, bringing the total population well above the lower level which was used as the reason for taking our services away . Another reason given for closing the little health centre was that there was no chemist and therefore patients had to go to town anyway to fill prescriptions. Now we do have a Chemist - because the population has grown enough to make it viable - but we still have to go to town to collect prescriptions from the health centre

I thought the CCGs were in charge of the finances and have been asked to reorganise surgeries because they have to save so much money, the Nicholson Challenge.
Soon there will not be an NHS.
www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/02/26/another-5-billion-of-nhs-privatisation-is-now-happening-with-the-aim-of-privatising-most-of-the-rest/

Progress eh . There's no stopping these things but at least least we can go down fighting and kick a few ankles [although I bet they slip me down the waiting list when I eventually need a new hip/knee etc]....we never had traffic lights in the village which meant the children at the school couldn't cross the road to use their playing field; the reason being that the road was so busy traffic lights would 'slow the traffic down' . Funnily enough, after a phone call to the local paper and a bit of bad publicity hey ho we got a crossing.

It's not necessarily the NHS's fault. It is having money stripped from it in all directions. If you want to keep the NHS, vote for the NHA party in the euro elections in May.
nhap.org/use-euro-vote-make-stand-nhs/

We know there's a problem with finance but we feel it's all been done in a rather underhand way. The S.O. used to be a medical rep and he says dispensing practices do rather well out of it. Even the PLG knew nothing about it, even though the letter said they had liased with them.

pulsetoday.msgfocus.com/c/13USreslrnrw0gZDlVHpnyk

Soon there will be no NHS.

Last post. Can't be bothered.