The Surgery's Gone Down the Plughole

It's a 150 mile round trip from my Mum's town

that really is unacceptable considering these are hospital patients and therefore not 100% fit!

The problem is, Wilma, that you do not actually know if your surgery is owned by a private company and leased back.

www.virgincare.co.uk/

Virgincare run 230 NHS services. However, they take a profit and send the money offshore, so not paying taxes properly and taking money out of the NHS.

djen Wilma* mentioned that her mother lives in Scotland which healthcare is devolved and may be run differently by the Scottish Government which is not a Tory government:

www.ournhsscotland.com/our-nhs/nhsscotland-how-it-works

where, not which

djen I am pretty sure my GP service isn't because one of the doctors I see would have mentioned it. He's a lovely doctor, but such a chatter box and never remembers what he's said before! I do agree though that you might not be aware.

rosequartz not only that, many of the patients who need to use the mini bus are elderly and such a long day can't help them when they're poorly. I can't see the situation being allowed to carry on. Surely something will have to be done. The local hospital is really nice and is equipped with operating theatres although I imagine only straight forward surgery was carried out there.

My surgery has put a big poster on the waiting room wall congratulating itself on providing a delivery service to my village; a service that was needed because they closed down the satellite surgery that was providing for all the elderly and housebound people who lived there. As a dispensing practice they just didn't want the local chemists to poach their business.

Wilma it seems daft to me that several elderly people, not well, all have to travel that distance when one consultant could make the trip.
A friend used to volunteer for the hospital car service, but they only got expenses which was not enough to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the car.

Couldn't agree more. Presumably running a shuttle service is cheaper than paying the consultants to travel. Some surgery can't be done at the local hospital, so a shuttle service would be cheaper than transport/ambulance transfer costs for those patients who can't get there under their own steam. It's only one step further for the consultant not to travel. It's not just elderly patients, it's patients who can't get to the larger hospital under their own steam.

I have noticed that there is a shuttle bus between all the hospitals in County Durham. Fortunately I've never had to use it. If you have to go to another hospital from Durham, it's usually in Newcastle, which is not served by the shuttle bus.

A 150 mile round trip to hospital? I'm surprised there's enough hours in the day. The cardiothoracic centre is 20 miles away, but it's two hours and four trains each way, so by the time you've sat in the waiting room, seen the doctor, walked to and from the stations etc., it's between 5 and 6 hours.

It's about an hour and a half on a good day. I just don't think that is acceptable, but my Mum says people in rural areas are used to things being awkward or difficult because of their location and just get on with it. It does make me realise that it doesn't matter whether you live in the country or the city, both have their own problems. She does have an excellent GP service and it seems to work well with the local hospital.

Those of us who live near large, full service general hospitals are lucky. In the rural areas of the UK you would have to travel a lot more than 70 miles for some specialisms e.g if you live in mid or west Wales and you need cancer treatment or a special care baby unit - you will have to head to somewhere near the north or south coast (Cardiff, Swansea, Bangor etc)
It is probably not economically viable to send a consultant long distances to do outpatients clinics in distant locations.
In NZ, which has a very dispersed population, the country spends a similar amount per head on health care and they do try to provide things like minor surgery in small towns I believe. But you pay to see your GP.

Where DD lives in Australia it is a 2+ hour flight to see a cardiologist, for cancer treatment and other specialist treatments including neo-natal specialist care.
The local hospitals (2 hours by road) offer some treatment - if you pay of course! A GP appointment used to be £75, it may have gone up. People have private insurance to claim some of the costs back but it is not cheap.

JessM the thing is that when the old full service hospital was knocked down and replaced with the smaller one, consultants holding clinics at the smaller hospital was part of the deal. And that's what has changed. The consultants are no longer travelling to the smaller hospital, so people have to make a 150 mile round trip to see their consultant. I wonder if the operating theatres in the smaller hospital are used now? My Mum's friend was taken by ambulance to the larger hospital last week when she was diagnosed with appendicitis to have her appendix removed.

I am aware of the situation in Wales because it's been on the news and I think it's dreadful.

The other thing about patients travelling for hospital treatment as an inpatient is the problem of family and friends not being able to visit. It's a bit much to for someone to do a day's work and then drive miles to see a loved one in hospital.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it's useful to compare the UK with other countries. We can count ourselves lucky to have the NHS, but there's nothing wrong with being unhappy with a reduction in the service.

I'm afraid we will see considerable further reductions as budgets are slashed and all parts of the NHS struggling to maintain service.
The government talk about £22 billion "efficiency savings" needed during this term of Tory rule. This is easy to say and impossible to achieve.
Efficiency savings mean things like fewer and more centralised services. Patients will have to travel further. This has already begun under the coalition.
A real example i heard about, from a relative who retired as a consultant last year, was that his really ill lung cancer patients were finding the services they needed being centralised in the middle of London so that they would have to travel from somewhere outside the South Downs. There is absolutely no chance that any rural services will improve for the foreseeable future.
Efficiency savings is basically a mealy mouthed way of saying "cuts". There will inevitably be huge cuts in services and NHS staff numbers.
There is a move afoot by the Tories to change the election boundaries in their favour to help them get a majority in the next election. All I can suggest to people is that they join their local Labour party and help to build a strong opposition.

Grey thoughts for a grey day. There was a piece on our local TV news last week about a protest somewhere in the Midlands about plans to move maternity services to a hospital 20 miles away. It's happening everywhere and all the time.

Just had a letter this morning, Richard Branson is our new provider. No mention of how/if they're going to recruit more GPs though.