This has to be the ultimate in waste of NHS funds.

I don’t think immigrants ‘pour’ into our country and nor should the NHS be under pressure from such a small increase.

Contrary to populist opinion JenniferEccles most contribute taxes etc to the U.K. economy and thus are not draining our public services if these taxes were funnelled into Education, the NHS, police and other services.

There are two basic reasons the NHS is failing in some areas; lack of funding from central government and lack of qualified staff. Thousands of nursing positions are vacant because they cannot be filled....especially now that many nurses from the EU are returning to their home country.

If it wasn't so serious it could be a scene from 'The life of Brian'
In fact there was a scene where Reg wanted to be a woman.
Fennel
Have you ever worked for a nationalised industry?
They have a completely different mindset to people who work in the real world where money spent has to be accounted for and justified.

I spent my life working for the real world of state schools where money spent has to be accounted for and justified and scrutinised again and again!

Where the faults lie, in any state run organisations is at central government level and not at the front line! Targets, dictats, 'good ideas' & continual changes from the centre is what wastes the money.. especially when they ignore the skills, knowledge and expertise of those that actually know! (AKA 'experts'.. but they are out of fashion with the right wingers!)

I had a big-wig business partner once ..he was supposed to help be run my schoolas part of some government scheme to show us how the real world worked( for which his company got a tax break for getting involved)
He was horrified that one person, i.e. me had to do the range of work required of me and did not have a PA. He was horrified at the staff room, the lack of resources, quality of décor, the fact staff paid for their own tea & coffee. That was before we actually got to the classrooms or looked at the budget
In his 'real world' at Goldman Sachs he ran a department with fewer staff than I had but he had a PA, an expensive & original art work on his luxurious office wall (mine kitted out from IKEA!) & his taff had some fancy coffee machine at their disposal and a subsidised restaurant (not even a canteen!) He drove a state of the art sporty soft top. I had a Ford Ka His job was to buy music futures mine was to ensure human futures.

I have many friends who run small businesses and I know it is different for them... more like my experience of trying to keep a small school going!

When I had my hysterectomy I received a letter saying I would not be called for smear testing as I no longer had a cervix. Surely this should be the only criteria.
I cannot believe the content of the OP, but maybe the world is crazy, it certainly seems so a lately.

Joelsnan I had the same op; I wonder if we should be offended, kick up a fuss and insist that we are called for testing even though we don't have that particular bit of anatomy any longer? I too found the article beyond belief - but there it was, in the Telegraph.

petra no I haven't worked for a nationalised industry TG.
But I did work for a LG Ed. authority and this accountability thing was getting worse when I retired. In the 90s.
So I know what you mean. I think.

I agree with Granny pauline, PFI is a huge waste, we're just giving money to shareholders that should go on treatments

Joelsnan and Rosina, me too and I felt it was a huge relief as I found the test very uncomfortable. One the other hand, I did have a small negative thought about how it highlighted I could never become pregnant again.
However, I do have the knowledge that I was born a woman, feel like I am a woman and happily living as one. I guess it is harder to understand somebody feeling that they are a lesser woman unless we've walked in their shoes. Which is more expensive, testing them or ongoing counselling about their distress at not feeling like a real woman? Whilst my natural instinct is to say ffs, just man up, my rational thought process can see that it is a minefield.
I've worked in small business, Education and the Civil Service. In Media it seemed that the more money you could spend getting "the look" was fundamental, in Education you could waste many a work hour for the entire staff arguing about which eraser to buy and in the Civil Service you were too idle to worry about who was spending what. In small business, every penny counted so you went for best value.

I feel the problem with the NHS is too much management taking the money which should be spent on nurses and treatment.

Re wasted prescription items, I don't suppose a (late) friend of,ours was an isolated case.

He was on umpteen medications, several of which could be bought over the counter relatively cheaply.

More than once I counted over 60 prescription items of around 6 different types, stockpiled in his bathroom. And more than once another visiting friend who was an ex nurse, threw them all away.

He was well off and could easily have afforded to pay a few £ per item, but he was also very mean with money and I know would never have taken so many items he evidently didn't need if he'd had to pay even £2 or £3 each for them.

After he died another mass of prescription items were taken by his wife to be binned. Among them were several mega-packs of paracetamol - something that can be bought for pennies in supermarkets.

We were offered some of these and did take some, purely to stop them being wasted.

This was someone who left 2 houses paid off, and a great deal of cash - I do know the circs. since dh was an executor.

I can't imagine he's the only case where such wanton waste goes on.

Oops posted too soon.
Perhaps people should pay towards their trearment as the old way of running the NHS is not fit for purpose nowadays.
I live in Portugal where although there is a NHS patients have to pay something towards doctors visits, medicines and hospital tests even blood tests. The amounts are reasonable €4.50 for a consultation with your doctor. £7.50 to see a specialist at the hospital. An average of about €7 for blood tests. Today I am having a gamma whole body scan which is €15.
It works well in other countries so why not in the UK?
Now running for cover and waiting for my scan.

Utter rubbish - if you think about it, there are far more women who have had a hysterectomy than there are transwomen. Who is getting incensed about post-hysterectomy women still being on the register? Or women who have had mastectomies being called for mammograms? If you are called for any screening that doesn't apply to you, just tell them and they take your name off the list.

The cost of sending a letter which gets a "not indicated" reply is minute compared with the huge wastages other people have mentioned.

To get back to the original OP, re women not being called in for smears whilst men are - this is a symptom of old legacy computer systems, and our 'faith' in computers getting it right. But computers can only do what they have been told to do.

I imagine that the patient database has been set up with a field to indicate the patient's sex (and another for name, NHS number etc.) and that the programs expect to find M or F in that field. And when a program sweeps this database it makes itself a list of all those with the F marker to call them in for a smear. (Obviously simplified, but you get the gist.) So for a male to be called in for a smear, his marker must be set to F.

Whoever decided that medical records would be set according to patient preference rather than objective reality needs to put in a proper solution, not this botch job. Sex matters - male and female bodies react differently to drugs, have different e.g. heart attack symptoms, and have different body parts (e.g. cervix/prostate). It is not in the patient's medical interest for their records to be wrong.

It could be fixed. The patient record could have a field for sex and another field for genderID. The sex could be accurate so that the body could be treated correctly, and the genderID field would indicate how they are likely to present and how they would like to be treated.

It is difficult to make such a fundemental change to computer systems. I remember the amount of work that went into the Millennium Bug, changing all the database date fields from DDMMYY to DDMMCCYY and rewriting all the programs' date handling; but it had to be done. This is the same.

The original data structure does not support the current data requirements - it needs to be expanded. Recording a male as female and vice-versa was and is a 'quick and dirty' fix to meet an immediate (perceived) requirement, but it needs to be revisited and done right. This will be costly for the NHS, who seem to have a sprawling unintegrated IT environment - inevitable given the sprawling unintegrated nature of the NHS, perhaps. But until they do, females will be invited for prostate exams and males will be invited for cervical smears, and health needs specific to their trans status will be missed.

This is down to the misplaced 'faith' in computers - the decision makers thought the IT departments could wave their magic wand and make it work - but as I said, computers need to be told what to do, and that takes work that has not happened.

Completely agree with Paddyann. There are too many in management post who could not manage to make a rice pudding. No common sense. We don't need a huge management structure just a very capable matron in charge. They should be halved and money spent on front line nurses who are always in short supply. I know we have finally started training more doctors and nurses but taking away the nurses bursary while they train will have put some off. It should have been kept with condition that nurse must work for NHS for 10 years and if leave to do private work must pay back bursary.

It makes me cross that older and younger women aren’t automatically called for a smear test (although they can request it) and money is wasted on totally unnecessary tests on transgender men. No wonder the NHS is short of money.

But how can they do a smear test on a transgender man? They can't. Therefore money is not being wasted on tests for transgender men. The money spent on these letters is the money being wasted and that amount is tiny compared to the amount spent on servicing the pfi contracts.

I wonder if a lot of the waste, drugs, paperwork etc is for the
NHS to protect itself against being sued. Which has cost them a lot in the past .
I saw my GP today to ask him about my blood test results because I've had secretaries ringing me saying I've got this that and the other problem.
He more or less said disregard all the paperwork and calls - nothing serious. "We're just told we have to do it".

This thread seems to have been hijacked a lot! But to reply to the OP, the NHS would not call men who have decided to identify as women for smear tests were it not for the fear of being sued, believe it or not. About 20 year go when I worked in general practice, we had an extremely abusive man threaten us because he hadn't been called for a smear test. No matter how much we tried to point out that s/he had no cervix to test, s/he said it was his/her right, now that s/he was a woman, to be on the smear recall system. I don't think, that these misguided souls would actually turn up, but they wanted to receive the letters as a recognition that they were now a woman.

It seems that if someone is genuinely wanting to fully transition, then I would hope that psychological support is provided as part of the process. I struggle to understand those who merely want to identify and be seen as women, but don't want any form of treatment towards that.

Daisyboots. We are living longer according to statistics ?so at what age should we be expected to die.? If I have to rely on science to reach the age at which both my maternal, paternal gr great grandparents and grand parents lived then I ask where did I go wrong. The NHS is a wonderful thing but not a fall back when there is much we can do ourselves . Science has conquered childhood illnesses that claimed many small lives in previous centuries. If our children had to go into hospital it was usually nothing more than to have their tonsils removed. That was to be a minor issue in comparison to what we see now.Now replaced with the dreaded C.
Obesity and dealing with it is in our own hands. No one forces us to eat ourselves into this state. Why rely on the NHS?Smoking related illness ?No one forces us to smoke, Liver problems ?no one forces us to put ourselves in an alcoholic stupor. I know lets rely on the NHS they will do it for us .
Drug taking is not forced upon us but who do we ask for help when getting to the point of no return ??
What ever we think about the NHS where would we be without them.
If as you believe it is 'not fit for purpose' ask yourself who have we to thank for that.

A bit off at a tangent but when working in a then small hospital on the coast I heard this tale.
Man goes to reception in X-ray department, hands in his form. Receptionist without looking up says “date of last period”. Man replies “I don’t think that applies to me”. Receptionist heaves a big sigh and repeats the question. Man makes same reply. Receptionist then looks up and says “ allow me to be the judge of that!”
The person telling me swore it is a true story!

Sticking to the OP: I imagine the appointments for cervical screening are generated by computer algorithm. The word female and the age are all the rules that are deemed to be needed. If I fill in a form and tick the box 'female' I can expect to be called for screening up to the age cut off. If I tick the box 'male' I won't be called. NHS computer systems are known to be hopeless! Even though the information is input by actual people, I imagine they won't be allowed (for data protection) to know the person is transgender.

Algorithm- noun A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem solving operations, especially by a computer.

I am more concerned about the women who are not having smear tests because they behave as men. They can still get cervical cancer

Couldn't agree more, Urmstongran.. The NHS, the world, everything..... has recently gone MAD. And STUPID.

Crystaltipps says 'Pressures on the NHS due to immigration - couldn’t leave this unproven statement unchallenged- if it wasn’t for immmigrants we’d have hardly anyone working in the NHS.

However, if there were 'let's say' 20 million fewer people in the UK, we wouldn't need so many people working in the NHS , would we?- whether they were British or immigrants.

Surely it should be for anyone who has a cervix and that would cover any transgender issues. The letter, then doesn’t have to be gender specific.