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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » NEW PETITION calling for everyone to be able to see a GP withi
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » NEW PETITION calling for everyone to be able to see a GP within 48 hours needs your support
Until 2016, I was typical of many thirty-somethings in that I had little need to see my local GP too often. This year that changed. Due to a recurring issue I found myself having to see the GP more regularly. Nothing critical, I’m fine, but this experience opened my eyes to a real problem and prompted me to want to find out more. In this post, I want to share my experience, start a debate and hopefully win some support for a petition I have started.
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Two words...Online Booking..the fact even the smallest of businesses these days have online booking and you can buy off the shelf systems makes the fact the majority of GP surgeries not having it both incredible and unacceptable.
"Monty Hall"
Will this part 3 succeed where The Godfather failed?
*facepalm*
Apparently having GP practise near work places would be Evil - though a number of years ago, when I worked for an oil major in London, they had an NHS GP and Dentist on site and part of the company. This enabled them (by the way) to deal with no-shows. You'd get a phone call a few minutes before your appointment as a reminder. Also, the dentists and doctors were on the company rolls as rather senior staff. So not turning up would be ignoring a meeting with a very senior manager....
Enoch Powell said if he felt the problem could not be stopped, then he would do his utmost to limit the damage. In the late 60s, he thought it was possible to prevent it coming to this, but Ted Heath prevented any action being taken. Now I think even Enoch would say we have to make the best of what we have got.
Mixed marriage is our only hope I reckon.
The focus has to be on excessive demand. The public are ready. It's one of the reasons they voted Leave.
Mine a little deeper and all those grievances so readily aired about welfare will surface about healthcare. Money wasted, time wasters, people splurging on the system. It will all be there.
Is the real answer more & ever more money?
Why don't we identify a country (anywhere in the world) where the health system works without big problems and implement it here?
We could start by looking at the places where the majority of emigrating doctors go. Is the system there only really attractive to the producers, but less so to the customers?
So many questions; chief one is, are there any answers?
(Edited to add: good evening, everyone)
Le Pen and Farage
Once you've manged to see your GP of course you have to hope that the CCG (or NHSE if you've got something really exotic) have the cash to pay for the treatment.
I've had an illness since birth that requires monthly prescriptions, which the NHS doesn't charge me for. I'm on a decent salary, and I feel guilty that someone on a low paid/minium wage job has to pay for their irregular prescriptions.
I know the government once talked about a) making all GP surgeries get online booking by well years ago and b) enabling individuals to choose which GP surgery they would like to register, but both appear to have been kicked into the long grass.
Online is particular gripe of mine, because anybody with reasonable IT knowledge knows it is possible to set this up for a small business very very easily.
Even more usefully, if you need an urgent appointment, the practice keeps the middle of the day free for these. So if you ring after 9 am you can get an appointment within hours, sometimes within the hour, to see a doctor. It works very well indeed.
As someone whose health, sadly, has necessitated a lot of visits to doctors and hospitals in recent years, I am very impressed by my current GP practice.
I just don't want to get banned from the site anymore!! Always wary of traps...
Vote for Farage or Le Pen.
I know Farage and Le Pen aren't Nazism but I'm really not sure how far some of them would go given enough freedom. I'm fairly strongly pro-independence, but no great fan of Farage or numerous other Kippers.
Forced at gunpoint to make a choice, I'd opt for the one most likely to favour my family's background but I find the extreme right and the Islamists to be almost equally unpalatable.
Even more usefully, if you need an urgent appointment, the practice keeps the middle of the day free for these. So if you ring after 9 am you can get an appointment within hours, sometimes within the hour, to see a doctor. It works very well indeed.
As someone whose health, sadly, has necessitated a lot of visits to doctors and hospitals in recent years, I am very impressed by my current GP practice.
Actually, if you did not want the UK to become majority Muslim then Brexit is probably the last thing you would support. Why do I say this? Well the migrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries don't tend to be Muslim. So they would have ensured that Muslims from the rest of the world were kept at bay.
If you stopped ranting at everybody who happens to voice their concern about the coming economic dislocation that Brexit will no doubt hit us with, you might realise that Brexit WILL diminish the UK in terms of political and economic power. You might also realise that Muslim migrants are more likely to come now, than they would have been if we stayed in the EU. All these Brexit politicians like Fox, Johnson and Davis want immigration, who will this be well it will be the people a fascist does not like i.e, muslims.
To be honest I would rather not have any migrants at all, however I accept for demographic reasons it is a necessity. The political decisions to increase pensioner benefits enhance the coming difficult decisions as everybody expects a state pension at retirement age and that money has to come from an increasing working population.
Plus a fascist can be deposed.
(Though you did graciously apologise the next day for going too far)
Where I live I can easily make appointments by phone, or more conveniently for me, on the internet. Repeat prescriptions are quickly ordered on the internet too.
Contrary to your claim, your petition is a political act.
P.S-One reason for the pressure on GPs is that an increasing number of GPs are women, who tend to often go part time for family reasons.
And for all your imaginative epithets for those who refuse the choice, it's not particularly convincing.
Who knows, in Sweden, given their fairly unique politics and demographics, there might be some small chance of those being the two alternatives, but your lack of faith in Britain's ability to navigate a less toxic path is every bit as pitiful as your scattergun insults.
Might have to stop consultants doing private work too.
At one extreme there is outright invasion. At the other there is simple demographics. If the original inhabitants of a place simply give up on having children, but those who have immigrated carry on their line, then the transition from one tradition to another will happen.
In their wisdom, our leaders have pursued courses of action that result in some of the population feeling invaded. That has caused us problems.
But the traditions of a people who abort so many babies are probably doomed anyway in the long run. Of course each individual unwilling mother is entitled to choose, but there is a cumulative impact, just as with problematic immigration policies.
You'll mark my answer FAIL of course, but never mind.
I seem to remember the Sun having that picture of the dead child on its front page condemning Europe for not helping the migrants in the seas off southern Europe. Those migrants are not European, the UK is not part of Schengen and it is likely many of them will return to the middle east. Even if they do not once they are settled in Germany I don't see them coming to the UK. The point being the Sun advocates allsorts of conflicting advice to its readers.
If I was merkel I would not have let the migrants into Germany but she is democratically elected and makes decisions for the Germans. I don't think you should conflate the Eastern European immigration from Poland et al and the middle east migration to try and advocate a far right administration. As I have said the Syrians for instance would not have any rights to come to the UK anyway. I don't see it as a problem.
In reply to SeanT's test I would never vote for a far right politician as it unleashes forces that are not intended by the initial vote.
A massive expansion of GP services might help, but where do the doctors come from? It takes years to train them and they have to be of a high academic standard to start with. Or we could import them from abroad, because of course immigration is so uncontroversial in this country they'll all be welcomed.
The post/petition identifies a grievance, but does not offer any practical solution. Indeed, I can foresee the proposed solution making matters far worse (a la Blair or Obama). Come up with practical suggestions for reform and put forward a petition on that basis and I will sign it. Until then, be careful what you wish for.
By what mechanism in the hypothetical is Nigel Farage going to stop Britain becoming majority Muslim?
Gonnorhea, a chemical weapon & Farage.
Would ConHome do?
Of course we need a massive uptick in GP's...we need named GP's too that know the patent history....everywhere else in Europe has it...
As it happens, I'd probably choose Le Pen (Marine), but I believe this is (fortunately) what I'd describe as a false dichotomy.
Were it Le Pen Senior, who denied the holocaust and frequently blamed France's problems on 'the shadowy world of international financiers'*, it would be a much harder call.
* That might be code for something, but I'm not sure what.
I was taken up to a ward & allotted a bed (which I took care not to touch, in the hope that at least the staff would not be put to the trouble of stripping & re-making it after I'd been discharged) and continued to wait. I was seen, and given an appointment for surgery the following day, and sent home.
The waiting rooms aren't very comfortable, it's true, but it would be better to improve comfort there rather than waste resources the way they were wasted over me, just because some artificial deadline was approaching.
Scottish Labour's private polling leaked
SNP 45%
Con 25%
Lab 15%
http://tinyurl.com/ScottishTorySurge
Fascists over Islamists for me. At least the trains might run on time. Though I agree with many in saying the proposition is a silly one.
In other news, look at that squadron of pigs out the window!
Hopefully, it's a question we never have to answer in reality.
I have a hypothetical question...how can we rid ourselves of pathological, narcissistic, numpties?
Steve Webb's become a Knight
A personal comic point - in the past I have baited progressives with suggestions about immigration....
When I suggest that if we need to import 6 figures of people each year, why not get them from South America (where my wife's family comes from).... well, in general I get a violently negative response. Why is that?
I've found it to be incredibly efficient (like Keiran I too have needed to see a GP several times this year after never before requiring their assistance) and means that I don't need to take time off work for most appointments as they take place remotely. I imagine it also avoids the spread of coughs and colds in the surgery waiting room from those who should be taking cold medicine and staying in bed!
Partly thanks to our foreign policy decisions.
There are actually more GPs in place than ever. And in my area everyone has a named doctor (which can be changed by the patient).
It seems that some practices in England need to copy the positive results of the GPs in my area.
As a side issue I am not sure what Sean T's angry Sophie's choice is trying to prove? I believe I would vote for a third party candidate!
PS. PB poster of the year results coming tomorrow
[ ] I would like the UK to be absorbed into an EU super-state
[ ] I would like the UK to join the Euro and the European army
Farage/ Le Pen/ Wilders/ Trump/ or even Corbyn (but it is close the last one)
Next question?
It's an oldie but goody - any system or process is perfectly designed to produce the results it does.
If there is a problem in getting a doctor appointment, then the cause is somewhere in the way appointments are scheduled - for example are there too many frivolous appointments, are people wanting to see the doctor when in fact a physician assistant or a nurse could handle the issue, and so on.
You need to identify the problem and then resolve it.
Passing a petition like this will result in much complication, possibly major expense, and at the end of the day will not solve the underlying problem.
The difficulty in getting doctor appointments may well be merely a symptom of other problems rather than the problem itself.
A little intelligent analysis is always a good start.
Anything that looks at blunt targets like his isn't going to work. What's required is for some of the NHS 'managers' to look at what's working elsewhere, to allow flexibility e.g. to see a doctor at work rather than home, encourage people to see nurses, pharmacists etc etc.
It's not going to be easy, especially when dealing with effectively unlimited demand because it's all "free". The whole healthcare system in the UK is close to breaking point and has been for years, and just throwing more money at the problem isn't working. Wholesale reforms are needed, which may be prove to be politically impossible. As a starting point, a reversal of the benefit-in-kind tax treatment of employer-provided private health insurance would be an easy win, would encourage those of working age out of the systems completely and have positive economic effects of reduced work sickness rates and private health sector activity.
Another outside-the-box idea I've suggested here before is for the NHS to sponsor teaching hospitals in cities like Mumbai and Manila, where there are thousands of potential recruits and could bring Western teaching standards and qualifications that allow for easy transfer to work in the UK at various stages.
[1] As previously noted, it's a biiiiig family.
[2] Sunil, you explain it to him: it's late.
Very easy for UK armchair warriors to claim 'they're both as bad as each other', but I think the above question crystalises things enough to make it obvious that such a claim is an absurdity. Assad is an autocrat. ISIS is a death cult.