Health

[empip]

The health minister talks of ".. a very good year for the NHS ..."
The real carers think otherwise.

Out-of-hours GP care is shambolic, say The National Audit Office..

....Since January 2005, the local PCT, or private company, running the out-of- hours service has hired doctors to work shifts at up to £141 an hour, the NAO found. For two 15-hour shifts from 8am to 11pm on Saturday and Sunday, a doctor could earn up to £4,230. The number of doctors from Germany, France and Italy registering to practice in the UK has doubled, according to the General Medical Council.
The NAO said the health department saved £180m from the £6,000 sliced off GPs' incomes but the total cost of the out-of-hours service in 2004-05 was £392m - £212m more.
The department allocated £312m, £70m short of the £392m required. "That created a problem for the PCTs," Mr Shapcott said....

Not even Jesus Christ could command such pay .... Our money poured in torrents down the drain... Why would foreign docs flock here? Easy money is why.
A private company would have long gone to the wall.
I guess ...You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time !

What a mess ! If services will not suffer in the wake of the mass NHS job losses, then all the folk leaving must have been doing sfa .. Yeah right !! If they were doing that, then sack the PCTs out of hand, they employed the folk .....

If you did not you'd

 

[joe-90]

We're a wealthy country. Free health for all. Bring all your sick from across the world. We will employ foreign doctors on silly pay to treat them.

.... and the band played on as UK Titanic slipped beneath the waves.



joe

 

[williams89]

My G P told me to go to hospital if I became ill. Not use the new service. He was right. My son was ill and after three hours this new doctor service still could not get a doctor to us so we transported my son to hospital. He was admitted and spent five weeks in hospital. The out of ours doctor servive contacted us BY PHONE seven hours after our first request for help. I could hardly understand what the man was saying so I said not to worry everything has been sorted and ended the conversation. Had we hung around for this out of hours doctor service I think my son might have died. I did not make a complaint. ****ing into the wind is not wise.

BE HAPPY

 

[Nige F]

Right on Joe..........and would the waves be of the North Sea...under which the oil lay that was going to benifit us all

 

[pickles]

Given the salaries they earn, in excess of 100k per annum I can't personally see why GP's aren't providing the service themselves on their time. It used to be part of a GP's life that they were expected to provide out of hours cover. I'm all for them being paid properly but it seems to me we have reached a situation where they are being more than handsomeley paid to sit back whilst the tax payer funds an alternative service

 

[empip]

Ultimate power .. means they can tell us black is white, old is new, bad is good, and vice versa ...... caring not a fig if we believe them or not... Mind you, do they actually know??

Is two terms in office almost a term too far, whichever party ??

 

[Brightness]

The health minister talks of ".. a very good year for the NHS ..."

Does this include NHS Direct, I wonder? Just over a week ago a very close friend of mine was decorating her kitchen. She was standing on the worktop, painting above the wall cupboards when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her calf that she could only describe as feeling like she had been shot.

Although she was in agony, she somehow managed to slide down off the worktop onto the floor and pull herself to the phone. By now she was feeling very light headed and sick and the pain was excruciating . She'd also noticed that her calf had swollen like a balloon as her tracky bottoms had become very tight on that leg.

She could just about see the number for NHS direct on her fridge door and so she rang them & told them exactly what had happened and sked what she should do. The 'nurse' or person on the other end of the phone said that she should make a GP's appointment for as soon as possible or try and get to hospital sometime - my mate said that she was alone in the house and that her hubby wouldn't be home until late that evening & had enough problems trying to ring them, so the other person said well get your husbnad to take you when he gets home!

Thankfully, my mate sensed that she should get something done sooner rather than later & so used her phones autodial to call her hubby on his mobile, saying she didn't feel very good and could he come home quickly. He left work immediately and it took him 1 1/2 hrs to get home. He thankfully took her straight to A&E where she was rushed straight in - by now she was having breathing difficulties as well.

Poor girl had a DVT and it had started to move she was immediately given emergency treatment and is now recovering slowly at home.

Thing is, she is not in any of the 'high risk' groups, she is extremely fit and weighs around 7stone soaking wet. She eats an extremely healthy diet and doesn't smoke. However, I dread to think what would have happened if she hadn't had the sense to call her hubby.

NHS Direct is completely useless and a total waste of money. Money that could be better spent putting more doctors and nurses in the hospitals. I can't understand why they didn't either insist she called an ambulance or called one for her as the nurses in casualty had said they should have done.

He took one look at her and rushed her straight to A&E

 

[empip]

Got another leg hasn't she ?? Some people want it all !
Tone would assure you that you should only really expect one leg..

 

[Brightness]

Got another leg hasn't she ?? Some people want it all !
Tone would assure you that you should only really expect one leg..

LMAO empip, I'll tell her that one - what if the clot had moved to her lungs though???? Could've killed her and she only has one life.....

 

[empip]

What? Tone in her lung? Blarian flu.

 

[Moz]

empip
your comment about ultimate power currupts all is very true ....

brightness
sorry to hear about your friend ,

are you like toff in Cumbria , living out in the wilds ?
on the jokey front how do you know how much she weighs ..lol