The first thing I will say, is I do love the NHS – most of the workers and staff there are super, so don’t take the title completely wrong. The guys are working hard (most the of the time when not on tik tok lol – sorry couldn’t resist). Anyhow – my point is what can we do to recover the long wait times for GP appointments and especially for referrals\u2026? I know several people who have GP appointments taking 2-3 weeks to be seen, others, 2 weeks for even a phone call back with test results. Surely, this is not right, and the situation needs to be remedied. Referrals are even worse. I have first hand reports of things like gallbladder referrals to see a specialist taking several months, gallbladder removal 24-26 months! I mean how can people manage with that kind of service? Yes we know Covid is getting most attention and money \u2026 but this stuff is having a real impact too (especially for other critical things like cancer, heart disease etc), and wait queues like this need to be flagged as ‘red’ and fixed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime, SPIRE healthcare and private medical companies are making a lot of extra money at the moment. I don’t blame them – if medical treatment cannot be provided on the NHS, then we need to get it from somewhere. Afterall, there is no price that can be put on having good health! The problem for consultants and for medical staff is the ethical dilema of saying, “oh, I will be the person doing your operation on the NHS or privately for that matter … you can have the operation privately in the next 2 weeks if you can pay (several thousand pounds), or in about 2 years time on the NHS…”. Sadly, we know it is all about the money. We should have all done medical degrees or live in Cuba …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first thing I will say, is I do love the NHS – most of the workers and staff there<\/p>\n