Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Politicians, doctors and patients who rubbish the NHS should temper their remarks. Which country does healthcare better?
The NHS may be "palpably fraying at the edges" according to Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association, but as a jobbing GP, I'd say it's not unravelled yet.
Undoubtedly, too many people pitch up at A&E. And when asked to account for their actions, a quarter say it's because they can't get access to their GP. Often that's true. Sometimes it's not. Unpublished data from a local study of A&E attendances that I worked on three years ago showed no correlation between GP opening times, type of appointments (booked as opposed to walk-in surgeries), and size of practice. Access to GPs is a problem in some areas but some patients don't even try to get an appointment.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/30/nhs-best-system-in-world-healthcare
The NHS may be "palpably fraying at the edges" according to Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association, but as a jobbing GP, I'd say it's not unravelled yet.
Undoubtedly, too many people pitch up at A&E. And when asked to account for their actions, a quarter say it's because they can't get access to their GP. Often that's true. Sometimes it's not. Unpublished data from a local study of A&E attendances that I worked on three years ago showed no correlation between GP opening times, type of appointments (booked as opposed to walk-in surgeries), and size of practice. Access to GPs is a problem in some areas but some patients don't even try to get an appointment.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/30/nhs-best-system-in-world-healthcare