Parlez~me~'n~Tory

Rightly Wry, Satirically RIGHT

My wife took my 20 month old child to the local medical practice this morning (they hold a walk-in session) prior to official opening hours to get her eye seen too and to have a large bump on her head checked out.

What followed was something that can only be described as ludicrous. My wife could not get an appointment to see a Dr unless she booked one with 14 days notice. My child could not be seen by a Dr on the premises because there was an A&E within 15 miles of the practice.

The receptionist then set about trying to suggest she knew what the prognosis was without any further explanation. We had already consulted 2 pharmacists who although coming to the same conclusion cannot prescribe without authority yet a nurse who might see us as 2pm today can prescribe. That alone is a ridiculous situation to find ourselves in.

Why is it so difficult to get an appointment to see a Dr in your own medical practice? What is the point of belonging to a medical practice when you cannot ever see a Dr and will only ever get directed to A&E?

When Labour allowed GP’s to rewrite their own contract did they oversee the right to remove themselves from frontline patient services?

Parlez_me_nTory was recently approached to assist with a blog post concerning NHS Wales and a scandal within.

Whilst content to write the post I thought it would carry much more weight and heartfelt concern if it came straight from the heart and therefore this post is courtesy of Carolyn Webster whom I am sure you will agree feels very passionately about this subject.

NHS Wales. In the care of whom?

I have pretty much relied on the NHS for my children.

One child was referred to Great Ormond Street hospital at 3 months old, she’s fine now. The other child will need the NHS for the rest of his life. His condition is not life limiting.

The medical staff and therapists in the NHS who have played such a vital role will continue to play that part for the rest of his, hopefully, long life.

It is due to this absolute dependency of the NHS that when I read an article posted by Aberdareonline posted WAG must not put NHS managers before nurses I was horrified.

To make mattes worse this information has barely received any media attention.

In Wales, the control over the NHS is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG).

This means that out of our budget managed by the Labour/Plaid Administration (yes, Labour still hold a little power somewhere), not only do we get free prescriptions, but it seems that we can now afford to maintain a policy that protects the jobs and salaries of the Chief Executives and other directors of former NHS Wales Trusts (all previous trusts were amalgamated to form 11 trusts).

In the real world, there would have been a round of redundancies, and redundancy payments, a bit of Gardening Leave, maybe a leaving do. But no, these non-job holders get to keep their jobs and salaries for 10 years.

This is despite a WAG annual operating framework where Local Health Boards are instructed to make a 3% reduction of the workforce of those above a band 5 salary scale post every year for the next 3 years. Basically this directive means that over the next 3 years, 2000 nursing and midwifery posts are threatened.

But meanwhile those Chief Executives, whose roles were in effect made redundant are safe for another 10 years.

So, Senior Management. Which of you will step forward to help my son speak?

Which one of you will care for him after another medical procedure?

Which one will hold my hand as I cry at another hurdle faced by my son?

Come on. Who cares?

I started blogging less than a week ago so it has been pretty hectic trying to get all the Admin and back-end sorted and to get posts out on time for your delectation; I hope I’ve been able to meet expectations, if at least, only mine.

Today I thought I’d have a quick peek at what’s been happening during the past couple of days together with a quick recap of how I’ve already posted and commented on the situation.

This morning we had the false shock and awe announcement from Damian McBride that he was:

ashamed of smear emails

…I’d already mentioned this week in our 3 good reasons post, exactly that. Good reasons not to vote Labour. Also, whilst commenting on the ToryRascal blog post Missing attack dog found cowering in school I put forward the theory that:

In my opinion there’s only one thing behind that interview this morning and that is to ingratiate himself with the masses that will be slithering behind their ‘real leader’ the First Secretary of State.

This brings us nicely onto another unsurprising claim, this time by Alex Singleton from The Telegraph that Peter Mandelson will be the next leader of the Labour Party.

I say this is an unsurprising claim due to the fact that following the reshuffle on 5th June whereby GuacamoleMandy became the First Secretary of State (an early Christmas present from #GoBro) he also became the PM in all but name having effectively dealt with the bungled leadership coup as reported in my Dear Milky, nothing for 12 weeks please post.

Footnote: Despite the weight of William Rees-Mogg commenting on the Mandelson as leader issue there are further counter-claims this morning by David Finkelstein that Peter Mandelson will not be Labour leader. Make of it what you will.

In an exceptionally bad week for Andy Burnham we’ve seen bad and conflicting advice being issued on swine flu whilst further Government attempts to ingratiate themselves with us, the voters, were made when the Health Secretary commented on the breakdown of society they themselves are the cause of with his headline grabber (which is clearly unfortunate) Health Secretary Andy Burnham reveals his gran was robbed in care home.

The article takes great care not to mention whether this was due to the policies inherited by the last Conservative Government or not. As for my own experience of the swine flu debacle I commented fairly extensively on my LabourFail is NHSFail is PatientFail post.

Well, it’s been a pretty mundane week in which Parliament begins it’s summer recess tomorrow but you can rest assured that nobody will begin their holiday in earnest until every vote is counted in Norwich North on Thursday night. Personally I’m really looking forward to all the extra material that elections throw up.

I’m writing this post more out of disgust than desire but I am left with no choice.

It’s also the second time I’ve written it but my phone syncing software saw fit to destroy any evidence of the first version.

Not the quaint setting of a west-country cafe for me to pass my latest thoughts, nor the tranquil countryside with the sound of leather and cork on willow. No, instead I am spending my time flitting between my bed, my sofa and any one of my three toilets.

The reason for my incapacitation? Recently I’ve had severe stomach cramps, an aching back, drowsiness whilst barely been able to keep anything down or in. I don’t normally do medicine but had to take Ibuprofen for my back. There are also cold sweats that visit by the hour though they are without a prolonged high temperature.

Finally, enough was enough and last evening I spent an hour waiting on the phone for NHS Direct to talk to me and eventually talk to me they did; three different representatives went through the same series of questions with differing scenarios all resulting in the same outcome:

Call your GP in the morning and see if they will put you on a high risk category and issue you with Tamiflu

Total NHSTime (waiting/consulting) thus far: 1hr 15mins

That was it I thought. So after a brief discussion with my wife as to the best possible method to keep the girls from contracting anything I let my Twitter followers know the situation; they’re kind of family too, in a detached way, before heading off for another restless night.

This morning I spent a further 15 minutes in the phone queue for my GP’s surgery before being told that a nurse would call me back within 4 hours. That call did occur after 3 hours of waiting (so I guess they met their patient’s charter)! After a discussion with the local nurse I am totally at a loss to understand why we have NHS Direct.

My local nurse has the cure for the world’s ills; or so she thinks.

According to Frome Medical Practice it could be a kidney infection, or even a urine infection. Or, perhaps there’s nothing wrong at all. One thing is for sure, according to the nurse it most definately is not H1N1 Swine Flu. I was also almost called a liar regarding my cold sweats, I mean, come on lady, sheesh, am I really going to make this crap up? What, just to waste your time?

Total NHSTime (waiting/consulting) thus far: 4hr 30mins

Finally, following that conversation (an additional consultation of 35 minutes) I managed to secure an appointment at 17:10hrs this evening, that’s a full 25hrs after first contacting NHS Direct. Of course, following my examination I shall report back to this post via the comments.

Total NHSTime (waiting/consulting) thus far: 5hr 05mins

So, why did this situation even occur in the first place? Well, personally, and it is only my personal opinion but I believe that my local medical practice have a simple agenda that does not include people, patients or queues.

Ok, they are all very lovely when you attend or try to book an appointment (providing that appointment is the middle of next week) but when you actually try to get some genuine information or assistance out of them it all falls to pieces.

I am aware of patients in neighbouring counties that have been given Tamiflu the moment they reach for a Kleenex so somehow I presume the message from the Primary Care Trusts is garbled, clouded and at best sporadic.

As Frome comes under the Bath and North East Somerset PCT I would expect the rules to be applied equally across the board; sadly, they are not.

12 years of bad investment by this Government has led to uncertainty, misguided action and a system that cannot cope. It matters not how much money you pump into a service if that area of the service is beurocratic and top heavy with legislators and HR bodies.

Andy Burnham the Health Secretary makes the following claim:

We have got a massive stockpile of Tamiflu in this country and everybody can have access to it through the health service

Comforting words eh? Well, not really. Would that were so then surely every dispensary in every town in every PCT would be dispensing, especially when one considers the huge markup via prescription charges. The Treasury would stand to rake in a very tidy profit.

No, it is not the case that there are sufficient doses to go around as the health minister claims. The Government and more so the Department of Health (DH) seem to have ordered too little too late.

To examine the cause of this and many more miscalculations during the past year we have to look squarly at the Chancellor, Alistair Darling. In April this year in the Budget the Chancellor reduced the DH’s overall resource expenditure limit for 2010-11 by £2.3bn to £104bn. This actually puts the figure at almost £2bn below the 2007-08 period as setout by the Chancellor’s boss The Prime Minister 7 years earlier.

So, once again it seems that this Government is content to lie to the electorate whilst preferring that they simply put up, continue to put up and ultimately shut up.