‘Our’ NHS is failing patients

In the UK it is often said that “our” NHS is the envy of the world. Anyone who has experience of healthcare in, say, Germany or France knows this is bunkum. The NHS is failing and the answer is, not necessarily, more money; does the NHS really need ‘Equality and Diversity Advisers’ or the interminable meetings to which management is addicted?

It requires structural revolution.

Because only wealthy patients have a choice of health provision we accept what we are offered. This will usually be designed

for the benefit of the provider rather than the patient; hence, for example, the appointment system used in many surgeries about which David Grummitt complains (Sep 2). This is particularly egregious when considering that many callers are sick, worried and elderly. For diagnosis in hospital, multiple appointments are often needed. Why? This is not the case on the continent. If our optician treated us thus we would go elsewhere. Until there is a genuine choice of provider the NHS will continue to fail patients.

But the NHS is also failing clinicians. That which is free is rarely valued. Note the appalling behaviour experienced by staff in A&E.

GPs tell of missed appointments without the courtesy of a phone call, trivial ailments more suited to a trip to the pharmacy or similar timewasters. The other side to this is the patient who should be seen but stays away through fear of wasting the doctor’s time.

Maybe a token charge up front, with exemptions for the genuinely needy, would alleviate some of these problems; it might be worth exploring.

The NHS was a world leader in 1948 but lost that title many years ago. The reforms needed are so far-reaching, inhibited by the electoral cycle and with the left’s opposition a given, it is difficult to see how that title can ever be restored.

Alf Archer