Can no one force GPs to do their job properly?
Last week, a friend, a senior doctor in a busy A&E, found herself dealing with a young woman suffering from a urinary tract infection.
While this was undoubtedly painful and potentially dangerous, it was neither an accident nor an emergency.
So why, my harassed doctor friend asked her, hadn’t she gone to see her GP instead?
The patient replied she’d dialled the number over and over again without getting through and, in the end, she went to the surgery to ask for an appointment. The earliest slot, she was told, was ten days’ time. It was at that point she’d gone to A&E instead.
'Why are doctors unable to see far more patients? The answer, in a word, is greed,' wrote one person to the Daily Mail. Posed by model
My doctor friend was so appalled by this that she rang the woman’s GP surgery, where a rather brusque receptionist confirmed the story.
An aberration? Far from it: this woman is one of tens of thousands who are turning up at the doors of A&E because they can’t get an appointment with their doctors. The costs involved are huge.
Take, for example, a typical case of a confused, elderly man who’s called an ambulance because he’s coughing and his chest hurts.
That’s £350 for the ambulance, £45 for an X-ray, £15 for blood tests and a minimum £20 an hour for the doctor’s time and £15 an hour for the nurse’s. In all, it’s likely to be more than £500.
Share this article
Had the patient been able to see his own doctor, says my friend, ‘the GP would probably decide to treat him with antibiotics, because he knows the patient and his history.
‘The appointment would take ten minutes and be a fraction of the cost. Of course we suggest they should see their GP instead, but if they’re adamant that they don’t want to, then we can’t turn them away.’
So emergency doctors — highly trained professionals who know how to save your life when you’re having a heart attack or have been in a horrific road accident — find themselves treating minor cuts and chest infections.
Risk element: At night, A&E; departments fill up with children brought in by anxious parents. They know their GP won't come out to see them, so who can blame them?
At night, their departments fill up with children brought in by anxious parents. It’s not hard to work out why: few parents are prepared to risk waiting until morning to discover whether their child’s piercing headache and high temperature are symptoms of meningitis or just a bad cold.
They know their GP won’t come out to see them, so who can blame them?
Tomorrow, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is due to make a speech criticising GPs for failures that include not knowing their patients’ names and hiving off out-of-hours care to outside agencies. He will also highlight the fact that admissions at A&E departments have soared as a result.
Quite rightly, he lays the blame for this on the changes Labour made to GP contracts nine years ago, which allowed GPs to opt out of night calls and rewarded them for complying with targets rather than for treating patients as individuals.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is due to make a speech criticising GPs for failures that include not knowing their patients' names and hiving off out-of-hours care to outside agencies
However, none of this explains why it’s quite so difficult to get an appointment in working hours or why you can no longer get even a simple blood test on the spot.
So it’s hardly surprising patients all over the country have decided they’ve had enough and are bypassing their GPs in favour of their local A&E.
This wildly expensive, ludicrous waste of resources wouldn’t be countenanced in any other industry.
So while Mr Hunt’s speech tomorrow is welcome, it doesn’t go far enough, as it simply identifies the problems without offering any solutions.
What he should be telling us is what action he is taking to ensure that all GPs start doing their jobs properly.
That means making night and weekend calls, the way they used to. It means ensuring that we can all make an appointment for tomorrow or the next day — not next week — or turn up and wait if we’re seriously worried. (Yes, I know a few sterling surgeries do operate like this — but too many don’t.)
It also means that when we walk through the surgery door we should not feel we’re an unwelcome interruption in the surgery’s busy day, but that we’ll be listened to and taken seriously.
The most junior A&E doctor seems to be able to achieve this on a fraction of GPs’ generous pay and with far less sleep. Why can’t GPs?
Google must search its conscience over vile traffic
Last week, Labour MP Margaret Hodge won plaudits for denouncing Google. Referring to the company’s unofficial but well-known slogan ‘Don’t Do Evil’, she told their UK vice-president: ‘I think you do do evil.’
She was talking about the company’s tax avoidance, which is perfectly legal, but certainly unethical. A greater evil, however, is that this internet giant has still done absolutely nothing to block online porn.
An overwhelming majority of parents want online porn blocked — nine out of ten, according to the National Association Of Headteachers. The Mail has been campaigning for this for more than a year. Google’s disgraceful response is to say it’s up to parents to monitor their children online and keep them safe from disturbing material.
Last week, Labour MP Margaret Hodge won plaudits for denouncing Google. Referring to the company's unofficial but well-known slogan 'Don't Do Evil', she told their UK vice-president: 'I think you do do evil'
But, as every parent who’s actually tried to do this knows, what happens is that access to everything from an Xbox game to research for a school project becomes blocked in the process — because the search terms for online porn are so broad.
David Cameron’s response has been typically equivocal, appearing to endorse the idea of blocking porn while in reality doing very little. Earlier this year, he announced with a flourish that action was being taken. In fact, all that’s happened is that automatic blocks on online porn will apply only to new users.
Meanwhile, a generation are losing their childhoods and becoming desensitised. We’re living through a terrifying social experiment and no one knows where it will end.
As the great 18th-century thinker Edmund Burke — who championed such fundamental Tory values as marriage, society and duty to the next generation — once said: all that’s required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Flavia Cacace, who partnered Olympic gymnast Louis Smith to win last year's Strictly, says the celebrity dancers receive a bonus if they win, but the professional dancers don't
Give this girl a pay rise!
Flavia Cacace, who partnered Olympic gymnast Louis Smith to win last year’s Strictly, says the celebrity dancers receive a bonus if they win, but the professional dancers don’t. As the celebrities are already paid twice what the professionals earn, I think that’s grossly unfair. After all, Louis didn’t win it on his own — and you don’t have to be a dancer to know that it takes two to tango.
Has Noel gone nuts, asked the headline on a Mail interview yesterday with Noel Edmonds, which revealed that he takes a fully-clothed shop dummy named Candice with him everywhere.
As the mannequin has her own Twitter account, has been approached by fashion houses, record companies and shops, and is in the process of developing a perfume and cosmetics line, I think it’s clear that while Noel may, indeed, be nuts, he’s certainly no dummy.
And at least he makes us laugh.
Around three million parents still have their grown-up children living with them at home, according to Saga, because these so-called ‘failed fledglings’ can’t afford to get on the property ladder.
Well, I know homes are shockingly expensive, but I can’t help feeling that staying at home is not the answer.
Struggling to pay the rent on a
grotty bedsit, making do with beans on toast, lugging your washing to
the launderette and putting on another jumper instead or turning on the
heating is all part of growing up.
To fly, a fledgling has to leave the nest.
BHS
has revamped its image. It’s trying to persuade us that if we buy cheap
clothes from its shops we’ll be able to fool our friends into thinking
we’re wearing much more expensive, fashionable brands.
To
that end, it’s running a series of ads showing its latest designs —
including an unflattering swimming costume and a particularly garish
turquoise summer shirt — with the slogan: ‘You’ll never guess.’
Well, I hate to break it to them — but actually I’m afraid that I would. Instantly.
Bake Off Paul’s split is a turn-off
With one stupid move, Bake Off's Paul Hollywood has destroyed his image and probably ruined his career
With one stupendously stupid move, Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood has destroyed his image and probably ruined his career.
The reason we loved him was because he seemed so decent: sexy without being flirty, honest without being mean.
We envied his wife, Alexandra, for whom he baked apricot tart on Friday nights ‘because it’s her favourite’ and fantasised about being married to a man who cared more about flatbreads than flat tummies.
Now he’s become close to Marcela Valladolid, his co-star on the American Bake Off series — younger, thinner and to my mind far less attractive than stunning Alexandra, who manages to look gorgeous even when heartbroken.
My guess is that it won’t be long before he comes slinking back home, abandoned by minxy Marcela as she realises no one in America has a clue who he is. If he’s lucky he may be able to resurrect his marriage and relationship with his 11-year-old son, Josh.
I’m not so sure about his career — his legions of female fans won’t forgive him.
