Pts. to control their NHS records.

Sid Bonkers

Well-Known Member
Messages
3,976
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Dislikes
Customer helplines that use recorded menus that promise to put me through to the right person but never do - and being ill. Oh, and did I mention customer helplines :)
BBC said:
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "We want to go further than simply offering people a choice of hospital.

"Patients should have choice at every stage of the journey - where they register with a GP, where they go for tests, who they see for treatment, and what care or treatment they receive from any willing provider.

How exactly is Andrew Lansley going to offer all this choice while making cut backs within an already overburdened NHS system?

My wife is a medical secretary and a little over 6 months ago all the medical secretary's in three of the largest London hospitals had their jobs "disistablished" No, I dont have a clue what it means either, just that for the last 6 months she has not "technically" had a job. Last week she was interviewed for her own job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Over the last 6 months around 15% of the secretarial workforce has resigned due to the stress of not knowing what the hell was going on within the hospital group, needless to say they still have all the six figure salaried managers running round protecting their own jobs while the lowly secretaries are now expected to work twice as hard, that is if they still have jobs............. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:


OK rant over
 

donnellysdogs

Master
Messages
13,233
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Dislikes
People that can't listen to other people's opinions.
People that can't say sorry.
Not all of UK even gets the choice of hospitals currently being offered in England....living in Wales our GP surgery has only just started opening up later for 2 hrs 1 day aweek, I had this in UK at least 3 years ago where our GP surgery would open up late twice aweek, and open earlier 1 day a week.

Have had to be referred to hospitals 5 times in 2.5 years since living here and have never been given a choice. Previously in England I was told to ring a number and they would go through the list of hospitals and their waiting list times.....

Shame that the Welsh Assembly has control over health here. Our health service here is still in the 80's.

I have sat in waiting at our local hospital to see the rheumatologist and there were 2 receptionist in the department with their mugs of coffee who couldn't look up to book patients in from their idle chat......not one single patient got given a good service. People with service like this give the public an awful impression of the NHS.

I don't knock the NHS normally, but I do think it needs a shake up, but a lot of things are happening with PCT's going and being renamed etc....shame there are so many managers compared to medical staff. I think that we could all be in for a rocky path regarding PCT's and GP's managing budgets, can't get my head around a lot of it.....hope people on here will keep us up to date....
 

liklejojo

Well-Known Member
Messages
94
The NHS isn't what it used to be. I work for the NHS and have been for many years but even I have seen the growing decline in services and staff generally chatting on the main desk a little more than they should be. Isn't the focus supposed to be on patient care? I have no idea how they will implement logging on to view our own medical records as you've said funding is being withdrawn. Utterly bonkers!
 

sip

Active Member
Messages
40
Patients should have choice at every stage of the journey - where they register with a GP, where they go for tests, who they see for treatment, and what care or treatment they receive from any willing provider.

"any willing provider" generally means the private sector. The NHS will simply become just a buyer of services, provided by ex-NHS hospitals sold to the friends of politicians.

The behaviour of some of our elected representatives mimics that of 3rd-World dictators, giving contracts to friends in exchange for a seat on the board of directors when they lose at elections (Haliburtonesque practices being imported to the UK).

We're still paying the Americans for WW2 (even though the official debt) has been settled. What cojones we had are now firmly held in the hands of the Americans, who are slowly starting to squeeze those cojones. It hurts, but America demands access to every market in the world whilst operating a protectionist policy when it comes to the US market. And UK politicians simply roll over and agree.

No wonder the last but one PM was considered to be a poodle...
 

sheltielife

Newbie
Messages
2
This would be great if it was to ever get off the ground!! We hear so much about what is going to happen and it never seems to. It's about 2 years ago that my GP practice announced that we would be able to request prescriptions by email, but it hasn't happened. If this did it would be great, as I know that my records are far from correct and it would be an opportunity to check them and inform the doctors if something was missing or wrong.
 

Pickwick

Member
Messages
21
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Doctors who tell me how I feel rather than ask. Hospitals where clericals outnumber medical staff. Actually - hospitals in general - I stay out of them.
Sounds great doesn't it? But - of course - we'll just end up with official and unofficial records - stuff we're statutorily allowed to see and stuff that's (every quietly) kept out of sight. I can remember my own medical record stating that I was a difficult patient ("He keeps asking things!"). I say remember because after some very dubious NHS treatment years ago, even a consultant surgeon I'd later asked for a second opinion (his open opinion being, "who the HELL performed this surgery?") found he could no longer access my 40-year long NHS record which had been - and remains - "mislaid".

I'll be among the first to log on if and when they start this scheme. But I'm not holding my breath, and when it does appear I'm cynical I'll be seeing anything more than the system has decided I'll be allowed to see.
 

Brianm

Member
Messages
8
Dislikes
Winter and dark evenings/mornings (SAD)
Please, please, please, please, please!

You are just as bad as the BBC.

The reported article applies ONLY TO THE NHS IN ENGLAND.
 

phoenix

Expert
Messages
5,671
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
We too are supposed to be getting an electronic system. We already have electronic 'membership' cards called the carte vitale which contain non medical data.
They tried to implement the scheme a few years ago but it was scrapped in 2008 only to be reinstated earlier this year. I'm not holding my breath that it will come to fruition.
In France records will only be created when the patient gives explicit consent, whereas in the UK I understand that consent will be assumed. Here people will be able to add/change some personal information and then decide who is authorised to have access to their medical record. Moreover, patients will have the right to withhold some medical information from certain health professionals . For example, a patient could decide to hide that s/he has cancer from his/her dentist, so when the dentist enters into his/her medical file this information would not appear on the record without him realising that there is some hidden information.

Personally, I like the system at the moment , I have paper copies of all my blood tests, copies of retinal scans, mammogram x rays, stress test ecg printouts, copies of doctors reports etc. I make my own appointments (after being told I need them by the diabetologist or GP) and select my own doctor. I'm given a blood test prescription and its up to me to visit the lab. Most doctors give me the copies of the report to take to the referring doctor. (they dictate it and I wait whilst the secretary types it or more often uses a computer template.) A copy of the lab results is sent direct to me.
Frequently one has to pay 'upfront' and are reinbursed. This means the relationship between doctor and patient is one of service provider and client, so the test/examination results quite naturally belong to the patient. In the UK, it often seems that test results and reports are protected information shared between doctors and withheld or released to the patient according to the doctors own beliefs
(I know people have the right to see their own records but they seem to have to jump through hoops to get that access)
Having to keep your own records, organise all appointments etc puts the onus on the patient, but also seems to saves a lot of paper shuffling and levels of bureaurocracy.

(It's not perfection though, the system of payments to belong to the system, payments to doctors followed by reimbursement is overcomplicated and very bureaucratic. What they save in one place is unfortunately more than made up for elsewhere.)
 

lostsoul

Member
Messages
18
Will employers be allowed to access our medical files without our permission? Will they be able to request access from the government to see our files for a fee?...a judas price.

This government is not about Perestroika...it has a hidden agenda...Privatisation of the entire British medical system for money and profit, at the expense of the sick, aged and infirm. It will setup the NHS to completely and utterly destroy itself, if it has not already done so. The abuse of the NHS system has forced it into disunity and separation. We were once the envy of the world. now, we are the laughing stock of the West-broke. This government has a hidden agenda that it has kept secret as part of its manifesto.

If the NHS goes under, as I believe it will, we T1's and T2's will suffer for it. We cost the healthcare system millions of pounds. So what is to stop the coalition forces doing something to stem the cashflow to keep us alive?........This government is about elitism and saparation from the masses to bring back the status quo. The rich will get richer and fatter, whilst the rest of us will get sicker. I dread to think what will happen when a doctor in the UK, has to be forced by his superiors to stop all treatment to a patient because they have no funds to continue treatment. Do you really want to access your own medical files to see what a doctor has written about you?
 
C

catherinecherub

Guest
As the OP, I have been looking for more information on this subject and have come across the following,

Liberating the NHS: An Information Revolution.

http://consultations.dh.gov.uk/informat ... nsult_view

Having worked for the NHS for 36 years I am of the opinion that this cannot be implemented successfully. We are supposed to have a level of care second to none as diabetics and we read here every day that some newly diagnosed do not get basic information and are unaware of what they are entitled to. Improvement is needed as things are now before new ideas are brought into play.
The NHS has been in decline for several years now and is getting worse by the day. Things look great on paper but work at the coal face and you will see that it is a shambles. I used to be proud to be a nurse but I would advise any young person who is thinking about joining the profession that they need to be able to cope with unnecessary stress on a daily basis and this does not come from patients but from the bean counters who have to justify their existence. They must have decimated a whole rain forest in my Trust area alone and most of it is pointless and patronising. If they had their way we would be filling in pointless surveys, putting forward ideas for cost cutting etc. and all this enforced rubbish is detrimental to patient care. That should be the priority, doing the best for the patient and not justifying a bean counter's huge salary.