Re: Secure, private, encrypted two-way messaging is needed, email possibly not
There is quite a severe shortage of GP places in my city, so changing GP isn't really an option. If your GP's surgery has a useful web presence, you are very lucky, as that's still far rarer than it should be.
It took me several months to find a GP with spaces available in/near my neighbourhood the last time I moved to a different part of the city, and my previous GP's surgery was getting increasingly desperate to get me off their books as I no longer lived in their catchment area.
But why should different GP surgeries have different levels of technical competence? It's almost as if they were a shambolic collection of small businesses rather than a National Health Service (with all the economies of scale that that really ought to entail). Oh, hang on, that's exactly what they are, and so each surgery has to re-invent the same wheel (or stick with that roughly hewn log roller, depending on their inclination). To coin a phrase, that's no way to run a "business". There ought to be a high quality, efficient, patient-focused and patient-friendly national NHS communications and IT infrastructure, but there isn't.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
