Posts by danensis

Engineers seek funds for world’s largest Tesla coil

I think your spell-chucker needs enlightning

NHS: Big tech might be OK for patient power

Liberalating the NHS

Having attended one of the White Paper "consultations" it was soon clear that the Department of Health hadn't a clue how they were going to achieve the task the new government had set them.

At the consultation I attended I was the only one there from a service user group - most of the other couple of hundred people there were from something called LINKS, which seems to be a collection of do-gooders left over from the Community Health Councils.

What patients want is not to have to choose between hospitals many miles apart - not everwhere is like Westminster, with several hospitals within a bus or train ride - but to know that whichever hospital they visit their care will be the best available. For that there needs to be contol and monitoring, just the type of thing the red-tops want abolishing.

The other major issue is that this is a strategy for the articulate middle classes. Many adults cannot read, let alone understand the medical jargon, or the complicated pathways involved in patient care. For them to have choice there needs to be an advocacy system in place, and that is going to cost money that would be better spent on improved services.