QOF and squeegee gangs.

We wonder how many patients may have had at this time of year letters along the following lines (we have put our real thoughts in brackets):

The doctor/nurse/adminstrator in charge of your (insert name of a Party determined illness) has noticed that you have not had the following:

blood test/blood pressure/asthma test/cholesterol test/(your head shoved down a toilet test for no reason other than QOF says we should do so test).

As part of the practice’s commitment to your health and well being (that’s a pack of lies we want to get paid if we tell the truth) we invite you to make an appointment for this with a doctor/nurse/healthcare assistant.

It is vital that you have this test to ensure your continued good health (if you don’t all your sexual organs will shrival and drop off or some other implied threat inserted here)

Please ring on the above number to arrange for this test.

Signed


Doctor/Nurse/Another.

Now we bet no GP will have ever have sent such a letter or asked staff to ring certain patients and “invite” them to come in for some “tests”.

The annual GP QOFing season is on so if you are a patient look out for numerous invites to perform tests to ensure that your Party approved illness is well “managed” by the medical process of ticking a box determined by some dullard in Whitehall the sole purpose of which is to try and reduce payment to your evil overpaid GP. Any real illness can be treated usually without all these mostly unnecessary extra tests done for no medical benefit other than doctors’ pay reduction.

A simple example would be if you have a mental illness do you need your cholesterol checked every year if you are well? Would your identical twin without any mental or other illness get the same intensive “treatment” as you? No discrimination here comrades as all patients are equal in the NHS and we are all in it together . . .

We think that as a patient with a long term condition being QOFed is a bit like being squeegeed at the traffic lights. Your windscreen is clean as you are well and so you get from your doctor a totally unnecessary load of soap and old flannel packaged to make it look like it is something useful to you when you don’t actually need it to make someone a fast buck.

Soap and old flannel will we are sure appeal to anyone who went to a public school especially if administered in the showers by a matron in a uniform but to anyone else it will be a load of froth on your windscreen - completely pointless and very annoying.

Praise be to the Party for ensuring that year on year GPs and their staff are spending more time squeeging windscreens than doing real medicine. Don’t worry if you can’t see your GP with real illness. If their QOF points are squeegee clean then they are Party approved excellent GPs for ticking all the Party boxes while ignoring your real healthcare needs. QOF you know it makes sense medicine.

Not.