What do you get for £ 50 a year?

A recent consult by one of the GPs here at ND Central’s newsroom led to a GP being asked if they would be a patient’s responsible GP for the over 75s.

No way man this is a hiding for nothing but as such it is such a good idea that only a complete Hunt of a politician with no medical experience would be daft enough to think of it.

The details are sketchy but it would seem that when you pool the Party’s pound per punter for this coalition pacifier (political gimmick) to reduce the (politically generated) A&E target “crisis” gone horribly wrong because the (politicians) thought the target was a good idea at the time the figures are not that good. The Trpartie alliance have come up with the idea that giving GP practices £5 per patient on their list to generate a nominated doctor for all those over 75 will stop all hospital admissions.

However doing some maffs this works out at roughly £ 50 per 75 year old pre terminal, inevitable cruiser towards death or further infirmity, never going to get better only worse continual consumer of the NHS or in US phraseology a “frequent flyer” by virtue of slowly dying punter per year. 

And that is just the life-long non-smokers. 

So we thought we would look at Old Privatization’s almanac, the NHS Tariff, and see what a 75 year old would get from it for £ 50?

We started with outpatients. The cheapest of which was £ 60 for a single professional outpatient attendance.

So £ 50 per GP over 75 patient to avoid admissions is not looking good at what you will get for your bung per buck.

So let us see how much it would cost an over 75 year old to go to A&E just for the hell of it say they fall over in a shopping mall and a Brownie fresh from a first aid course sees poor old granny or grandpa on the ground and dials 999 like Brown Owl told them they should do.

Well that will cost a minimum of £ 58.00 for a no investigation with no significant treatment A&E attendance if granny or granddad just book into A&E and then leave rising to a massive £ 58.00 if it is dental care that is needed. Remember this is a one off attendance price not a year’s care by a doctor. 

What about NHS 111 (dumb, dumb, dumb)? So plenty of scope to ring a dumb, dumb, dumb dullard and be told to ring your GP/999 ambulance ASAP and each call is reckoned to cost £4 for the call handler, £ 9 fir a nurse and £ 17 for a GP for 6-8 minutes a time. Clearly to call a technician with 6 weeks training at £ 4 a time only gives your 75 year old 12.5 X 8 =100 minutes max. per year of technician time to keep them out of hospital. 

Well using these figures £ 50 a year to prevent admissions will pale into insignificance when all NHS 111 calls per annum are converted to an admission when the NHS dumb, dumb, dumb call handler decrees you need extra care at extra cost because I am a moron dullard following a computer screen.

How much to insure a pet hamster? Took some finding but read here and notice that the link is from hamster central community which must mean taht GP care in the UK will have been consulted via the Royal College of GPs.

£ 319 for 4 hamsters in 2005 = £ 79.75 and don’t forget inflation as this is a private service for a small furry cute rodent that you might like to pick up and handle not a furry, confused, doubly incontinent, demented geriatric that no one not even their relatives want who unlike your cuddly hamster your vet could terminate within the complete Hunt’s £ 50 a 75 year old per year master plan as a one off consult.

Food bill for a hamster is estimated at £ 18 a year while an OAP basic State pension is £ 110.15 a week. That’s twice what Jeremy expects the GPs on the team to be worth for over 75 care for a year.

The team thought we would check out McDonalds the Tripartite’s preferred model of NHS healthcare and see what we could get for £ 50 a year for the over 75s.

There is after all the McDonalds “saver” menu that must be part of the Nicholson challenge, which starts at £ 0.99 an item which multiplied by 52 weeks a year equates to £ 49.50 a year. So that is pretty close to how much a complete Hunt’s plan to avoid excessive admissions in the over 75s a year comes to with a 50p Christmas bonus maybe for the GP to call at Yuletide to bring some festive cheer?

By gingo that and the fact that A&E don’t like it up them will mean that a complete Hunt’s master plan will stop all 75 year olds going to A&E if the GPs pay for them to go to a McDonalds once a week.

But that won’t work for the over 75s will expect someone to take them there so better ring NHS 111 for an ambulance.

Praise be to the Party for regarding NHS GP healthcare for the over 75s as a gimmick slightly less expensive per year than a McDonald’s saver menu once a week. Remember community matrons weren't they supposed to do the same for a hell of a lot more than £ 50 a year per patient? That worked so well didn't it?