The idiots just don’t get it do they?

One of the doctor’s magazines here in the UK are reporting the next great idea from the UK’s National Respository for Morons known as National Health Service England (NHS England or NHSE) that all GP practices should open on Easter Saturday as part of NHSE’s “resilience” plans otherwise known as jokes.

For those who like to read twaddle here is the letter in full but you will need a dictionary of NHS management speak to fully appreciate it and keep a straight face while doing so.

Now which ever genius thought this up will never have ever worked in healthcare. Prior to the 2004 new General Medical Services (nGMS) contract general practice used to open on Saturday mornings and do you think that this meant that Saturday morning surgeries were:

a) packed to the gunnels with patients wanting to be seen with acute life threatening illness that could not be dealt with during the working week

or

b) were most people in the UK after a hard Friday night at it recouperating at home and letting their livers take the strain?

Were these surgeries busier or quieter on Bank Holiday weekends? Go on have a guess.

You do not have to be a rocket scienctist to work out which of the above two options the Great British public were doing for they used to be long quiet mornings spent doing paperwork sometimes puncturated by 2 or 3 patients coming for repeat prescriptions to break the monotony.

We have even heard of some recent initiatives that tried the same idea to try and ease A&E pressures over the winter with the same result. Surgeries were empty and A&E was full.

And further down the article (or the letter) it suggests “NHS 111 staffing increases to cope with potential surges in demand”.

DoH?

So NHS England suggests increasing NHS 111 staff to cope with potential surges in demand which will result in an increase of referrals to A&E and out of hours GPs? Would it not be better to give them the Bank Holiday off (and the rest of the millenium) to allow ambulance trusts, emergency departments and GP out of hours a breather?

Praise be to the Party for ensuring that no-one is too thick to be unemployed in the United Kingdom for there is always a job for you at NHS England. No experience of anything and no common sense is also useful.