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?

Really?

Sometimes journalists “stumble” across stories of earth shattering significance. Remember Watergate? Here is another one of equal importance.

This has generated a huge amount of discussion/debate but once again some journalists have missed this one – by years. Some of the discussions have led to some suggestions like increase the availability of GPs. The solutions are all are so simple that even someone who works for the current repository of all those in the bottom third of a Northernshire comprehensive school NHS England is starting to realize this might not be as simple as Mr. Hunt “thinks”.

Some more thoughts are to be found here on this subject. We would suggest you read this one before complaining you can’t see a doctor in the UK.

Now any GP who reads their post might receive letters from their local A&E departments and some of these letters might include how many times a patient attends A&E in a given year. Occasionally the GPs, or perhaps their staff, might even know who some of these patients are and perhaps even discuss with these patients why they keep going up to A&E, or ring the surgery more than 10 times a day or request visits each day or every night.

Some of these patients even request home visits after going to A&E the night before and after they have just been to surgery the morning after.

Why?

Because NHS patients in the UK where care is free at the point of abuse:

1) can
2) get it for free
3) get their NHS Choice as approved by all politicians from the Tripartite NHS alliance

and

4) there is no sanction against misuse of the NHS. You only lose your NHS “Party” medical card when you die.

So under the current framework what can anyone do?

Nothing.

But hang on comrades remember the earlier Telegraph article saying we had less doctors than certain states that the BBC have been saying for weeks and months will be flooding the UK with immigrants? Why not do a swap?

After all there is free movement of labour and goods within the European Union why not add freedom of movement of patients? Perhaps create a European health market for patients?

Ambulances are after all free to patients to go to A&E however many times they call them. Perhaps the BBC’s stance on immigration hysteria could use this to solve both problems at once? Can you think of how the EU market and all xenophobic politicians could use this as a Party catch phrase?

Workers for wasters.

Hold the front page get me a Hunt on the phone this is an exclusive breaking story that will solve everything like 7 day a week working . . .

And the lack of staff and funds . . .

Simples.

Praise to the Party for creating the BBC to tell GPs what we have known for years. What will Mr. Hunt do or say next in response to this new information? More Qrapping anyone but we’ve done that one before and to death and it worked so well?

The mornings after the holidays before.

First day back after a minor 2 day break and the roads in Northernshire were deserted. The GPs’ Ferraris were in top gear all the way in to work as the usual go slowers were doing just that at home and on full pay during the annual Christmas and New Year do nothing for 2 weeks other than eat and drink too much fest that is Christmas unless you are in the health service or retail therapy branch of team GP. In which case life isn’t quite that easy unless you believe Mr. Hunt.

Still not having had access to any medical care whatsoever, anywhere in the UK for a whole 2 days has led to a game of happy families here at ND Central for the doctors who we now under GMC censorship guidelines are forced to report for. Like many surgeries in the UK the GPs at ND Central offer only book on the day appointments to mop up any “illness” that could not be treated over the preceding 2 days due to the complete National Health Service shutdown over Christmas.

Most of the happy family dire emergency consultations went like this:

We all have the same symptoms which are mostly really, really, really bad coughs (note the not just a cough symptom) associated with eyes looking pleadingly towards the doctor like a hungry puppy dog desperate for some food, 

and, 

these symptoms are all no worse (but equally no better and that must be the point?) than when we were all seen with the exact same symptoms on Christmas Eve as emergencies or extras. 

Examination of all these poor suffering puppies, punters, clients patients revealed completely clear chests and a complete absence of any coughing throughout the whole of the multiple happy family consults.

Is there anything you can do for us, doc?

No.

 

The advice that you were given on Christmas Eve still applies. You all have the same very, very, very minor viral upper respiratory tract infection that virtually every other “emergency” seen today has had and you were all told it will take up to 3 weeks to get better. Remember that you were told all of this only 2 days ago. 

Not happy with your GPs’ Christmas Eve advice? 

Well you could ring NHS DICK for Jeremy Hunt care but more likely you will ring (have rung) NHS 111 who will tell you, especially if it is your little Christmas cherub coughing all night, to go straight to A&E or to see your GP ASAP within a time period of hours generated by a random number generator or a more likely a modified game of odds and evens by the “highly trained” technicians answering the NHS 111 call.

If you went to A&E and were seen by a half decent doctor you have been told the same thing as your GP had told you the day, or two, before and been sent home. The ones we don’t see today will have blagged some antibiotics from A&E but will pitch up with the same story after the New Year’s Day total NHS shutdown when the antibiotics prescribed for a viral  infection haven’t worked.

And can you guess how these post booze and food fest holiday “emergency” appointments all ended? Can you?

Can we have some Calpol as we are running low, we seem to be running out, I haven’t got much left and it is a holiday etc. etc. . . .

Still 2 appointments at say £ 25 (+/- £ 59-117 an A&E appointment) to be told the same thing to blag a bottle of Calpol costing less than a fiver is a good use of NHS resources. Perhaps Sir David could vector in these facts into his "challenge" as we are sure NHS management will be sticking their fingers into the dike to prevent the 4 hour breaches given the empty CCG car park today while they expect the NHS to be open all hours that they do not work?

Still some areas are now going to allow pharmacists to dish out freebies via a scheme called Pharmacy First (just google this many areas are doing it) which will save the NHS a fortune and free up GP time in the same way that NHS dumb, dumb, dumb does. Go to the chemist blag a bottle of Calpol or headlice treatment then do the same at the doctors.

Given that headlice are endemic as are very, very, very minor viral URTI at present in some areas it won’t be long before some Arthur Daley’s start doing the rounds of their local chemists and then sell their freebies at a discount to their less bright friends in the same way drug addicts “losing” their drugs and getting a replacement have been overheard in the waiting room to say “I told you I would get you some drugs”.

No doubt all of this would have been inspired by the market forces demonstrated when one of the team going to the supermarket was met with a tsunami of customers exiting a store carrying several large boxes of Christmas crackers each and not much else. Once inside the newspeak tanoy was repeatedly telling those who had paid either £ 7.00 or £ 4.00 for quality Christmas crackers before Christmas that these were now available for £1.75 and £ 1.00 respectively, while stocks last.

Did we miss yet another tanoy idiot announcement from Jeremy Hunt that post Christmas all families can be seen free at their GPs for a fraction of the normal cost for doing so?

Praise be to the Party for ensuring that market forces means the NHS is treated like McDonalds. I want my burger and I want it now.

Unfortunately the Party forgot the bit about educating the public about illness and the fact that it sometimes takes longer than eating a burger for illness to get better and not to request another burger when you are not cured instantly of your illness over Christmas.

Or that you buy Calpol in a chemist for less than the cost of a packet of fags, a GP appointment or an A&E attendance. Still the remarkable antiviral properties of a free bottle of paracetamol are well documented even on NHS Choices and are clearly above and beyond these same properties being available by paying for the same product yourself.