GP accountability

In the UK we have General Practitioners (GP) who act as the gateway to "specialists" for things like cancer, mental illness, fractures and so on.  The procedure is that you have to first acquire a GP who may choose whether or not to take you on.  Having achieved this you have to fit in enough evidence into a 10 minute slot as you can to get the GP to refer you up to the next level of expertise.

If you get through the first hurdle you might get a hospital letter sometime in the next three months with an appointment.  The initial appointment is invariably with a newly qualified student who may then initiate the process of seeing someone with more expertise than you.

If you get to see one of the consultants who do know their field it will be a while later.  At this point the consultant can order medications to be prescribed by the GP assuming you are still living at this point that is.

You should not expect to see "THE CONSULTANT" more than once every 3 months as they mostly have a busy private practice to maintain as well as doing the minimum required to qualify for payment by our National Health Service as well.  Such people usually require extensive holidays in tax havens so their time is limited unlike that of those of patients.

That sounds bad but it gets worse.  If your GP chooses to prescribe drugs you find intolerable or is told to by the consultant then the means of redress is tortuous and painful as well as leading to you no longer having a GP.

Of course you can skip this charade if you are wealthy and just go to a private clininic at charges of £250-£500 per visit or £1200-£3000 per night if you want to stay the night.

For those outside the UK this might sound bizarre given publicity on UK public services but I assure you that it is at least this bad everywhere in the UK.

If you want to make a complaint then you do so online via the NHS internet site http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx

If you only have one GP near enough for you to use then getting removed from their list is bad news since then the only health care there is comes via a 4 hour wait at hospital A&E

It is really a system designed in favour of medics and not patients and this is not how a public service should be.