The new NHS?

On the day the Government take the first steps to promote the new Health and Social Care Bill, Eddie Crouch tells us a recent personal experience with the NHS hospital system, and draws conclusions from this. Like all dentists, he wonders if dentistry has already been forgotten in this plan?

During the New Year my wife experienced the NHS at first hand. During the afternoon of New Year’s Day she began to experience small changes in her vision in her right eye, in fact it started whilst we were driving to collect our daughter from York Railway Station. We had enjoyed New Year’s Eve in a rented cottage on the beautiful Yorkshire headland that is Flamborough Head. Indeed my wife had spent an hour on New Year’s morning taking photos of the colony of guillemots.

We went directly to York District Hospital as our concern grew, which like York itself on New Year’s afternoon was practically deserted in the modern A and E facility. The greeting banner running in electronic red above the receptionist read “The wait to see a Doctor will be 4 hours”, they must have had many ambulance cases based on the row upon row of empty chairs to generate such a waiting time, or the deterrent message was working well.

We sat down and waited our turn and after about 15 minutes my wife was triaged by the casualty nurse, and we resumed the wait. She was eventually seen by the Consultant some 2 hours into our wait who looked into her eyes and confessed this was not his speciality but would get someone to assist over the phone. Thirty minutes later he returned saying the telephone diagnosis with the Eye Specialist seemed to suggest it may not be a detached retina, but best to come back to clinic in the morning.

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