Tories use coronavirus to put barrier between patients and NHS care
Future predicted: The 1980s drama Max Headroom featured a TV doctor who examined patients by video link. In the pilot we were treated to the sight of a patient dropping his trousers in readiness to show off his anal pustule. This seems to be the future that Matt Hancock is planning for the NHS – especially after he gave Amazon free access to all your medical information (I’m not sure if this is the patient from that show but it’s as close to that scene as I’m going! Note the “does not vote” label at the bottom).
The Conservatives have been trying to stop people actually going to see a doctor for years and now they’re using coronavirus to force it on us.
They want us to hold all our appointments by telephone or over the internet.
What an absolutely moronic idea. Only an imbecile would suggest that it was an improvement.
Matt Hancock said a current “digital-first” rollout will be extended across the country wherever “clinically and practically possible”.
He told MPs: “We’re taking steps of course to improve access by making sure people can access primary care in the best possible way.”
Draw your own conclusions about Mr Hancock!
This Writer is reminded of the pilot of Max Headroom (the SF drama, not the comedy video-jockey show) in which people use home video cameras to show their symptoms to a TV doctor.
In the show we’re treated to the sight of a man starting to drop his trousers in order to show the world his “anal pustule”. Charming.
But we live in a country that has aired Embarrassing Bodies, so one imagines that this is the sort of thing that has emboldened Mr Hancock.
As far as I’m concerned, we might as well look up our symptoms on Google. The result will be about as reliable.
In other words, I reckon this policy is a plan for preventable deaths (only affecting poor people, of course) and possibly even for the eruption of another epidemic; remote GPs aren’t going to recognise all the symptoms in the course of a brief call.
And how much are these calls going to cost the patient? The NHS is supposed to be free at the point of use!
Ultimately, we can see this as a transparent attempt to push the NHS closer to privatisation.
It will only take a few tragedies for the Tories to claim that the public health system isn’t working and commercial interests could carry out the duty much more responsibly (even though that has proved not to be the case in every single privatisation ever carried out by a Tory government).
Contemptible.
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would like to see them change the dressing on this injured leg of mine by telephone or video….cant be done…….. would do it myself if it wasn’t in a place below my knee where i cant bend far enough down and sideways to see properly what i’m doing.or if it was just a dry dressing but it still needs the silver & seaweed primary dressing putting on the open bit and a sealed pad secondary dressing putting over that. so it still needs a nurse to do it every 3-5 days. (twice a week preferably).
This “hands off” approach is purely based on commercial possibilities and does nothing for doctor/patient interraction – you are little more than a number on a worksheet rather than a human being.
Also, letting this get established opens the doors to any doctor, anywhere in the world signing up for the service for extra cash – try suing those GPs for poor advice !