The BBC seem to be in hyper-drive today regarding the supposedly bad NHS accident and emergency figures. They even had a reporter doing that standing outside a big building thing, this time in Wales, breathlessly telling us that the Wales health fellows only release their figures monthly so the only available figures are for November. If I persevere, I’m hoping to have figured out what happened to December in Wales by close of play today. However, I also doubt I’ll bother to persevere.
Do you think, like me, that the bestest ever figure ‘they’ could release would be how many A & E attendees per month are native Brits and how many attendees are of other nationalities. Or are those two numbers a couple of elephants that must never be spoken?
About three weeks ago I visited the local hospitals eye department. No, no. I visited because I was in receipt, via the mailman, of an appointment to attend. The address was us but the name wasn’t us and as we would be passing the hospital I thought I’d drop it off pointing out the error.
Bad move. Parking was a disaster and took an inordinate amount of time. Then, after a refreshing twenty minute walk from our parking place to the hospital and locating the eye bit, I was somewhat saddened to see the crowds at reception!
As it looked like it’d be close to a half hour to get to the front, I left her in a queue to guard our place and went for a nosy round. The waiting area was a long room with sixteen doors, eight down each side and I assumed each door was hiding a consultation room complete with eye doctor.
The waiting area was full but what grabbed my attention was that for every person waiting to be attended to, there seemed to be another person, in uniform, who’s only purpose looked to be the never ending transportation of file folders from room to room. It was like watching worker ants moving bits of leaf. In slow motion.
After observing this for a while it came as no big surprise, upon getting to the front back at reception, to see similar file to-ing and fro-ing going on there with files being moved between the receptionists at their computers.
If this is typical, the mind boggles at what the monthly cost must be for the NHS just to move files a few feet every few minutes.
During my limited investigation, I counted eleven file movers. This figure takes no account of file movers who may’ve been on coffee breaks, toilet breaks or out back behind the bike sheds having a fag. Nor does it take into account the number of sets of twins who may’ve been on duty during the counting period.
I was also unable to ascertain, owing to time constraints, if each of the sixteen doors actually hid a doctor or if some doors where just dummy doors to give the waiting hoards some sense of hope.
Quote; Tricia Cunningham.
“The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.”
??
If you get an email telling you that you can catch Swine Flu from tins of ham, delete it. It's Spam.
2 comments:
my daughters first job as a newly qualified accountant was working for a company auditing hospitals.
She was truly astounded to find each department had it's own HR contingent.
It took her days just collating data from all the departments, to find out how many actually worked at the hospital.
I've always thought that their should be a cull of the folder carriers. They seem to have multiplied over the years.
The problem is, if you have a huge money tree in the back yard and don't have to turn a profit, why should they worry?
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