A New Year message asked why Bonkers had not commented on the ‘Pull out and
Keep’ section of Bexley Council’s Winter 2022 Magazine which received
a
generally favourable report here. The honest answer is that I don’t know; I
must have skipped over it because it looked a bit boring but I find myself
agreeing with my correspondent that it is a load of old, err, wishful thinking.
At a time when
I was refused any appointment for a potentially serious
condition, Bexley’s Magazine supplement claimed that appointments are available early in the
morning, during the evening and on Saturday.
The sting is in the tail, simply contact your GP practice. I accept
that Bexley Group Practice may be in a class of its own when it comes to
inaccessibility but contacting a GP is the Achilles Heel of the NHS and second
only to the incompetence of successive Health Secretaries as the reason for the collapse of all health services.
Then the supplement goes on to say that to register with a GP you do not need to
supply proof of address, immigration status, ID or NHS number.
This
is I believe what the law says but it is not true in practice. I can say that
having just gone through the process myself in an attempt to escape the clutches
of Bexley Group Practice. I had to provide my NHS number, state my nationality
and birthplace and upload a current bank statement and driving licence as proof
of address and identity. For good measure I had to scrawl something
approximating to my signature using my computer mouse. Not once but twice.
It was a 20 minute process and worked well enough except that it didn’t like
spaces in post codes but as the new GP’s receptionist warned me, it is not for the faint hearted.
Nothing works properly in the NHS. Not very long ago I was sent a copy of a
letter addressed to my GP by a consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The named
GP retired many years ago but it tells him that the consultant phoned me to
update me on a treatment plan. He most definitely did not and that was more than two months ago.
Just like Bexley Council the NHS is a confirmed failure and condemns people to
die unnecessarily. 500 a week from bed shortages alone was reported only yesterday.