Nhs

[hibee]

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Bit of a daft situation at St Johns where they have guys at the car park entrance checking people on entry. I asked what was going on and they said they were keeping staff out as they normally fill the car park by 8am.

I get the need for visitor / patient parking but without staff, it's not much of a hospital.

You could argue it’s not much of a hospital if the patients can’t get there either.

East Lothian community hospital is the same, if your appointment is between around 9-2 there’s no chance of a patient getting parked because the staff have taken all the spaces and they don’t do anything about it there so no checks on the way in.

[JimBHibees]

Was wondering if there was any analysis done on whether brexit has resulted in a significant loss in foreign staff across the uk. Seems it significantly has. Wonder how this will ever likely to be improved enough to fulfil the required capacity. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was seen as a positive outcome by the wealthy and influential cabal who pushed Brexit.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/...nhs-doctors-eu

[Stairway 2 7]

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Was wondering if there was any analysis done on whether brexit has resulted in a significant loss in foreign staff across the uk. Seems it significantly has

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/...nhs-doctors-eu

Seems a fair rebuttal of the statistics at the end though. The article seems daft if it doesn't include the number of non EU doctors and nurses. Brexit caused an explosion of immigration 2.1 million net increase in migration in 3 years, mostly from outside EU. The problem is we're about to undo that with making it harder for migrants to bring dependents, being stricter on foreign students, raising the wages threshold and decreasing net migration to a few hundred thousand per year. Looking at the figures the amount of foreign nurses registered last year was more than double the year before brexit, it's just they are mainly from India and the Philippines

The Department of Health and Social Care rejected the thinktank’s findings.

A spokesperson said: “This analysis is inaccurate and we don’t recognise or agree with its key conclusions. We are making significant progress in training and recruiting a record number of nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals. There are over 9,000 more nurses working in the NHS and there are over 26,000 more hospital doctors now than in 2016.”

In 2022/23, over 24,000 new nurses were registered who were trained outside the UK, which is a 32-year high

The proportion of new international nurse registrants as a total of all new annual registrants on the UK register has increased substantially in the past 5 years and reached a two-decade high in 2021/22

https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-reliant-is-the-nhs-in-england-on-international-nurse-recruitment

[overdrive]

Phoned the GP this morning. Receptionist asked what’s wrong. She then told me to go to the pharmacist and hung up on me. Just been to the pharmacist and he said I need to see a GP. Can see me going round in circles here

[Moulin Yarns]

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Phoned the GP this morning. Receptionist asked what’s wrong. She then told me to go to the pharmacist and hung up on me. Just been to the pharmacist and he said I need to see a GP. Can see me going round in circles here

Next stop, A&E. 😉

[hibee]

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Phoned the GP this morning. Receptionist asked what’s wrong. She then told me to go to the pharmacist and hung up on me. Just been to the pharmacist and he said I need to see a GP. Can see me going round in circles here

And if you do eventually get an appointment you’ll likely be the only person in the waiting room, no idea what the GP’s are doing all day.

[Bridge hibs]

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Phoned the GP this morning. Receptionist asked what’s wrong. She then told me to go to the pharmacist and hung up on me. Just been to the pharmacist and he said I need to see a GP. Can see me going round in circles here

Same happened to me a few years ago, round and round and round in ****ing circles, that was the whole reason for seeing my GP in the first place

****ing dizziness !

[Andy Bee]

Robin McAlpine letting loose on the SG and more specifically Neil Gray over the National Care Service. He aint holding back.

https://robinmcalpine.org/fix-your-c...-a-brass-neck/

[Sergio sledge]

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Next stop, A&E. 😉

I know you are joking, but therein lies one of the problems facing A&E at the minute, too many people passed round the houses end up just going to A&E in order to just get someone to see them because the GP can't or won't.

[Jack]

I've taken this from elsewhere. It's a sad set of affairs compared to the SNP who took office all these years ago.

(The LMC = Lothian Local Medical Committee is the representative body for all NHS General Medical Practitioners within Lothian Health Board area. Our basic principles are to support, represent and communicate with General Practice.)

This was issued by the LMC earlier this year and explains why the whole thing is a mess. Please do get in touch with your MP as this isn’t going to get better. A long read but well worth it.

STATEMENT FROM LOTHIAN LMC (Local Medical Committee)

Why are your GP practices now unable to do everything they once were?

General Practice across the country has been struggling for years. However it has now reached a critical situation with less money, less doctors and less staff to meet the growing needs of the Scottish population. So how did we get here?
In 2017, the Scottish Government recognised this and promised to introduce a new contract, starting in 2018 and to be fully implemented within 3 years. At the time, the then Health Secretary Shona Robison MSP (now Deputy First Minister) said “We equally recognised the fundamental challenges faced by general practice, not least growing workload and increasing risk”.
Unfortunately, for the first time in the history of the NHS, large parts of this contract have not been implemented. Even worse, when Health Boards haven’t been able to spend the money that they were given to employ additional pharmacists and other professionals to support General Practice, the money has had to be returned to Scottish Government rather than being able to be spent supporting your local practice.
Scottish Government promised transitional payments to practices to recognise the non-delivery of this contract, but then withdrew that funding, even after some practices had already used the money for additional cover.
There have been many further challenges both local and national since then;
• Over half of the practices in Lothian have recently received huge bills for their facilities from NHS Lothian, over and above what they were already paying. This will amount to £1.6 million per year across the practices affected and, without any additional funding coming into practices, it’s likely this will lead to reduced staffing, with fewer appointments and longer waits to be seen.

• All practices in Lothian are impacted by Scottish Government not funding an increase in compulsory pension contributions. This is only occurring in General Practice in Scotland as English and Welsh Governments have already committed to paying this, and there is funding in place for all staff in hospitals. Again, this comes out of the funding available to practices to pay for administrative staff, nurses and doctors.

• Many people don’t know that the funding for practices comes through a national formula and doesn’t reflect how many times patients are seen. Practices are paid the same whether you are seen once or a hundred times per year. In 2017, the Scottish Government recognised that it wasn’t sufficient and promised to move towards a new funding model. This still hasn’t happened, and the funding uplifts have been substantially below inflation since then.

• The average patient used to contact their practice 3-4 times per year. This has increased to 6-7. The reasons for this are multiple and include more elderly, more people with illness (often multiple) and more treatment options. The large growth in waiting lists has also had a big impact, with GP appointments being taken up with ongoing management whilst awaiting definitive procedures.

• We all know how much energy costs have risen over the last couple of years and with insufficient funding to cover this, again this money comes out of the services practices can provide.

• Part of the funding which comes from government every year is earmarked for non-GP staff pay rises e.g. receptionists, nursing staff, practice managers. This has always matched what was given to staff working elsewhere in the NHS. But for the first time last year, the Scottish Government decided to break this link, meaning practices had to fund the shortfall or risk losing staff.

• The number of GPs in Scotland is falling. As part of the 2017 contract the Scottish Government promised that numbers would rise by 800, however when doctors in training are excluded from the figures, the numbers are actually reducing! Since 2013, the GP WTE (whole time equivalent) workforce has fallen by 5.35% - a fall of 196.7 WTE GPs. In that same time period, the number of practices has fallen by 9%, average list sizes have increased by 18% and the total patient population has increased by 7%. 42% of practices in Scotland report at least one GP vacancy. The number of GP partners has reduced by 14% between 2012 and 2022. In the last 20 years the ratio of GPs to hospital consultants has halved, despite many things which used to be done in hospital now commonly being done in practice, and this reflects the falling share of the NHS budget spent in General Practice.

• In many areas, practice buildings are too small and are outdated. Unfortunately, Scottish Government has now cancelled all funding for new builds, leaving many working out of buildings no longer fit for purpose. Scottish Government has also withdrawn sustainability loans, a scheme to reduce the risk for GPs who own their building. This leads to financial loss which again impacts on the services they can deliver.

• With less staff and more work, better IT would help improve efficiency. Our IT is cumbersome and unreliable which often impacts on the care of our patients, increasing inefficiency and damaging staff morale. We are the only country in Britain still using paper prescriptions - this alone costs a huge amount of clinical, administrative and patient time.

• In order to make systems better we need time to learn and develop. We used to receive ten half days per year to work with our teams on making practices better for everyone. The support for this was withdrawn by NHS24 and Scottish Government have done very little to reintroduce any form of reliable support.

Incredibly, despite all that we have just described, your practice remains absolutely committed to provide the best service that it can.

However, if you’re not satisfied with the service you receive, look beyond the practice and instead hold those with the power to improve matters to account. Scottish Government needs to do more to directly support General Practice, the bedrock of the NHS. Please contact your MSP. Their contact details can be found at Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) | Scottish Parliament Website

Lothian LMC
May 2024

[Stairway 2 7]

My niece works as a receptionist. She's 22 worked there a year and now is the longest lasting in the team as it's hellish. She says doctors work about 3 days a week mostly and are constantly on long weekends. She said last Monday only one GP was in and was only coming in from 12. The spaces for him were full in seconds but she had to spend all day saying sorry no availability. I said can they not just put on a message saying full but they need to vet each calls for emergencies ect but generally just listen to abuse all day.

She says some days no GPs are in so they send mass texts about staff training or repairs happening.

She also says everyone thinks Monday will be busiest time to call so people call on a Tuesday which is actually the busiest day

[J-C]

Got my flu/covid winter job text through, offered me Haddington or N Berwick, eh that'll be right, went online to get the Musselburgh health centre, earliest is Sunday 10th Nov ffs.

[silverhibee]

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My niece works as a receptionist. She's 22 worked there a year and now is the longest lasting in the team as it's hellish. She says doctors work about 3 days a week mostly and are constantly on long weekends. She said last Monday only one GP was in and was only coming in from 12. The spaces for him were full in seconds but she had to spend all day saying sorry no availability. I said can they not just put on a message saying full but they need to vet each calls for emergencies ect but generally just listen to abuse all day.

She says some days no GPs are in so they send mass texts about staff training or repairs happening.

She also says everyone thinks Monday will be busiest time to call so people call on a Tuesday which is actually the busiest day

No problems at my GP, I phone in the morning and get to see a doctor that day, that’s at Murrayfield, but even at Muirhouse surgery there was never a problem with getting an appointment.

[Stairway 2 7]

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No problems at my GP, I phone in the morning and get to see a doctor that day, that’s at Murrayfield, but even at Muirhouse surgery there was never a problem with getting an appointment.

Your very lucky there's more chance of winning the league cup than me getting a same day appointment at my doctors. Probably shouldn't name the practice but it's a less affluent area of east Edinburgh she works at

No idea why GPs are allowed to be basically privatised contractors.

[Jack]

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Your very lucky there's more chance of winning the league cup than me getting a same day appointment at my doctors. Probably shouldn't name the practice but it's a less affluent area of east Edinburgh she works at

No idea why GPs are allowed to be basically privatised contractors.

Much will depend on what's wrong with you as to whether you'll be seen that day.

GPs wouldn't have joined the NHS in 1947 if they hadn't been allowed to maintain their private contractor status. Having said that the number of them is decreasing every year as the health boards take them over.