Are The Words ‘No, Love, It’s Supposed To Look Like That’ So Hard Then..?

GPs should not refer women who are well but worried for female genital cosmetic surgery on the NHS, say experts.

Well, duh!

Specialists at a Central London teaching hospital say they received 30 such referrals, mainly from family doctors, over the past three years.

This included eight schoolgirls - one as young as 11 - the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology reports.

Experts say doctors need clear guidance on how best to care for women who mistakenly believe they need surgery.

Sorry, why? Don’t they do five years at medical school? How hard can it be?

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons says medics need to determine whether a problem exists or whether an alternative solution may be preferable, but offers no advice on how to judge the problem, say the researchers from University College London's Women's Health Institute.

If it’s not an actual clinical problem, what sort of advice should you need?

They say it may be simpler to ban the procedure in the NHS altogether, leaving it to private practices.

Well, I’m all for this on cost grounds, actually, but then what about those who do have a real, clinical problem? Where do they go?

I mean, good grief, why is it so bloody hard for supposed ‘professionals’ to just do the damned job they are paid for?

Dr Sarah Creighton and colleagues believe the future demand for so-called "designer vagina" operations or labial reductions is potentially infinite and is driven by society's wider and growing desire for cosmetic surgery in general and changing expectations about what is a desirable appearance for women.

Yes, you can certainly blame the media and women’s magazines and fads started by the permatanned chavs of Essex and Cheshire for the desire for such surgery.

But you can’t blame the GPs’ reluctance to address those issues with their patients, and to send them for unnecessary and costly surgery on the NHS, on that.

Can you?

"Show us yer dirty knickers, love!"

For the last few years, she has counted on the health service to afford her dignity and security in her old age.

But now a blind 77-year-old widow has been left feeling dehumanised and humiliated by those who were supposed to be looking after her.

Edith Braddow, who was prescribed incontinence pads by a local clinic after being referred by her GP, says she was told to bring in three soiled pads if she wanted to continue to receive them.

This doesn't even make sense. It's not like she couldn't fake it if she wanted to, is it?

And just what do they think she's doing with them if she doesn't need them? Is there a black market in incontinence pads?

Even worse is the fact that she and her son meekly complied with this request:

'I was incensed, but we put three pads in a carrier bag.

When we got there the nurses actually weighed each pad in front of us and referred to some kind of scale...'.

And believe it or not, the health authority actually defended this:

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Community Health insisted that testing incontinence pads for absorbency was standard practice.

‘A review of the continence service took place during 2010 and changes have been made to ensure patients receive optimum care,’ she said. ‘The aim of the service is always to return patients to continence wherever possible. Pads are only prescribed for those patients with moderate to severe incontinence.

‘All patients are offered a comprehensive clinical assessment, which includes reviewing existing pads to ensure adequate absorbency and comfort to the patient, as defined by National Good Practice, followed by a clear treatment plan.’

I don't know which I'd prefer to believe - that they are so dehumanised themselves that they believe that this is acceptable behaviour, or that they are just secret perverts who are turned on by soiled underwear.

If the latter, I suggest they go to Japan, where such tastes are catered for with vending machines...

Colchester Hospital vs Military Hospital

Sapper Ashley-James Hall, 20, whose legs were blown off in a bomb blast in Afghanistan, was being treated in Colchester General Hospital for suspected meningitis.

He is now being treated in isolation at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where injured troops are cared for.

He still has open wounds from the explosion and has contracted a bacterial infection in his legs.

According to the family, the infection is similar to MRSA and means he must be kept in isolation. However, staff at Colchester General Hospital wanted to put him back on a general ward.

/facepalm

Dad Stephen said: “He has got an infection in his legs and it was felt by us the hospital could not deal with his injuries. So he discharged himself.

“Military care is better than the NHS. You ask for something to be done on the NHS and it takes hours.”

If it happens at all, that is.

Mr Hall said: “At Colchester one set of doctors tells you one thing, then another set say something different.

“Ashley was not happy with his care.

“Ashley has an Afghan bug similar to MRSA, but they were trying to put him in with the general public on a general ward.

“We were having to shout and scream at them.

“He is in an infection control ward in Birmingham.

“Colchester doesn’t have the same medical facilities. We were dealing with new doctors all the time. It was just appalling.”

The family have angered the hospital by going to the media.

A hospital trust spokescreature whines:

Mark Prentice, a spokesman for Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are disappointed that Mr Stephen Hall has concerns about the care given to his son Ashley-James but also that he has chosen to raise them directly with the media and not with us.

“We would urge him to contact the trust as soon as possible so that we can thoroughly investigate and report back to him.”

And will you find that their concerns are well-founded in that investigation?

“As a result of Mr Hall contacting the Gazette, we have carried out a brief, preliminary investigation which indicates that the care given to Ashley-James was entirely appropriate at all times during his recent stay on the emergency assessment unit at Colchester General Hospital.”

That’ll probably be a ‘no’ then…

Spending Other People’s Money On Other People….

The Fryatt Hospital and Mayflower Medical Centre in Harwich, Essex, opened in December 2005, having been built using a scheme similar to the private finance initiative (PFI).

Yay!

Oh:

But since its opening, the hospital has been dogged by problems.

There was a three-year delay in getting GPs to move into the centre, half the floor had to be replaced, people were unhappy with the fact that its minor injuries unit was not open at night, and its x-ray department was cut to three days a week.

However, most complaints centred on the fact that its operating theatre was not being used. It was intended for minor procedures including foot operations.

Now North East Essex Primary Care Trust, which runs the hospital, has admitted it never will be.

Don’t panic, though! No-one’s been sacked or demoted for this. You see, it’s all the fault of…unforeseen changes.

Well, the lack of use of the theatre part, anyway. The report doesn’t say what amazing, innovative excuse the Trust came up with for all the other complaints…

Matt Bushell, acting chief executive, said changes in patient safety regulations regarding anaesthetics since its opening meant the operating theatre was now no longer "viable".

It’s impossible to renovate it, then?

A spokesman for the trust added that it had been "the victim of unfortunate timing" regarding changes in legislation.

Or the victim of utterly incompetent management…

Mr Bushell stressed that the theatre only took up about five per cent of the space of the hospital, which offered more than 60 health services.

John Brown from Harwich Town Council described the new hospital as a "white elephant" and said: "It has been a waste of money."

"For the millions it cost to build the new hospital they should have spent a fraction of that renovating the old hospital," he said.

Quite…

Head Injury? Well, Maybe...But You've Had A Few Sherbets, Haven't You?

Following on from Dick Puddlecote's post yesterday, it seems alcohol + illness makes it hard to diagnose - particularly for those medics who have already made up their minds:

Confused and in distress, this man seems to be in need of medical attention.

But when this picture was taken, Arnold Siddall had just been dumped outside a hospital A&E department because staff thought he was drunk.

In fact he had suffered a fractured skull, but no one at the hospital read a form written by a paramedic which said the 47-year-old had hit his head on a pavement.

So he was turfed out, and eventually arrested. Whereupon, on suffering a fit, he was brought back to hospital. Too late.

Now a coroner has ruled that Mr Siddall could have survived had he been treated at once, rather than a full 14 hours after his fall.

His family released the poignant image of his final hours yesterday as they demanded assurances that no patient could ever be betrayed by the NHS in the same way.

Good luck with that!

The trust has paid his family a five-figure out-of-court settlement negotiated through solicitors Pannone and has apologised for Mr Siddall's treatment.

Anyone want to bet this won't happen again?

"Press One For St Peter..."

A cancer sufferer was told he could not book a hospital appointment - because records showed he was dead.

Alan Campbell rang a booking system phone line after becoming worried that the disease may have spread to his throat.

But when he tried to make an appointment with the NHS Choose and Book system, a telephone operator informed him their records showed him as 'deceased'.

Another case of ‘Computer says ‘No’..’, I suppose..?

'When I rang to take take the appointment I was told, 'Sorry, we can't give you an appointment, our records show you are deceased'.

'I said 'you're joking, I'm talking to you aren't I?' But they said 'you'll have to go back to your GP to get it sorted out'.'

So he did. Because we all know there’s not point in arguing with call centre staff, who are unable to deviate from their instructions.

Mr Campbell, who has also survived a stroke and a heart attack, contacted his doctor and was told the problem had been resolved - only to phone the Choose and Book system again to be told their records still showed he was dead.

D’oh!

NHS Blackburn with Darwen Teaching Care Trust Plus, in Lancashire, which is responsible for the phone service, has now apologised for the error.

Mr Campbell has been told he will contacted within 14 days to arrange an appointment with an oral and maxillofacial surgery specialist.

Within 14 days? How about NOW?

Janice Horrocks, executive director of Engagement Partnerships and Operational Development, said they were investigating the case, adding: 'We are sorry for the distress experienced by this patient.'

I love that ‘experienced by’… Nivcely swerved, Janice!

What she should have apologised for was the distress caused to Mr Campbell, of course.

And no statement from an NHS media flack would be complete without the obligatory the-system-does-work-honest! Statement:

'We would like to reassure patients that using the Choose and Book system, which allows you to choose the hospital, time and date of your appointment, remains the fastest route to getting the quickest and most convenient hospital appointment for the care that you need.'

Unless the NHS thinks you’re dead, that is.

False Economy

Narah Bate, 81, was recently diagnosed with a rare bone marrow cancer and given potentially life-prolonging drugs.

When she developed blisters in her throat and sores on her face, the professor treating her changed the prescription.

But that didn’t go down too well with NICE, who decided the new drugs were just too expensive.

But medicine rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) denied her the drug Imatinib saying it was too expensive and she would have to remain on hydroxycarbamide.

Still, it’s a harsh world, and we all have to make sacrifices, and this way the NHS saves money to…

Oh. Wait:

Audrey, 62, of Fleet, Hants, said: “The side-effects of this medication are so bad she had to stop taking it for a week to allow the blisters in her throat to heal. That meant a stay in hospital and a blood transfusion.

“Now she’s having a blood transfusion almost every week. That takes up a hospital bed, using staff time. They say that Imatinib is too expensive, but treating her this way must cost more.”

Indeed.

What’s that old saying about those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Obnoxio's Manifesto

OTC makes the sensible case for scrapping large chunks of the quangocracy; buried away in the comments is his fuller manifesto, which is pretty much the same as my own:
---------------
First step would be to leave the EU.

Second step would be to repeal every law based on EU directives. We can always re-implement later. Mass repeal of every law introduced by Labour since 1997. (Probably a lot of overlap!)

Third step would be to shit-can every consultancy contract with the government and renegotiate.

Every single drop of government funding for quangoes and charities stopped dead.

Massive tax simplification: flat tax of 25% on everything above £12,000 per annum. Dividends untaxed. Corporate tax abolished*. All duties abolished**. VAT abolished. National Insurance either abolished or replace the current Ponzi scheme with actual insurance.

Sell off the NHS.

Renationalise the trains and resell them in such a way that you don't have oligopolies on routes. Same thing for buses.

Deregulate schools and introduce vouchers.

Introduce citizens income, end ALL welfare programs. Implement program to gradually phase out citizen's income***.

Sack the entire civil service, district and town councils. Review the entire governance requirement.

Go to the market to get us out of the bank ownership business.
---------------
* I'd quibble with this. It would be far better to have a 20% flat tax on all income, personal or corporate, than 25% on personal incomes and 0% on corporate.

** 'Duties' that equate to user charges, such as fuel duties to pay for roads; a modest tax of a few percent on new goods to cover refuse collection costs; or indeed taxes on land values seem like 'good' taxes to me.

*** I'm not sure where this is going. A higher effective income tax-free personal allowance is an important corollary of a Citizen's Income-style welfare system; as nobody can be sure which is preferable, why not give people a choice?

Waste in the private sector

When you point out how wasteful and inefficient the State sector is, the traditional Leftie retort is "Ah yes, but there is waste and inefficiency in the private sector as well".

To which the counter-retort is "Ah yes, but the consumer doesn't pay for the waste; the consumer only pays what the goods and services are worth. Plus 17.5% VAT where appropriate. For example, 'Waterworld' may have been the most expensive film to make of all time, but the film was not that brilliant that cinemas could charge people double the normal price to see it."

In case that doesn't shut them up, or they ask "Who does pay, then?" or in the unlikely event that they say "Then the poor long-suffering shareholder must bear the cost", then is useful to look at a real life example; the Blu-Ray vs HD DVD 'war'.

Sony and Hitachi spent oodles of money in developing rival formats. If you were a shareholder in Hitachi, then you have paid an element of R&D and lost your money, and if you were a Sony shareholder, the gamble has paid off nicely*. But most sensible shareholders in Japanese electronic giants would own shares in both companies, so the only question is, do the gains (future income from licensing the Blu-Ray patents) exceed the cost of developing both formats? Almost certainly yes. So the shareholders haven't really lost out either.

So yes, superficially there is 'waste' in the private sector, but it doesn't really matter.

In any event, it pales into insignificance when you read about the NHS hospital wards crawling with vermin.

* When you think of the rival formats that Sony has developed and miserably failed to market, for example MiniDisc and ATRAC (instead of MP3) and so on, they had to get lucky sooner or later.

NHS Fuckwittery (10)

From today's Metro:

Around 2,500 under-14s are admitted to hospital each year because of the effects of alcohol... It also emerged that more than 1,500 pupils were expelled in just three years for drug or alcohol-related reasons. The Liberal Democrats, who uncovered the figures, said they were evidence of an "escalating public health crisis".

Wot? I thoroughly agree that under-age drinking is A Bad Thing, but that's hardly an "escalating public health crisis", is it? That 2,500 is barely 1% of all alcohol related admissions, which in turn, only account for about 2% of all NHS-admissions. 2,500 is also barely 0.1% of all 10 to 14 year olds. Hopefully, this experience teaches them a lesson, if not, well ... they are probably beyond redemption.

And why shouldn't schools be allowed to expel pupils for exactly that reason? I am sure that the gains to the hundreds of thousands of pupils whose lessons are no longer disrupted by scum like this far outweighs any other factors.

"Cocaine victim numbers surge"

Shock! Horror!

The number of cocaine users admitted to hospital has more than quadrupled in eight years, it was revealed yesterday ... gasps The Sun breathlessly, ... The worrying statistics point to a dramatic rise in the drug’s popularity over the last decade..

It then continues with some hard facts ...
Cannabis poisonings nearly halved during the same period. Good stuff. Why is that not worthy of a headline?

The Government figures reveal 740 people needed emergency treatment after bingeing on cocaine during 2006/07, compared with 161 in 1998/99. Wot? Out of maybe half a million users, 740 overdoses? I'd guess that the bulk of these relate to crack-cocaine anyway, which is a truly vile drug, not the good old Bolivian marching powder that merely turns you into an arrogant arsehole and makes your nose bleed. Even if this guess is wrong, it's not much of a message is it "Kids! Don't do cocaine! There's a one-in-a-thousand chance you'll overdose if you take it regularly for a year! And going by these stat's, zero chance that you'll die!"

The majority – 629 – were men and their average age was 29. Yeah, so? Cocaine is taken predominatly by relatively wealthy men in their twenties, any fule kno that.

... the number of cannabis users needing treatment fell from 171 to 96 – and heroin overdoses fell from 1,962 to 1,530. Isn't that something to celebrate - out of one or two million cannabis users, only 96 needed treatment? Ditto heroin, with 300,000 users?

Last month the Government revealed drug-related hospital admissions had soared by more than a third since 2002. Many of the 215,447 admissions were for legal drug overdoses or accidental poisoning. So, er, by these figures, illegal drugs caused about 3% as many admissions as legal ones? And even legal drugs only accounted for 2% of all admissions (approx. ten million). Hardly a f***ing epidemic, is it?

H/t EUReferendum, who makes further very interesting points.

Ann Cryer MP (Lab, Keighley)

Prompted by Verity over at DK's, I have uncovered some fascinating statistics.

Another Labour MP making evidence-based-policy! Whatever next?

She doesn't always get it right though - she called for immigrants to be forced to learn English a few years ago, which is bollocks of course. Once people are here they are here, you can't deport them for failing a language test. The cheaper and better solution would be to grant residence permits only to people who can already speak reasonably good English when they apply.

* Update - a subsequent post at Vindico's has set me thinking - would such a ban be in the slightest enforceable? Hmmm...