There’s been a good deal of recent complaint that in some practices patients who haven’t contacted their doctors for years get struck off. NHS England are desperately trying to save money, so have come up with a scheme to get rid of “ghost patients” – people who may have died or moved away – for which GPs get paid £100 a year. The Patients Association is furious that the scheme takes NHS rights away from those who may be well now but collapsing or suffering later – or even, understandably, a bit afraid of doctors.
It makes a change, I suppose, from the often-raised complaint that people who are not really ill take up too much of their GPs’ time; but one would assume that the average patient, not ill but not immortal, would at least sign in for routine inoculations and such.
I imagine that plenty of patients think they ought where possible to “avoid wasting the doctor’s time” or maybe their own, but what I would like to see demanded of patients is that they come in for a routine check-up, that they regard this as saving the doctor’s time in the long run, and accept that this is expected of them if they want the doctor to understand what they are really like in sickness or in health.
I feel fairly strongly about this – not just because I used to be with the Patients Association but because I only had my cancer discovered in time as a result of it being near something else trivial that I might have ignored. People should indeed stay on the list, but they should be lured in – threatening to cut them off permanently if they feel too well is not going to help.
What do you think? Have your say below
