Like everyone else, I’m spending the next week getting ready for Christmas. It’s busy: shopping, school plays, friends and family, the last-minute rush at work… What a weird time for the government to launch a consultation on arrangements for the transfer of commissioning responsibility for renal dialysis services from NHS England to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).
I mean: phew. That sentence alone is exhausting! Imagine, alongside the inevitable high jinks and hold-ups of the holidays, carrying out a comprehensive consultation about passing responsibility for dialysis services from NHS England to CCGs (regional groups of GPs) by 9 January. Everyone is in the same boat at the moment, right? So much to do! So many distractions! Wouldn’t it be awful if the whole consultation period elapsed without most people knowing it had happened at all?
It’s worrying, especially as the amount of people needing dialysis (around 23,000) is increasing – some estimate that by 2018 it could be up to 40,000. The changes are due to kick in next April, and there’s a lot of debate about what impact they might have on patients. Supporters say services will become more efficient, but the National Kidney Federation and the British Kidney Patient Association have expressed deep concern. The BKPA argues that dialysis is a specialised area which should be the responsibility of renal experts (not GPs); that separating responsibility for dialysis and kidney transplant services could lead to poor co-ordination and that CCGs deciding not to prioritise dialysis in their area could create a postcode lottery. They have requested a delay to gain assurances that services will be safeguarded. An e-petition opposing the changes has 30,500 signatures. All this is very medical and pretty boring (that’s dialysis for you – ask anyone who has it), so I’ll leave the statistics there and tell you a quick story.
Last Christmas the NHS saved my dad’s life. On Christmas Eve, instead of coming to my house, he ended up in hospital. I’ve only ever been scared my dad was going to die once before, when we got him tickets to see Chris Rock at Brixton Academy and he laughed so hard I thought he might have a heart attack. That night was way more fun.
Dad is not one to complain. I mean, he does – he’s an academic; he complains for a living. Then for fun he complains about everything else: politics, capitalism, neoliberalism, London, America, my taste in music, cricket, Today, everyone else’s taste in music, parochialism, most films, actors who aren’t Steve Buscemi, anyone/thing on TV, ostentatious beards, people who don’t know who Sid Perelman is… He never complains about things that happen to him, though. My brother and I didn’t know about his longstanding kidney problem until recently – he hadn’t wanted us to worry.
But there we were, worrying. They gave him dialysis. The first time, his blood was so full of toxins when it went into the dialyser it was black, but that night he came round and we knew he was going to be OK. A year later, my dad gets dialysis three times a week. He is fit, healthy and joining us for Christmas. He remains disgusted by my music taste and has taken my sons to the pictures so that I can write this. His surgeon joined an artery to a vein in his forearm to make hemodialysis possible. If you put your hand on the crook of his arm you can feel the blood rushing underneath like water from a tap. It feels strong and clean. It is.
I’m with Samuel Johnson (and Bob Dylan) on patriotism, but if anything could change my mind, it would be the people who save my dad’s life three times a week, for free. This column is my thank you to them. I hope their work and their patients remain the priority of those who control the future of the NHS.
Follow Lauren on Twitter @LaurenLaverne
