General Discussion
Barton Surgery
At the beginning of September I had cause to complain through the surgery's complaints procedure about one of the doctors.
I received an acknowledgement and waited the 25 working days they say they need for an answer to my complaint. None was forthcoming.
I will be persuing this matter, but I wondered if any others had had a similar experience?
Barton surgery! I don't like attending the surgery at the best of times. Everytime I go there it is full of sick people coughing and sneezing all over the place. Has no one heard of a hanky/tissue in this day and age.
Anyway I digress. Over a year ago I submitted to the doc(s)request to give him a blood sample and take a blood pressure meter home for a week. The doc(s) had been banging on to me for over a year to carry this out.
I let the nurse take the blood and went home with the monitor for the week. I kept a log of the readings and then took it back and handed it to the receptionist. I explained to her who I was and that the log of readings was inside the plastic box the meter was in.
A year has passed and no results etc from the blood sample/ pressure readings, what a surprise!
In my mind the only reason that they pester the sh~t out of you to run these test is that they bill the NHS for them and make loads of money.
Money, money, money, if they could still run the practice and make loads without any patients I'm sure they would.
Great, so now you need to file a complaint about the complaints procedure 
Here some points I have heard on Radio 4 recently. It goes something roughly like this.
It costs £610,000 for the basic training of a doctor.
Of the 5000 being trained for the shortfall, the prediction is that half of these will be moving to Australia.
When a student graduating with a loan of say £40 to £50k leaves the country, said student loan then gets written off after a couple of years.
Defacto it is a no brainer that so many do just that.
Then we hear that the UK welcomes doctors to come here with open arms and no wonder we need to.
What an appalling merry-go-round.
Except it isn't quite a nice complete circle, because Australia does very nicely, we get chaos and Barton-esk surgeries, whilst Sierra Loene et al gets Ebola out of control.
In this global village we live in this is the free market outcome. Well done politicians give yourselves a pay rise for a job well done - NOT.
Student loans = I believe that when they'll get written off depends on when they were taken out (different amounts in play since student loans were introduced). However, as far as I am aware it is presently after 30 years from graduating (that might be a 'couple of years' to some) and loan repayment is still to be repaid wherever in the world the graduate (in this case doctor) should end up living.
And if I had the opportunity to go and live in a better climate, with less hours to work but with higher pay would I be tempted? Yup!
Now we can't do anything about the climate in this country but we could do something, political will allowing of course, about doctors' terms and conditions of employment.
Old Fart. In that time, have you asked for the results of the tests? No surgery in this land sends out results automatically - they'll only contact you if the results indicate the need for further consultation. By the way, if the surgery wasn't full of sick people, there'd be no surgery. :-)
Clive, you know nothing about Barton Surgery, so quit with the "Barton-esk" (sic) jibes. Thanks.
Elvis, I hope that your complaint wasn't about the doctor being too female...
As it happens, I prefer a female doctor, can't beat a female when it comes to the old prostate test.
Old Fart, I'm only trying to help you. Stop being so precious dear. :-). So did you ask for the results??