Random good (?) ideas - again...
One of the banes of the NHS are people who make appointments and then don't attend their appointments. An idea I have been chewing over is that when someone signs up with a GP, they make a refundable deposit of some more than token sum - say £10 - which they would forfeit if they break an appointment with less than 24 hours notice. Another option might be for a deposit only to be payable if the patient has previously broken an appointment without notice. Apparently the best time to see a quack without an appointment is when it is raining, as a lot of 'sick' people do not show up when the weather is inclement.
Any thoughts?
One of the banes of the NHS are people who make appointments and then don't attend their appointments. An idea I have been chewing over is that when someone signs up with a GP, they make a refundable deposit of some more than token sum - say £10 - which they would forfeit if they break an appointment with less than 24 hours notice. Another option might be for a deposit only to be payable if the patient has previously broken an appointment without notice. Apparently the best time to see a quack without an appointment is when it is raining, as a lot of 'sick' people do not show up when the weather is inclement.
Any thoughts?
Labels: Healthcare
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on Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 12:32 pm.
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Of course this is a good idea - one from the Ladybird Book Of Health Economics I would suggest. If you're serious about public sector waste this is a good place to start. I would set the figure a little higher (maybe lower for disadvantaged groups). It's because of open goals like this that I can become very disparaging when people tell me that "it's impossible to cut government spending/waste".
A better idea would be to abolish the NHS and make people responsible for their own health. That way if they want to drink themselves to death, nobody else (like me) has to pay.
Sounds a bit drastic, I know, but if the govt has nationalised healthcare, why not food, or heating, or any other of life's essentials? Just as well they haven't done any of these things, though, or we'd all be starving in the nude.
You beat me to it, thomas fuller. I was going to offer the stunning idea that people pay for their own doctors' appointments, just as they used to before the introduction of Soviestesque socialised medicine in the 1940s. There was always private insurance and mutual societies.
With what they are forced by law to pay out of their salaries into the NHS, Brits could afford very comfortable private health care - a situation which would put them, as the patient, in the driver's seat; not a government minister in a government department and hundreds of salaried apparachiks eating up the contributions. Get rid of this vile system! It's degrading.
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