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Inaccurate precis....

Friday, May 16, 2008
If I was asked to describe the NHS using a boxing metaphor, the best match would be 'on the ropes'. However, Pravda Central has other ideas, headlining 'Chief Executive's report confirms the NHS is fighting fit in 60th year' . Yes it has .

That the relationship of governmental press offices to the truth is, at best, at the bitterly contested divorce stage is hardly news, but the inaccurate precis of NHS Chief Exec David Nicholson's words does represent a classic of the type.

This is what he actually said: "The NHS is in good shape".

Not the same, is it? Not by a long chalk.

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posted by Croydonian

The right man for the job?

Monday, April 07, 2008
From Pravda Central:

"Health workers to tackle climate change".

I do hope that sundry meteorologists and the like will repay the compliment by rolling up to their nearest hospital and sneering at in-patients hoping to book an appointment.

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posted by Croydonian

Great surveys of our time

Monday, March 10, 2008
The nation of malades imaginaire on the other side of the Channel has been polled on the ailments they most fear and holding the top slot is the Big C (72%), although its margin over Alzheimer's has fallen from 37 to 18 percentage points. Also coming up on the rails are cardio-vascular diseases and brain injuries. The Big Disease with the Little Name slips from petrifying 35% of Gauls to 27%. Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's round off the leader board, while an impressive 3% have 'no opinion'.

No showing for either crise de foie or jambes lourdes, two ailments known only to the French.

Oddly enough, the survey was conducted for a magazine called Pèlerin (pilgrim), so I suppose it is rum that 'anything that could not be cured by taking the waters at Lourdes' was not an option.


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posted by Croydonian

The trouble with numbers....

Thursday, November 08, 2007
This, from the EU's site today:

"There are already 3 million obese children in Europe and this figure is rising by an estimated 400,000 a year". Although presumably a fair few graduate to being obese adults every year?

And from February:

"A staggering (wobbling, surely?) 27% of men and 38% of women in the European Union are classified as obese. This figure does not include the 5 million children who suffer the same condition".

The first item then goes on to propose compulsory exercise etc etc and the second wanted to 'de-stigmatise' obesity by classing it as a chronic disease (yes, really), but both are far too dull to be worth investigating further.

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posted by Croydonian

Well just fancy that....

Friday, October 19, 2007
The following dry as dust announcement appears at Pravda Central:

"Statistical Press Notice: Patient Choice Survey Friday 19 Oct 2007

The following statistics were released today by the Department of Health:

Report on the National Patient Choice Survey May 2007 England and provisional headline results of the July 2007 survey".

I will admit to being something of a drop-forged cynic, and experience has also shown that the drier the announcement, the more certain it is that an announcement containing bad news is being sneaked out purely because there is an obligation of disclosure, with the hope being that no-one will bother digging deeper.

And, lo and behold, it is not news that Alan Johnson has made haste to associate himself with:

In May, the percentage of patients offered a choice of hospitals has fallen on the quarter, the percentage of patients offered a booklet on hospital choice has fallen, and those aware of choice prior to a GP appointment is effectively static.

The worst SHA areas for awareness etc etc are London, the South East Coast and the East of England. The best are the East Midlands and the North West - the only two where a majority were offered a choice. Bottom of the class for offering a choice was Brighton & Hove City Teaching Hospital - 18%, and the highest, East Lancs - 67%.

The provisional results f0r July show further falls. Tweaking the positioning of my cynical hat, I would imagine that having made all the noise about making patient choice, the government is less than keen on making it real, as press releases (and newspaper headlines) are easy wins, but making things happen is a good deal harder, given the culture of the NHS.

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posted by Croydonian

They do things differently in... Australia

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Headline of the day:

"Vodka drip saves poisoned tourist".

The Sydney Morning Herald has the full story, but in essence the Oz quacks ran out of surgical alcohol and had to resort to vodka as an antidote to swallowed anti-freeze, and "the patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit".

Crikey. Make mine a drip of 25 year old Speyside malt, please.

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posted by Croydonian

Memo to Brown - will you make your mind up

Thursday, September 13, 2007

From 16/3/7:

Nothing matters more to any of us than our health and the health of our family and friends.

And today:

There is no issue that is more important than the safety and security of families in their own homes, on their own streets, in their own neighbourhoods and in their own communities.

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posted by Croydonian

Government acts to help innumerate park bench drinkers.

Monday, May 28, 2007
Or so this release from the Health Commissariat would suggest:

"By the end of 2008 the Government expects all alcoholic drinks labels to include alcohol unit information, following a ground-breaking agreement between Government and the drinks industry....Labels with unit information will help people keep an eye on how much they are drinking, allowing them to monitor their alcohol intake more easily. The labelling information will be supported by a major cross-Government campaign on alcohol from 2008, a large part of which will be about raising unit awareness".

So, off licence owners, tramps, binge drinking teenagers and the like will be able to scan bottles on the shelf and work out that much more quickly what is going to take them to palookaville at the fewest bangs per buck. Isn't that thoughtful? I wonder if the next step will be for thoughtful retailers to include price per unit information on their display units, thus promoting sale of the viler ciders, English 'sherry' and the like.

As ever, this is a problem looking for a solution. Drinkers intent on moderation already know that stronger alcohol content per unit will lead to faster intoxication, and probably worked that out from practical experience with their first few drinks. Excluding those with impaired mental capacity, are there really people unaware that vodka is stronger than babycham or shandy?

La Flint in her role as big nanny sees this things differently, and prefers to infantilise the population, especially pregnant women: "In addition, the Government is also encouraging the alcohol industry to include sensible drinking information for pregnant women on labels. Avoid alcohol if pregnant or trying to conceive is the shortened form of the Government advice announced on 25 May". There are times when I ponder whether the 'health' industry is intent on proving the old misogynistic saw that women lose half their brain capacity upon getting pregnant.

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posted by Croydonian

Just what Thailand needs - toothbrush star ratings

Sunday, April 22, 2007
Yes, really.

Apparently only four out of ten Thais pay much attention to the quality of the toothbrushes they buy. That high? I'm inclined to think that a brush is a brush is a brush, but should you find yourself in the Bankgkok equivalent of Boots or Walgreen, there should be an array of brushes with "consumer information on the package, such as the softness and sharpness of bristles". And it is a legal requirement too.

Perhaps some of my better travelled posters could inform me if Thai oral hygiene is especially poor or their toothbrushes particularly useless. But some how I doubt that either is the case, but meanwhile let us trust that this does not give Patricia 'very, very regular bowel movements' Hewitt ideas for ever greater levels of interference.

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posted by Croydonian

Conclusive prooof that lawyers are not like the rest of us

Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Infertility is no laughing matter, and one has to feel sympathy for women who cannot conceive, however a Canadian lawyer has a rather curious take on her 7 year old daughter's infertility: she is donating her own eggs for freezing and prospective implantation for however many years down the road.

Where most of us would see our moral compasses twitching over the prospect of a woman giving birth to a half sister which would share a mother and a grandmother, the Canadian lawyer lacks doubts: "If my child had needed a kidney I would have given her one and no one would have questioned it. In this case it’s a gamete". More here

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posted by Croydonian

Bandwidth thieves at the DoH?

Friday, March 23, 2007
Pravda Central has a release about the forthcoming ban in smoking in pubs etc, which it mendaciously calls 'the official countdown to smokefree (sic) England', it being nothing of the sort.

So far, so very very uninteresting. Jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink I ended up at the section with the official 'no smoking' signs. The signs themselves are hosted at an Australian domain: http://smokefree.profero.com.au/files/a5_sign_sf_premises.pdf

Most curious.

Then there is the guidance:

* Smokefree (sic) premises sign must be at least A5 in area (210mm x 148mm).
* The international no-smoking symbol in both signs must be at least 70mm in diameter.
* Both signs must be printed in colour (red and black on a white background).

This begs the question whether the use of no smoking signs using, say, magenta and lime green would give an opening for legal address

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posted by Croydonian

Suffer from migraines? Good news for you.

Thursday, March 15, 2007
Well, ish. Neurologist Piero Barbanti of the San Raffaele research hospital in Rome has informed the world that "Migraines are an 'illness of the brainy'".

And his proposed action? A film festival encouraging "Film-makers..to make short films which illustrate how failing to seek professional advice about migraines can be disastrous". I can't see any of these being the next 'Dolce Vita' or 'Ladri di biciclette', although doubtless Dottore Barbanti means well.

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posted by Croydonian

Greek research finds Greek wine 'can help combat various forms of cancer'

Saturday, March 10, 2007
Apparently.

Still not sure I'm prepared to risk my innards by drinking the stuff, so I'm holding out for research from South America, Oz and western Europe.

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posted by Croydonian

Yet another flagship policy heading for a shipwreck

Monday, January 29, 2007
And this time it is the digitising of NHS records. The Information Commissioner has considered the application of the '98 Data Protection act in this area, having:

"...received a number of enquiries from people who have seen articles in the media relating to the introduction of electronic care records across England. Many of these individuals have expressed concern at the plans and are worried that their health records will be available to everyone across the NHS".

.....

"Once the basic health information...is uploaded on to the NHS Summary Care Record:

• you will be able to choose to remove some or even all of the information initially uploaded

• you will be able to keep the uploaded information but make the Summary Care Record invisible."

Furthermore, "The Commissioner will be monitoring the implementation and operation of the new NHS Care Records Service to ensure patients are provided with adequate information and choices and that their health data is maintained in a safe and secure way. As part of this he will continue to engage with NHS Connecting for Health on a number of issues, in particular those relating to the accuracy of the information to be uploaded, the way people are informed about the changes and the systems in place to allowpeople to access their own information".


One might note that this is in direct contravention of the Government's averral that patients have no right to refuse consent, and I forsee an awful lot of litigation over this.

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posted by Croydonian

Thursday, August 24, 2006
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?

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posted by Croydonian