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From The Editors: By Clive Peckar
FRCS, FRCOphth
Readers
of last months’ Editorial by Paul Rosen, will be pleased to
hear that after his mother wrote to her Member of Parliament, complaining
about distorted Government priorities, she commenced her radiotherapy
within a week. Bristol Eye Hospital, in Southern England, has just
produced a report showing that in order to meet Government targets
for new outpatient appointments, it has been necessary to ‘cancel
and delay more than 1,000 follow-up appointments per month resulting
in a number of patients irreversibly losing sight, mainly from glaucoma
and diabetic retinopathy’.
The UK Government’s Public Administration Committee called
for a reform of public service targets. It warns the quality of
public services are now under threat as professionals are put under
pressure to meet national objectives. ‘Professionals are putting
target setting before patients’ health’. We all applaud
the UK Government’s initiative in bringing waiting lists for
cataract surgery down to three months by the end of 2004. In order
to achieve this it has set up new regional Strategic Health Authorities
to collect bids for providing competitive healthcare (including
bids from surgeons elsewhere in the EU) by sending patients to high
throughput cataract and hip factories.
In many cases these involve a longer journey for patients. In championing
this action the Government are also promoting the concept of ‘patient
choice: of hospital and surgeon’!
Some cynics, however, are suggesting that the shortening of the
timetable to re-modernise the National Health Service (NHS) is timed
to precede the British General Election in two years time. Let us
hope that the Government are really trying to permanently modernise
the whole of the NHS and not merely produce a cut-price model for
re-election.
In the meantime, as several EU countries are now adopting policies
of reducing waiting lists by sending their patients to other countries,
health issues are becoming increasingly international. As a publication
of the ESCRS, an international organisation, Eurotimes is eager
to hear from readers throughout Europe regarding these matters in
the hope of generating a wider debate.
CLIVE PECKAR
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