NHS cuts

The media seem to love scaremongering and sensationalising news as they have done regarding government cuts and the loss of "front line services".

It would be very satisfying if they picked up on and reported the following actual waste of public money.

Most normal people know that enormous savings are to be made in public services such as the NHS that would avoid the need to reduce front line staff.

I have first hand experience recently of how non-added value procedures cost us, the public, money.

Having experienced a problem with one of my eyes I used the NHS Direct via the Internet to diagnose the problem and was instructed to go directly to Accident and Emergency. Believing this to be a little dramatic I phoned NHS Direct and was given, in no uncertain terms, the same advice.

Immediately I went to the Royal Eye Infirmary ( on NHS advice ) and waited to see triage nurse and this is where the waste of our money started. I was told that I was not an emergency and "no" I could not make an appointment to be seen that day but should go to my usual opticians, which I duly did.

The optician was not surprised, but a little angry, that I, like others before me, had been referred by the Eye Infirmary.

Subsequently, after a full check I was told I would need another test and that the optician would write to my GP for him to arrange a check at the Royal Eye Infirmary from whence I had just come!

So to summarise the unnecessary steps in this ridiculous process the following is where increased costs have been met by you and I.

1     Full eye test at private optician.
2     Letter from optician to GP
3     Contact from GP to Sentinel Healthcare ( to arrange appointment )
4     Phone call to me from Sentinel to discuss appointment.
5     Letter from Eye Infirmary to me confirming appointment.
6     Phone call from Eye Infirmary to remind me of appointment ( yet to happen)
It is an absolute disgrace that we are wasting public monies just because the establishment has procedures which have absolutely no purpose. These people are there to serve the public, not to waste their hard-earned cash.
Please send a link to this Blog to any MP's that you know and lets shake the system up a little.