AST week I wrote about my experiences [1, 2, 3, 4] with The ‘Care’ Gateway and YORKSHIRE ‘HEALTH’ ‘SOLUTIONS’ LTD. Based on my experiences this month, Tories are not killing the NHS. They’ve ALREADY killed it. It’s not the NHS failing; it’s the privatisation that’s failing, or failing patients. Do these private firms think it is acceptable that in order to book an appointment one needs to wait in a queue for over 4 hours? On a non-free line? It has now been 8+ days and the private firm, YORKSHIRE ‘HEALTH’ ‘SOLUTIONS’ LTD, has not even responded to my E-mails (about 4 of them), let alone offered to book an appointment. It’s like they don’t even exist. I’ve got an open complaint about this company with the Manchester authorities. Ignoring attempts to book an appointment is done at their own peril and I’ve been told I’m not alone. Other people too are having very negative experiences. As it turns out, other “providers” are also unresponsive; The ‘Care’ Gateway’s Team Leader (one of about 3), Samantha, admitted this along with subordinates. And they cannot seem to get hold of their very own providers. I should know, I have just spent a lot of time on the phone with them. And it’s nothing technical, this is POLITICS and bureaucracy. What a waste of NHS time/resources. In the past it wasn’t anything like this; it’s like one ends up speaking to lawyers instead of doctors, or middlemen for businesses instead of care professionals. In this post I will mention a couple of first names, which I did not wish to do (but escalating as it has been nearly 10 days now without concrete progress).

I’ve just spent another 40 minutes on phone with a person (The Care Gateway). Sole outcome: Team Leader (Sharon) will phone me back by the end of the day. Initially she said “24 hours” as if that means anything… when they work 9 to 5 (or until 6). Still no appointment, still no solution. Over a month since GP referral. What a train wreck. They’re only making things worse. They waste NHS resources dealing with obscene levels of incompetence. The sorts of things that didn’t happen prior to privatisation.

The NHS is fast becoming rather useless to me, and likely not for any reason other than planned ‘failure’. Planned… because the government wants it to seem like the NHS is failing, in turn offering privatisation as the ‘solution’ (even if the privatisation itself is the core problem).

As a friend put it, “it is planned failure used to drive patients into corporate treatment facilities and thus stoke the statistics so they can claim increased demand and cut more. Here they even subsidize the privatized facilities at the expense of treating the population.”

I said, “bear in mind this is ALREADY a private companies, propped by up tax money, so I am trying to get it blacklisted by NHS…”

The friend retorted: “So they are bleeding one company further in order fund even less efficient companies. Profit in services means that either people were overcharged or underserved or both.”

“So if NHS is already a private company then it is already overcharging and underserving, on top of the overcharging and underserving the secondary companies cause.”

I will update this post or write a follow-up after Sharon (the manager) phones, assuming that she does (they made empty promises before). Notice how bad a treatment; in the past 9 days I spent about 6 hours on the phone, after waiting about a month since referral. To see a GP that’s another barrier, and one cannot get a referral without first meeting a GP. So unless one throws oneself at the ER, treatment or diagnosis can literally take months! Yes, months!

Privatisation kills; the people who perpetrate this are sick sociopaths. There’s no medical treatment for sociopathy.

Well, the sole upside of all this is that I get a first-hand account of the epic failure of privatisation, which I shall document.

Update (4PM): So Sharon has just phoned me, saying she had spoken to YORKSHIRE ‘HEALTH’ ‘SOLUTIONS’ LTD, saying they would phone back by the end of the day to arrange an appointment. So, in summary, it took just over 9 days for this to happen (assuming they will in fact phone later). She cautioned there’s a big backlog, depending on place. Either way, after about 7-8 hours on the phone and many E-mails I may merely get an appointment booked. Some “service”, some “care”, some “solution”, eh? At this snail pace we’re talking about months to see a specialist.

Update (5:10PM): I finally received a call, almost at 5PM sharp. My findings about it are as follows:

- There seems to be a company or agency handling the bookings, or maybe not contracted outwards but merely a subdivision
- The person I spoke to was reasonably new on the job and was not aware of some of the most basic things, such as what’s on the company’s own Web site (imagine that! I know their site better than her!)
- The backlog for bookings wasn’t as severe as they might have people believe. In fact, a booking was possible for tomorrow (although it’s past 5PM, so technically she could not do it) or Friday
- Remember she phoned me only because I had escalated the matter and spoke to managers 3-4 times on the phone already (plus a similar number of calls to people below them). It rook 9 days of calls and waiting.
- Initially the booking was offered for a place rather far away, not even bearing the company’s own name, let alone anything “Yorkshire”. What is going on here?!?! Is this like a massive network or a chain of private companies? This one is at 9 Maple Road, near the Co-op (M23 9RL) and it’s known as “Woodland Medical Practice”.
- For a 10-minute ultrasound scan I needed to spend about 8 hours on the phone (all in all), just to book an appointment. This isn’t acceptable. It’s also wasting a ton of manpower. It’s the least efficient thing I’ve ever experienced in the UK, not just the NHS.
- The lack of response was acknowledged to me as a widespread issue, affecting a huge number of people.
- They are aware of the problem, but they are apprehensive about the patients finding out about it. Why not admit it upfront?
- They took over a company (the person on the phone cannot even name it, probably because she genuinely does not know its name)
- The company whose “business” they ‘took over’ caused a massive backlog of about 10,000-20,000 patients. The number isn’t made up. That’s what she told me on the phone.
- The company and those patients were added 3 weeks ago or one month ago, i.e. around the time of the referral. That sounds pretty insane and it leaves people in critical need of care in a bad state. They might even die before receiving any treatment or diagnosis. This isn’t an order of merchandise or consumerism, this is people’s lives.
- The lady I spoke to admitted they’re struggling to even read and respond to E-mail. She downplayed this issue and made some mutually-contradicting statements in the process.
- People waiting on the line for 4 hours is apparently not so outlandish. So what if I’m one of thousands of people subjected to such (dis)service levels?

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