Keir Starmer

His big idea seems to be self referral to a specialist to cut GP waiting times. As far as I remember GP's are trained for a long time to provide an important triage service to make sure what you are complaining about - bad back, head and neck pain etc, and decide whether its ibuprofen, prescription drugs or specialist referral is needed. Also GP's are in short supply and side lining the service is not the way to encourage more recruits.

I am not sure why he feels he has to out Tory the Tories when they are so disliked and Labour hold such a lead but her really is a dislikeable leader - I'll probably hold my nose and vote Labour at the next GE as a vehicle to oust and hopefully destroy Toryism for the rest of my lifetime however I'll do so with less hope in my heart than I did in 1997
 
bluethrunthru said:
His big idea seems to be self referral to a specialist to cut GP waiting times. As far as I remember GP's are trained for a long time to provide an important triage service to make sure what you are complaining about - bad back, head and neck pain etc, and decide whether its ibuprofen, prescription drugs or specialist referral is needed. Also GP's are in short supply and side lining the service is not the way to encourage more recruits.

I am not sure why he feels he has to out Tory the Tories when they are so disliked and Labour hold such a lead but her really is a dislikeable leader - I'll probably hold my nose and vote Labour at the next GE as a vehicle to oust and hopefully destroy Toryism for the rest of my lifetime however I'll do so with less hope in my heart than I did in 1997
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Something similar exists for patients able to create their own appointments with https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/

Used in 40 trusts currently including Mrs MBs. So far has blocked consultants from seeing priority patients, wasted time in the consultation describing why the patient was there, and a completely inappropriate reason for attending an out-patient appointment for something that could have been triaged by a specialist nurse (not even a GP).

Man is a visionary.
 
bluethrunthru said:
His big idea seems to be self referral to a specialist to cut GP waiting times. As far as I remember GP's are trained for a long time to provide an important triage service to make sure what you are complaining about - bad back, head and neck pain etc, and decide whether its ibuprofen, prescription drugs or specialist referral is needed. Also GP's are in short supply and side lining the service is not the way to encourage more recruits.

I am not sure why he feels he has to out Tory the Tories when they are so disliked and Labour hold such a lead but her really is a dislikeable leader - I'll probably hold my nose and vote Labour at the next GE as a vehicle to oust and hopefully destroy Toryism for the rest of my lifetime however I'll do so with less hope in my heart than I did in 1997
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The problem is obviously that we don’t have enough staff.

The NHS has been built for decades to have A+E and GPs as the point of entry, and the key to fixing the current issues is expanding those until the service is better.

Everyone I know thinks this. The solution is more medical staff.

So I have no idea why Starmer is on tv saying anything other than the Labour party’s official pledge - reintroducing the 45p tax rate to fund 10,000 new doctors and 25,000 more nurses.

That’s all you have to say.
 
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domalino said:
The problem is obviously that we don’t have enough staff.

The NHS has been built for decades to have A+E and GPs as the point of entry, and the key to fixing the current issues is expanding those until the service is better.
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Is my understanding that this is your position (or interpretation of what Starmer meant) right:
because A&E are overrun, and GPs are also overrun, then having people refer themselves to private healthcare makes sense

Or were you only referring to the (very obvious) lack of staff?
 
MillionMilesAway said:
Is my understanding that this is your position (or interpretation of what Starmer meant) right:
because A&E are overrun, and GPs are also overrun, then having people refer themselves to private healthcare makes sense

Or were you only referring to the (very obvious) lack of staff?
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We have a system where there’s loads of GPs and few specialists because the gp sees everyone and then acts as a gatekeeper referring out to the specialists when needed.

If every Tom, Dick and Harry with a back twinge can self refer to a physio then all of the physio availability going to be used up taking self-referrals and rejecting 80% of them.

The solution is simply to train more GPs, not take work from GPS and dump it on specialists.

Otherwise we probably need to triple the number of all specialists we have for them to get through the workload of taking self-referrals.
 
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blueinsa said:
Staffing is the issue with nearly 150000 vacancies alone in the NHS and similar numbers in the care industry.

We can find money to pay an agency up to £5000 for a shift for a doctor but we apparently can’t find it to pay people correctly?

Only thing broken is the politics of those running the show!
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agreed - the agency costs seem ludicrous compared to just hiring more staff.
I wonder whether we have the training facilities ready to restore the situation, or how long it would take to get them up to needed capacity.
 
domalino said:
We have a system where there’s loads of GPs and few specialists because the gp sees everyone and then acts as a gatekeeper referring out to the specialists when needed.

If every Tom, Dick and Harry with a back twinge can self refer to a physio then all of the physio availability going to be used up taking self-referrals and rejecting 80% of them.

The solution is simply to train more GPs, not take work from GPS and dump it on specialists.

Otherwise we probably need to triple the number of all specialists we have for them to get through the workload of taking self-referrals.
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Thanks, I see now I misread your original.

Certainly allowing every specialist to take people in would swamp the specialists.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
agreed - the agency costs seem ludicrous compared to just hiring more staff.
I wonder whether we have the training facilities ready to restore the situation, or how long it would take to get them up to needed capacity.
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I’d say it’s doubtful although I’m sure universities will say the courses are there.

Issues are miserly bursaries to encourage people into the training needed (wife looked into becoming a midwife) but we simply couldn’t afford her 3 years of training and no salary and then of course, the salaries and work life balance that comes with working within the NHS.

It simply has to reward those working within it.
 
blueinsa said:
I’d say it’s doubtful although I’m sure universities will say the courses are there.

Issues are miserly bursaries to encourage people into the training needed (wife looked into becoming a midwife) but we simply couldn’t afford her 3 years of training and no salary and then of course, the salaries and work life balance that comes with working within the NHS.

It simply has to reward those working within it.
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Until 2020 we only had 7500 places per year for studying medicine in the whole country.

It's now 9500, but we won't even notice the difference for 3 more years.

We're also the biggest exporter of doctors in the world, with ~17,000 British doctors working in other OECD countries.
 
Doesn't sound like a good policy proposal once you break it down but that isn't really the point. If it appeals to people to vote for him, he can always junk it later down the line.

Politics isn't really about the real world.

It’s about selling a fictional narrative of the real world.
 
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Mr Kobayashi said:
Doesn't sound like a good policy proposal once you break it down but that isn't really the point. If it appeals to people to vote for him, he can always junk it later down the line.

Politics isn't really about the real world.

It’s about selling a fictional narrative of the real world.
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It feels like Labour are spending 90% of their time appealing to Brexit voters and tories.

I suppose they think that's the margin they need to go after, anyone remotely Labour is going to vote for them after 13+ years of Tory rule, but it's really frustrating because it feels like there's 2 Labours - the one that's on TV appealing to the people who put us in this mess, and the one that makes pledges and promises and policy announcements at conferences.

I didn't watch the whole interview but as far as I can tell the Labour leader did an interview on the NHS without mentioning Labour's headline NHS policy.

HE didn't mention it in his OpEd in the Sunday Telegraph FFS!


non-paywall link.
 
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domalino said:
It feels like Labour are spending 90% of their time appealing to Brexit voters and tories.

I suppose they think that's the margin they need to go after, anyone remotely Labour is going to vote for them after 13+ years of Tory rule, but it's really frustrating because it feels like there's 2 Labours - the one that's on TV appealing to the people who put us in this mess, and the one that makes pledges and promises and policy announcements at conferences.

I didn't watch the whole interview but as far as I can tell the Labour leader did an interview on the NHS without mentioning Labour's headline NHS policy.

HE didn't mention it in his OpEd in the Sunday Telegraph FFS!


non-paywall link.
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So you are drawing from that he says different things to different people.

The telegraph is a newspaper generally read by better educated and more affluent people, express reader brexit bollocks isn't going to appeal to them as much because you'd think they'd have a bit more critical awareness.

Last time there was a general election, Labour decided halfway through to start appealing more to fuckwitted racists in old mining towns. The Lavery strategy.

Obviously it didn't work and unsurprisingly so. I don't mind if he wins over fuckwits and racists, as long as he does absolutely fuck all for them, re racist policies. By the time the economy and state of society has improved hopefully they'll have moved on and forgotten or they will have been marginalised out or importance or dead.

As I said, politics isn't really about the real world. Most people live in their bubbles and don't really spend any time to think about stuff outside of it.
 
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