I recently benefited from an example of the NHS working hand in glove with the private sector really well. Sadly that is not always the case.
When Tony Blair swallowed his pride and asked BUPA and other private health providers to help him cut waiting lists, I was the interviewer who the then Health Secretary Alan Milburn said New Labour’s relationship with private medicine wasn’t a ‘one-night stand’.
It has always made good sense from an economic and health service point of view. As Secretary of State for Health, and a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Alan knew he wasn’t an old lefty either - but a true working class lad made good who was committed to Blair and his New Labour modernisation of the Labour Party.
Milburn’s last big public sector job was as social mobility czar. But Wes Streeting, his successor in Health and Social Care in the first Labour Government since Blair, has wisely asked him to help him with the challenge of waiting lists.
Alastair Stewart sets the record straight on living with dementia in this week's Living With Dementia
GB NEWSA role which Milburn, now making a tidy sum in the private sector, was delighted to accept.
As far as a collaboration between the public and private sectors of health is concerned, I remain content: so long as the private sector respects and emulates the ethos and ethics of the NHS. Some do and some don’t.
My experience was as a result of the brilliant ‘smoke-free’ Hampshire service within the local NHS..
This week, Sally drove us, as requested, to the Tesco car park just outside Winchester, for my lung cancer CT scan.
There we saw a big articulated tractor and trailer with the name and logo of medneo UK on it and a sign confirming it was indeed the mobile NHS CT scanner.
An NHS radiographer greeted us with an NHS nurse checked my details. Both charming, helpful and reassuring. It was all over in a quarter of an hour. If they find symptoms of lung cancer, they’ll tell me and my GP and get to work on it - as early detection saves time and money and lives.
A reminder to those of you who live with or know someone with dementia: we are not stupid and our memories are not totally shot, but short-term memory and most practical, especially fiddly things are damned tricky, so please be patient with us.
Although my brilliant NHS audiologist showed me how to change the batteries on my NHS hearing aids and how the smartphone APP worked to control the hearing aids, I managed to get it all wrong. So she booked me a quick appointment to rescue the situation and take me through it again. Now that is service and that is the NHS at its best… I will try to be less of an all-fingers-and-thumbs burden in future!
On the news front, the hacking of the Co-op, M&S and others worried me. We use several of them, but rarely online. So when TV presenters said just change all your passwords my heart sank.
This is not easy or convenient for anyone with dementia. It is a real drag as we get numbers and letters muddled and need to write everything down.
Also, some sites insist on emails and confirmation codes to do it. I know it makes sense, but I wish website designers would remember there are thousands of us with dementia, and our numbers are rising. One card we do use is the Tesco Clubcard via my laptop. But accessing and using the vouchers we have earned is, for me, a nightmare.
Why not make the savings and bonuses available to customers via the cards? I filled out a customer satisfaction survey with the Tesco Website as requested and was told my opinion ‘really’ mattered and that they’d be in touch shortly.
Nothing yet. Disappointing. I once interviewed the woman who invented the Tesco Clubcard and was really impressed.
