What makes you happy ?

From The Times

MINISTERS are hoping to rescue the NHS from its continuing cash problems through a “semi-privatised” scheme that trains patients to avoid hospital or their GP.

The Expert Patient Programme, which has cut hospital visits by 16 per cent in trial areas, is to have its budget tripled before becoming a not-for-profit company

” that trains patients to avoid hospital” – Don’t turn left, it’s not a hospital, really, it’s not there at all, ignore it, drive past, go on, go !!

“not-for-profit” – read that as “there will be no profit after the greedy kickback-giving profiteers have taken their vastly inflated salaries.”

Ms Hewitt believes that the best way to expand the Expert Patient Programme rapidly is by allowing NHS managers or outside providers to take it over from state control.

What ? You have an NHS, you want to make save money so you hive off the care to the Private Sector ? How do we spell NHS these day ? b_u_p_a ? It will cost more you bloody idiot.

The programme works by running training courses for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, multiple sclerosis and arthritis. They learn how to treat themselves when previously they would have gone to their doctor or the hospital accident and emergency department, and to avoid such emergencies altogether by looking after themselves better.

Ms Hewitt, you are seriously out of your f*cking tree on this lump of idiocy. Just how in hell do you propose stopping people with these conditions from attending hospital ?
Here’s a better idea – tax the drunken morons who are cluttering up Accident & Emergency because of your decision to allow alcohol to be sold 24/7. THOSE are the cases you need to remove.

The programme, set up four years ago, was based on an American “self-care” plan

That’ll work then eh ? When will the UK bloody learn…

The care structure we are meant to have now (primary care onwards) is meant to be doing all this – how many GP practices now have asthma clinics for example ? – so if Ms “lost the f*cking plot” Hewitt is saying we need all this new stuff then she is also admitting that the current structure has failed. So while that in itself is an okay admission in some ways, I’ll wager that she did not go consulting with front-line professionals but instead has pondered how she can feather her own nest when she’s been thrown out after her house of cards has been blown to the wind. Ms “Scamming the NHS for all I can” Hewitt does not use the NHS does she ? Ohh… now there’s an idea – if someone pays for private healthcare, make them pay private healthcare prices when THEY need A&E – that alone would stop the spongers from the private sector. (And don’t give me any of that “I pay my taxes bollocks” – those companies do what they do to cream the easy stuff. If they are in Healthcare then they should provide healthcare.)

Here is my 2 step plan for a guaranteed better NHS

1. Ask the (actually working) nurses which managers should be sacked and sack them
2. Ask the nurses how to make it better and do what they say

Too many chiefs, not enough indians – that’s what’s at the core of the NHS problems.

From the BBC

Multiple sclerosis patients in the UK are to be able to get a cannabis-based pain-relief drug from their doctor for the first time, it has been announced.

Not quite.

You’ll be able to get this:
IF you have certain symptoms only (pain, even though cannabis has been proved to help with other symptoms)
AND your ‘doctor’ (more like Consultant) is willing to take the risk
AND if you are judged to be able to benefit from it
AND the PCT will fund it
OR if you can afford it. (£4 / day may not sound a lot, but that’s £120 / month)

Not quite what the BBC are trumpeting is it ?
I have greenhouse which is not overlooked at all.
I have some high quality seeds and I have both the time and a reason.

J saw the neurologist today. Treatment with interferon-b continues for another year … nothing he can offer for any existing damage … no financial help toward a motability scooter … same stuff as normal when she sees him. I wonder whether he gets more data to report to the drug company than he can offer help for. Makes a mockery of going really – you normally see a medic to get help, not to provide help, albeit in a roundabout way that may only benefit people in the future. He seemed to think the first 3 years of Multiple Sclerosis were the worst too, that by now the initial onslaught of the nervous system would be decreasing and things would even out. It’s also odd he said that – she was diagnosed in 2000 and I’m sure it’s now 5 years later… Quite what he means is odd too – there is no pattern to MS, but then sometimes anecdotal evidence as witnessed and not read can be closer to truth. Either way it makes no difference to our daily lives – I’m still her carer and she still is disabled. A lottery win cannot change any of that.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Be careful what you wish for – it might come true. This lady always wanted to be a bit taller.

It’s Multiple Sclerosis Week.
BBC, MS Society, mult-sclerosis.org, MS Trust and the MS Resource Centre.

Apart from continuing to clean up the abody site, I’ve joined and posted to some MS sites / newsgroup / mailing lists today.
Thing is, if you have a regular sort of disease, there is usually a clear pathway for whatever treatment you need, and usually someone at the end who is the one responsible for the cure / treatment / operation. From here, it feels like the more high profile the disease, then the more well-worn the path you need to tread, more people know, authorities will proclaim how well they do in whatever ‘league table’ the current politicians have going. When needs are precise, defined, clear then the track to the target or goal is equally clear. But if it isn’t, it gets very murky…….

If you get a regular sort of disease, and you become unable to work, then society makes you better. It’s more beneficial to society that you work, produce, contribute. The cost of your health care is, in the overwhelming number of cases, easily offset by your contributions back to society following you being ‘cured’. It’s not that society – and governments – want us all to be healthy because they are brimming with altruistic desires, they want that because a healthy person helps push the economy forward. An unhealthy person drags the economy back, it slows them down. But what if the person cannot be made well ?

Go look at websites that deal with what I’m calling ‘regular’ diseases. When you look in the diagnosis or treatment sections, you will see lots of words like “will”, “shall”, “expect”. Now go look at the MS sites. You won’t see those words. You will see words like “might”, “should”, “could”.
Those first words are doing words. They imply action, direction, but the second lot ? Hardly inspiring are they ?

Want to find a care pathway for prostate cancer ? cervical cancer ? heart disease ? Easy…. now find a care pathway that speaks in the same doing words about multiple sclerosis. So that’s why I’ve got to find out what others have done, and take a cue from them. We can’t follow what they’ve done though because unless they live within a couple of miles of us, their system will be different – their ms care, their health trust, their social services – there is no pathway, none. Hell, it’s that foggy up ahead I’ve no clue just what will happen.

Oh well.

At least my day was brightened by a happy dance I did at 13:04 – and I know at least one person reading this will know why :lol:

Talking to Marisa the other day in #bodyart-uk, she mentioned that she’ll be doing some airbrush tattooing soon in Holland, and by coincidence, today in Argos I saw an Airbrush Tattoo Kit. J now has 2 butterflies, D. has an excellent green gecko, and I’ve got paint all over my hands and a green chain of what looks like clover around my left forearm. Fun !

More IP blocking has been done, and I’ve added some IP’s to a plugin. No doubt I’ll get a nasty email or two about it, but hey, do you really think I care ?

I was going to rant here about J’s increasing blindness, the stupid state of the NHS and why I hate, loathe and detest private care, but I can’t be bothered .. another time maybe. It started along these lines;

“You must use the eyedrops to stop your eye condition”
My eye condition is caused by my multiple sclerosis – it won’t go away
“We won’t operate until the condition is gone”
But your drops are worsening the cataracts
You must use the drops
When I’m fully blind, will you operate ?
If the eye condition is gone
But it won’t be gone will it ?? The MS will still cause it
So keep using the drops