I unexpectedly spent most of yesterday at a hospital. It's my first serious interaction with the NHS in God knows how long and it's not that serious. It's also not running-related (I was out again this morning!).
But the thing that struck me was how the whole thing still needs better management and I despair that all the money that's been thrown in that direction hasn't improved some things that could be so much better. First off though, the care and the clinical expertise were as excellent as we expect. Huge admiration for those who continue to work there and thanks for all the warmth.
But the information systems make me shudder and are partly responsible for me spending all day there instead of an hour or so - I needed to stick around until a nurse was free to do an assessment and fill in a paper form. The assessment itself took about ten minutes, but I had to wait from midday till 4pm to get it done. Even when it was done, I had to help them correct a few things that they'd written down wrongly - not medical things, but administrative things like Laura's phone number written differently in two parts of the form. Every time I do anything, it seems it involves me writing out my name, address and date of birth at least, and I've no idea how those forms get digitised.
And when I saw the registrar earlier in the day, he didn't have a clue what my appointment was about and could only get partial information from the system. It also turned out that my appointment had been timed too soon for results of some tests that I had last week. He was great, I have every confidence in his ability to treat me well, but he was handicapped by the information systems.
So 9.5/10 dear NHS not for using up my day but because some people other than the people I saw face to face don't seem to have reached the 21st century yet.