Is It a Service?
The question really should be, is it a good service?
In the NHS the key performance indicator (KPI) is waiting times, i.e. how long does a patient have to wait to receive their first treatment after being referred by their GP.
If I got paid in accordance to how quickly I could arrange an appointment with a client, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. Am I crazy or should the KPI be the health of the client after the medical intervention?
I understand that waiting times have been driven by the public and they were shockingly poor, but just being judged on how quickly the patient has their first appointment is surely not right. What about the next appointment? What about how effective the treatment is?
I often receive clients with huge medical files that have been referred left, right and centre from Doctor to Doctor and not one of them really understood the problem. This again goes back to their training. There are so many specialists these days. The problem with specialisation is that no one ever looks at the person as a whole physical, mental, emotional being.
The definition of a specialist is, “someone who learns more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing”. If Doctors salaries were performance related in alignment with the improvement of their patients’ physical, mental and emotional health, I think there would be a great change in the way they think and approach their work.
Currently Doctors are paid a large salary whether their patients get healthy or not. If there was a change to ‘health’ performance related pay, I am sure they would begin to study organic farming, organic food, exercise, meditation, detoxification protocols and would begin to lobby government to put pressure on the food industry to provide better food and support organic farming.
Ultimately, the NHS will only truly become a service to the public when the results of the service increase the health of the nation, not increase the profits of the pharmaceutical companies.
In part IV, I’ll be sharing with you my recommendations on what is required to achieve better health here in the UK. So stay tuned!!!