One of the reasons that people are not more worried by the relatively low standard of the NHS is that they are are not aware of the treatments they are not getting.
There are drugs, scans, other diagnostic tests and therapies which are available in other advanced countries which the average British patient does not know he is not receiving. A very clear example of this was reported in the Telegraph last week in a small story. A survey was conducted Myeloma UK, a charity. It revealed that a quarter of specialists in myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, do not tell their patients about treatments that have not been approved by Nice, the government agency which decides whether or not drugs will be available on the NHS.
So the patients of these consultants simply are unaware that they might have been given a more effective treatment in, say, France or Switzerland. The ignorance of the public about how the NHS is treating them less well than other systems is perpetuated.
The Daily Telegraph article is here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS
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Reminds me of the story a hairdresser told me about visiting her father in the US with her 5-month old baby who came down with an ear infection on the trip over.
The baby had been born with a weepy eye, and the NHS doctors told her it would go away eventually...After getting the baby treated for the infection, the American doctor put a couple of drops in the child's eye and the weepy eye was gone in 24 hours.
The sort of stuff Brits are told to "put up with" and tolerate.
Posted by: James G. at September 6, 2008 10:34 AM