Dear Mike,
The NHS may not be a business to you, but it is to GPs, who, by and large,
do not get paid salaries and have to live off the difference between the
expenditure they may make on patient services, and the income from them.
This is part of the reason why NHSnet is making such slow progress among
GPs, who are being expected to fork out sums of money to connect to NHSnet,
which when everything is being taken into account, would pay the
mortgage/school fees/care HP etc., for some quite considerable length of
time.
I suspect this part of the equation is not easily visible to many people
whose level of salary do not reflect their decisions on capital and revenue
costs. Over the last five years, GP expenses have risen much more strongly
than income, and NHSnet is a no-hoper in this environment, regardless of the
technical arguments.
Andrew
Dr. Andrew N. Herd MRCGP
Family Physician, Medical Adviser to Durham Health Authority
Honorary Lecturer in Primary Health Care, Durham University
Medical Editor, Practice Computing
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 08 May 1998 21:39
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: Locality Communications
>
>
> John wrote:
>
> > Subject: RE: Locality Communications
>
> > So the point made is that all networking costs are treated in
> isolation, I
> > can't accept that. We all make assessments of cost, I pay more for
> > something that saves me time, I am prepared to offset the extra
> cost because
> > I value my time more. I therefore make an assessment of the whole.
> >
> > It is not bogus, it is real life. It is also not economics it
> is business.
> >
> > John
>
> For goodness sake, can't we accept that the NHS is NOT a
> business!!! I accept that the NHS spends a lot of public purse
> money, and that it must therefore act in some respects in a business
> like way, in the sense of maintaining proper accountability and
> control of resources. However there is a wide margin between
> behaving with due prudence, and as a policy decision erecting a
> wholly unnecessary barrier between a valuable service and those who
> wish to access that service via a different route.
>
> Mike Wells
>
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> * M. Wells *
> * 9 Hall Close *
> * Bramhope *
> * Leeds LS16 9JQ *
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