[log in to unmask],Net wrote at 22:04 on 09/10/98
about "Re: Viagra yet again":
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>> [log in to unmask],Net wrote at 22:29 on 05/10/98
>> -----------------------------
>> > and wrong to send to another GP for private consult.
>>
I asked why...
>Private.
>And refering to another GP could play against us if the press turned
it on
>its head.
>Regards,
>
I can see your point[1] - but I think you are overly sensitive,
provided the profession refrains from its tendency to keep secrets
about the organisation of the NHS...
1. Patients are quite likely to agree that paying for Viagra is in
fact reasonable. (If you want tuition in what you can gat away
with, after all, the authorities on the subject are the ministers of
a recently elected government)
2. If we tell patients the truth - that the NHS has tied itself
into a knot on this one, under central direction, and failed to take
sensible and simple action during its 6 month notice period of
Viagra's launch
- that the rules have been set by bean counters of one sort or
another - for instance the prescribing adviser at N&E Devon HA, an
amiable and hard working lady called Marilyn Ramsden, and by the
members of the prescribing committee at N&E who, with the exception
of me (I was deputising for another LMC member at that meeting)
agreed that the proper reaction to a new drug making it possible to
treat something new was to call on central gov to ban it - a spread
of opinion ot made clear by the draft minutes of the meeting...
whose members would be disclosed by the HA if asked under the NHS
Code of Openness although they would almost certainly object and make
it as difficult as possible.
- that GPs in general and you in particular think this is
monumentally stupid and not to the benefit of patients...
I don't see how it turns into an anti-doctor story.
OTOH if one maintains that one is referring to somebody with greater
expertise in the matter - if it is true then merely noting that the NHS
has made a politico-financial decision not to provide that service
should suffice to keep you clear of the fuss...whereas of course if
it is not true I would not support anyone saying is is.
The latter situation is the only big opportunity for someone to spin
it against us.
I think it simplifies matters if one boils it down to whether an
individual patient wants VIagra, and whether an individual doctor
wants to prescribe it. When both apply the logistics is a mere
exercise, albeit one which is made more complex than it need be by
the failure of the NHS management at every level above the
individual practice right up to the political to take proper action
in proper time. An endemic condition, alas, and one which should be
dealt with by elimination of the vector.
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[1] not a Viagra joke. Well, not really.
--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley
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