BRUCE Willing (JEP letters 6 April) is quite right to raise the increase in bureaucracy in the Jersey health system, when the funding would be better applied to the medics, consultants, doctors, nurses etc. The Island is in danger of having a replica of the NHS, which has been subject to much criticism in the past for the length of time people have to wait to see a GP, a consultant, receive treatment for serious illnesses, operations etc.
These problems will not be resolved by more bureaucracy, but only by more medics and frontline staff.
From my personal experience and others, it seems that the new health system is already being implemented to the detriment of patients. When I seek a consultation with my GP, which in the past I usually obtained within 24 hours, I am now reduced to a telephone consultation which does not enable the GP to make a full diagnosis as when he can see and examine a patient.
The result is an incomplete diagnosis and treatment prolonging the complaint and the deterioration in the patient’s condition, which eventually leads to more serious treatment being required to cure the ailment.
The latest introduction is now not to allow patients who are unwell into the reception area of the consulting rooms, but to require them to wait in their car in the car park from where they are collected and taken through the back door to an isolation room for their consultation with a doctor. This is bureaucracy gone mad.
La Maisonette, Rue de Haut,
St Lawrence.
