Fantastic news from labour 2miilion extra appointments

[Tallerandtall]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4z4vw3p1do

isn’t this what we wanted!?
so let’s see how other things progress and stop moaning.
it is good progress.

but I bet the Tories and réformatics can’t help but moan.

The article does point out that the figures in the comparison data are affected by the strike.

And I will moan if there’s something that warrants it. My sibling works in a private school and is in the cross hairs of a redundancy exercise due to VAT and extra NI. So I think moaning about that is up to me, not you.

It’s a load of BS as there isn’t the staff to be able to offer this.

Are we supposed to get excited at 2 million appointments? There are over 55 million people in England. So one person in every 27 got an “appointment” that they wouldn’t have had that year.

I also notice it was supposed to be “operations, procedures and appointments”. I wonder how many were operations and procedures rather than e.g. routine blood pressure checks.

It's progress I think @Tallerandtall .

It will be acknowledged by some people, but others won't acknowledge it, as you're already finding out.

Pissing in the ocean. The population is rising by pretty much one million people per year

Yes it's what we wanted and I'll be the first to cheer if it actually happens, but anyone who's been round the block a few times knows how figures can be manipulated so it's a case of wait and see

And yet waiting lists have fallen again too. It’s having some effect, clearly.

I wonder at what cost and where the money came from? I needed two none emergency appointments last year and both of them were outsourced to a private clinic. So I think I will remain sceptical 🤨

I also worked for the NHS, and there are a lot of IT initiatives that have been rolled out (started under the previous government) around joining up systems making it easier to for GPs to find appointments and book them.

I don’t believe for a second it was due to overtime initiative like weekend or evening working.

@cardibach
So does me pissing in the ocean

I wonder what form these appointments take: how an appointment is defined.

I imagine the definition of appointment has been broadened to include a call from the receptionist telling you that your recent bloods were fine and there is no need for a follow up.

I would like to believe that there’s some progress being made but being the age that I am, I know that we should be sceptical of politicians and the reminder that there was strikes is a good example.

People shouldn’t stop moaning until their experience of the NHS is better. For example we shouldn’t have to call 100 times at 8am in the hope of a GP appointment and if we need to see a specialist or have an operation , we should have access to that care in a timely manner. I hear so many stories of people being told months and years for care that should happen much sooner and that’s not good enough for a supposedly developed country.

Hope that they are not cheating and including sending an appointment letter physically and digitally as 2 !

They compared it to a time when doctors were on strike?
A cursory search shows that 1.3 million healthcare appointments were cancelled as a result of the strikes
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/blogs/counting-cost-nhs-strikes?utm_source=chatgpt.com

I would love to see it compared to the number of appointments in the same period of 2019, pre covid

I need a blood test. I’ll be waiting about 6 weeks. Got an appointment at the end of March with my GP. Longer wait if I go to the hospital. My friend has been given a fracture clinic appointment for a broken bone check (not follow up) which will be 11 weeks after the break. Another friend has an Asthema appointment in 43 weeks - yes, 43 weeks time. Got appointments, yes, but they are ridiculous. Not progress.

Again, if you re-define a waiting list or suddenly tell a bunch of people that they are no longer on a particular waiting list, then yes they will have fallen.

But does anyone, who regularly goes out without their mother to hold their hand, really believe that waiting lists have fallen because the people on those waiting lists have received the full treatment they needed and gone on their way rejoicing?

Even if one were that naive, then why have others not come along to take their place?

Surely the government aren't saying that everyone waiting say, for a heart by-pass-has been given that heart by-pass and and that no-one else needs one.

Sadly, lies will always be found out unless the ones being lied to are so blind with love that they refuse to believe it and, alas, there are many who will believe everything this government says.

But, in summary, of course there aren't two million extra appointments and , of course, waiting lists haven't gone down. It can be made to look to the simple as if they have but they haven't .

On the face of it, good news, but when taken in the context of the comparative period (strikes) and declining NHS productivity it’s less positive. Firstly because the discontent in the NHS hasn’t been resolved, and more strikes are on the radar. And secondly when there are, ordinarily, 130 million or so outpatient appointments, only managing to be less than 2% better in a 6 month period when the comparative period had so much strike disruption is, frankly, poor.

As others have said, it compares the number of appointments over a specific timeframe from the previous year when ,at the least, hundreds of thousands of appointments were lost due to industrial action. Be interesting to compare it to th3 heat before that and see how many extra appointments there really have been

Seems it's time for another Yes Prime Minister clip
This one's about civil service pay rises, but to use one of Sir Arnold's preferred adjectives the principle's "sound"

Not sure why I’m responding to someone so condescending, but if there’s a waiting list of, to keep the numbers simple, 10 and only 5 appointments, 5 people will stay on the list. Let’s assume another 5 join the list so now we have 10 again. List doesn’t drop in number. Increase the number of appointments by 3 and your list, even with the new people added, falls.
Or don’t you think it’s ever possible to clear backlogs?
Are you one of those people who said Labour wouldn’t reduce the lists and now they’ve reduced instead of being pleased you have to find reasons it must be a fiddle/lie?

Measurable? I don’t think so.
Why don’t you want things to be better? Is your identity so tied up with believing Tories are fab and Labour hopeless that any evidence of Labour achieving something is an existential threat?

God there are some moaning never pleased people in the Uk. Good grief!

As I say, there will always be those who believe everything they're told if they think the teller is made of gold.
Thank you for saying you would keep the numbers simple for me-some might say that is condescending, even if you do seem to be a tad confused.

This is probably all being done in private hospitals at a cost of bazillions to the tax payer - and A and E seems to be worse than ever.

Not every single person in England is currently waiting for an appointment. Also you don't need an appointment for a "routine blood pressure check", you can get one from a machine at your surgery reception or get your own machine to use at home for £15 on Amazon. I would say getting a hip replacement operation is somehow more pressing than something you can easily do at home.

I don't think comparing a greater number of appointments to a period when doctors were on strike, is quite the win you think it is.