Who even knew such a target existed. (see a doctor in 48 hours)
My situation has been that I have to ring up every morning and afternoon only to be told at 8.10am when I got through that all appointments for the morning have gone and 1.10am that all appointments for the afternoon have gone. This went on for three days and I had to book holiday time off work as I was not covered by a sick note.
Whilst at the doctors waiting for my appointment I witnessed an argument where someone at the reception desk was told to ring up or come back tomorrow to get an appointment and he got rather annoyed because he wasn't allowed to book one of the available appointments tomorrow because it was still today.
My other option was to book a "timed" appointment early or late in the day but these can only be booked one week in advance and if all the appointments for a week today have gone you have to try again tomorrow. And still wait a week to be seen of course.
I can't see any option to see a doctor in 48 hours was ever available.At Creature's surgery they are nearly all same day appointments for Doctors. They started this because 15-20% of the appointments in advance just didn't turn up to see the Doctors.
If Creature feels really ill he gets himself down to the surgery for opening time, staggers in, drapes himself on the counter almost, and they give him as early an appointment as they can. Then he crawls over to an empty chair and waits to be called in.
It is much easier to get an appointment in advance with the Nurse for things like blood pressure readings. And Creature knows that if whatever looks really horrid the Nurse will fetch a doctor to take the responsibility for giving advice anyway.The waiting time thing was a joke. I don't know how GPs are paid, but I suspect they make a better profit if they have more patients than they have time to treat.
That led to "We can make you an appointment for the middle of next week"
The government meant well by saying they must see all patients within 48 hours, but the response by GPs was that they just wouldn't let you make the appointment until they were ready to see you. That way it looked on paper as though they were doing their job properly.
I understand that the hospital targets the government were proud of were met in a similar way. They would open a file for you on paper then add it to a pile on a desk. When they had a slot for a patient they'd take one off the pile and send out a letter telling you when to come in. Only then would you be entered into the official system.
Actually I recall a scandal when it was discovered that some hospitals found an even better way because they could enter into the system that this patient had been seen, treated and sent home without ever having met them.
Both Labour and now the Conservatives are operating in a fantasy world. Making changes that have no connection to reality.My mummy had cataract operations and they do one eye at a time in case they blind you in the process and that way at least you still have some sight in one eye.
She had the first eye done and was supposed to have the next one in a few months time. When she chased them they insisted she had already had the second eye done as the computer said it had been done. She had a difficult time convincing them that it was her eye and therefore her opinion was correct.
Anyway as the computer said it had already been done, she had to start all over again as a new patient in the next financial year. I think they deliberately closed off her case to get the operation "done" in time.This is hopefully a start to drag public services out of the whole target driven system. It has never driven up standards, quite the opposite. For hospitals to have a waiting list to get onto the waiting list in order to ensure that the real waiting list is within limits is utter lunacy. All it does is double the administration work. Police fiddle the crime clear up rate by logging every minor infringement, rather than giving a warning and avoiding time-wasting paperwork. I'm sure it's the same in education, and (dare I say it, OC?) local government.
I'm sure it's the same in education, and (dare I say it, OC?) local government.
To which my answer is 'Probably, human nature being what it is - but I don't know.'
My targets are measured by outcomes - eg my work on final accounts must be completed within a timeframe that lets other people meet their deadlines so that our accounts are approved by the relevant Committee by 30 June. Or the VAT return is sent electronically to HMRC by the end of the 3rd working day after the period to which the return relates. It's very rare for me to miss the VAT deadline, and I've never issed the final accounts deadlines.
We do have a load of performance indicators which the District Auditor is interested in, and other measures which they use to determine the extent to which the organisation provides value for money. I have nothing to do with those.
However, Eric Pickles has realised that local government has got rather good at filling these boxes with ticks and figures that the DA likes. So he has abolished the Comprehensive Area Assessment and probably won't replace it with anything; so in a few years time any old group will be able to bang on about how inefficient local government is and there won't be any 'independent evidence' to indicate anything to the contrary. But facts quite often get in the way of bigotry, dishonesty, lying etc - the tools of the politician's trade. Facts therefore must be eliminated.I think your deadlines OC are different anyway. You have to get it done by a certain date, but it's not as though you could choose to skip it and do some easier task to meet a different target.