Summary
WHEN the Scottish public consider what sort of NHS they wish and then health professionals and MSPs plan how to implement the service, there needs to be a clear understanding of some basic issues. The population is getting older, medical technology is getting better and public demand is infinite. Production-line medicine with centralised services for planned operations and procedures is an obvious economy of scale. The public want most care close to home but understand the need for travel to a big centre for their once-in-a-lifetime joint replacement or heart-bypass procedure.
The difficulty, however, comes with emergencies. The average 80- year-old has several long-term illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and self-care problems. What they need is not super- specialist doctors but generalist doctors and care teams who can understand the whole interacting interplay of several diseases and social factors in a crisis.See the full content of this document
Extract
An Objective and Balanced Nhs Plan
A country with an ageing population which ignores the requirements for generalists close to home is making a big mistake in the planning of medical manpower ...
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