Veronica Goddard

………Area Assembly took place last night and our meeting was displaced by the slimming club. We had to meet in the small hall at Turner Memorial Hall and the Slimming Club took the larger hall. Now, whether this is a sign of falling numbers attending Area Assemblies or increasing numbers attending the Slimming Club, I can’t say. If it is a fact that people are trying harder to adopt a healthier lifestyle, I say ‘Well Done’ - I think I should sign up myself! But please, do come to the Area Assembly meetings - there we discuss things that matter to Leeming, Priory, Robin Hood and Sherwood Wards.

Last night we had a presentation by the Notts Primary Care Trust about the government’s plans to provide ‘Poly Clinics‘ which will be rather similar to Byron House at Kings Mill Hospital, with a variety of health needs being catered for  and where patients can either register  on the clinic’s patient list (panel) or use the service on an ad hoc basis and just walk in and be seen by a GP, nurse, physiotherapist, dentist or other medical expert.

There were mixed feelings about the possibility of Mansfield / Ashfield acquiring this type of service (the decision as to the location has not yet been made)and bearing in mind the mix-up over confidential data of late and its attendant worry for those concerned, I am not altogether convinced about this whole project. To have yet another agency privvy to everyone’s medical history is a little more of the Big Brother syndrome .Indeed, this story illustrates my point:

Commenting on the announcement that Fujitsu has been sacked from the NHS IT contract, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said: “This is yet another example of a hopelessly flawed, centrally imposed project that has not been properly thought through from the start and was never subjected to a proper cost benefit analysis.”
http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/story.html?id=14367