Ben Bradshaw is a Very Very Silly Man With a Very Very Silly Idea

Ben Bradshaw's NHS Choices

I am not going to go on about the dippy Neil Bacon or his partners in crime. Everyone I shall let Dr John Crippen do it instead. Read his view on Ben Bradshaw here. Crippen is clever and I am just a barndoor airhead and there we have it.

My ideas of course

1. RateyourMP
2. RateyourMinister
3. RateyourPM
4. RateyourNHSManager

As for patients, they come in many groups

1. Those who have trully suffered. Most remain silent and suffer in silence.
2. Those who are neurotic
3. Those who are obsessive
4. Those who are vexatious

As we deal with a broad range and type of complaints through NHS Exposed, I can truly say that only 1 percent of the complaints are from people who have genuinely suffered. The rest are from those who come in points 2,3 and 4. There is a general misunderstanding of medicine, a communication failure between what the doctor means and what is understood.

A prime example are Ward 87 patients. 90 percent were fearful that the Trust would seek revenge on them if they complained. There are two damning reports about it and the ward was shut down.

Overall, genuine people like Arpad Toth or Angus Dei are very hard to come by.

With respect to NHS Choices and the doctor rating website by Ben "twit" Bradshaw, lets see the statistics.

In the UK, 34,104,175 people are estimated to have Internet access. That's 57.2 percent of the entire population. And the 'active internet universe' - those who surf regularly - amounts to 21,799,637. On average, surfers in the UK now spend nearly 10 hours a month online. (Others estimate the numbers are slightly smaller, but there's no question that they are on the increase).

The poorest have the lowest life expectancies. Health Inequalities have long been known to the government. The lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum places more demand upon health services. The Independent covers it very well.

"Avoidable health problems caused by social factors – as opposed to biology and genetics – are causing large-scale health inequalities in the UK, the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health has found after a three-year study"

The lower socioeconomic classes also have lesser degree of access to information technology and the internet. The latest research for this is as follows

"Over one-third (36%) of adults do not have access to a computer and over two-fifths (42%) lack access to the Internet. These are the headline findings of the Annual Media Literacy Survey 2008 from NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) to be published today – Monday 17th November 2008 – at a joint NIACE/Ofcom Media Literacy Conference in London.

Consequently, those with most call upon the services of their doctor are those least likely to be in a position to comment upon those services on the internet. Dangerous upper class neurotics with too much time on their hands and an axe to grind however are prime candidates for doctor rating websites. It is a shame that the Department of Health wastes time and money providing a soap box for these individuals and does not even get a useful spectrum of opinion in return.

Furthermore, NHS Connecting For Health aims to collect every patients data and centralise it. NHS Choices tries to tempt patients on to their websites were IP addresses are easily recorded so nothing is trully anonymous. Data collection seems to be a hobby of the Department of Health. As everyone knows the Department of Health is subject to RIPA [ Regulations and Investigatory Powers]. So, anyone using it can come to their own conclusions.

Here endeth my view :)