scaredeycat
Member
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2007
- Posts
- 406
Re: The totally off-topic thread
Hobart's public hospital is ridiculously dysfunctional - cardiology was actually run by a respiratory physician for 2 years who wanted to model the department on the NHS. He didn't see any problems in having patients wait 6 months or more to have an echo. He also felt that there was no need to train technicians locally, as he preferred to poach them from overseas. Decision making has very little to do with clinical need and more to do with who can lobby the loudest and come up with a "business plan" that will please the bean counters and their political masters.
I work predominantly in private and the greatest difference I see is that when I want something done for a patient, it generally just happens, usually within 24 hours, whereas in the public system there are almost always multiple road blocks that cause frustration. That's not to say that the public doesn't do good work - I've seen a lot of great results - but I've also seen far too many stuff ups over the years which could have been avoided.
bottom line - private health insurance is infinitely more important than frequent flyer status!
Sorry in our area if it wasn't for the Private Hospitals public medicine would be in a sorry state.... I now locum both privately and in the public system.The work loads are incomparable.Currently privately I am doing 10 stress tests in a day finishing often by 1300.Publicly I can be limited to 2 a day-and they wonder why there is a waiting list?
Hobart's public hospital is ridiculously dysfunctional - cardiology was actually run by a respiratory physician for 2 years who wanted to model the department on the NHS. He didn't see any problems in having patients wait 6 months or more to have an echo. He also felt that there was no need to train technicians locally, as he preferred to poach them from overseas. Decision making has very little to do with clinical need and more to do with who can lobby the loudest and come up with a "business plan" that will please the bean counters and their political masters.
I work predominantly in private and the greatest difference I see is that when I want something done for a patient, it generally just happens, usually within 24 hours, whereas in the public system there are almost always multiple road blocks that cause frustration. That's not to say that the public doesn't do good work - I've seen a lot of great results - but I've also seen far too many stuff ups over the years which could have been avoided.
bottom line - private health insurance is infinitely more important than frequent flyer status!