New government, same narrow vision

BMJ 1998;316:1320 ( 25 April )

Letters

New government, same narrow vision

How hospitals manage emergency admissions needs to be examined

Medical profession must change things itself

Health authorities in New Zealand have spin doctors to produce good news

Most New Zealanders believe their public health service has deteriorated

How hospitals manage emergency admissions needs to be examined

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Smith was right to suggest that the debate on the NHS should shift to something more important than waiting lists.¹Waiting lists are used by politicians as an indicator of the successor failure of the health service, yet they are merely a measureof how much we as a society wish to spend on the health service.What should be exercising our minds is the ability of hospitalsto manage emergency admissions other than those politically importantones occurring over the winter as a result of inclement weather.In 1984 it was recognised that over half of all surgical admissionswere emergencies,² and this has not changed; yet patients admittedas a surgical emergency receive a poor service. At worst theymay be operated on at inappropriate times by inappropriate surgeons,although we know this is wrong. Alternatively, they may wait fordays for expert opinion or investigation . . . [Full text of this article]