‘Do not go to the NHS walk-in centre, it will only upset you.’ This was the advice from a friend last week as I drove around Tooting with earache searching in vain for St George’s Hospital. How a building with 1,000 beds and 6,000 staff is undetectable to the naked eye is a wonder to me. But it really is the case that this place exists in a Bermuda triangle. Not one sign indicates its presence. My friend explained: ‘They don’t signpost it because they don’t want you to find it by car. They want you to take public transport.’
They? Who are ‘They’? And why do They care if I travel to hospital by car? This was clearly ridiculous, and yet now I thought about it my local GP surgery had virtually ordered me to attend the hospital by London Underground. I had rung them in the grip of aural agony to be told, as usual, that the doctor could only see me in three days’ time. Although I normally sigh and open my cheque book to the private sector, this time something inside me snapped — possibly an ear drum. I demanded that they offer me further options of the kind I had already paid for with my taxes, and not the option which involves me going to a stucco-fronted house in Belgravia and paying £200. I’ve had enough of it, you see. As William Hague once so rightly, but unfortunately for him rather prematurely, said, ‘We’ve paid the tax, so where are the services?’ I told this to the doctor’s receptionist and she told me the services were at something called a walk-in centre. When I asked how to find this Utopian place of healing she said, ‘You get on the Tube at Balham and…’ ‘Can I just stop you there,’ I explained. ‘I’ve a raging earache and I’m not getting on the Tube. I’m driving in a nice quiet car or, if the pain gets any worse, taking a taxi.’ At which point the conversation drifted to a disinterested close.
I then forgot to take the TomTom, so after cruising for an hour around the exact spot where the hospital is marked on maps I had to stop and phone a friend. ‘This place doesn’t exist, does it? It’s just a conspiracy to keep all the sick people going round in circles and away from the NHS waiting list.’ He informed me that it did exist but would only materialise after much more complex circumnavigation into an inner world which is quite possibly balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle. Furthermore, when I got there it would be £20 parking, interminable queueing and at the end of it all only the sort of defensive medicine which forbids invasive techniques such as ear unblocking. ‘Frankly, I don’t think you could handle it,’ he said as politely as he could.
I turned the car around and made my way back to the GP. I don’t know what I was doing; all I knew was that my ear was about to drop off. The place was packed, it was obviously futile and yet as I stood in front of the receptionist looking wretched she smiled, ‘As luck would have it, someone’s just cancelled. The doctor will see you now. Go straight in.’ You can imagine how disorientated these words left me. I pretty much fell through the door.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am,’ I gushed as he looked up from his computer. ‘I’m in such paaaaain…’
‘Who told you to come in?’ he snapped. I looked behind me in case a tramp waving a broken bottle had also wandered in. But there was only me. ‘Er, the receptionist.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have come in. I haven’t beeped yet.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You need to wait till I beep.’
I had come so close. And yet the prize of healthcare free at the point of delivery was about to be snatched from me as it dangled before my eyes. At that point I would have done anything to satiate the doctor’s desire for beepage. So I said, ‘Would you like me to go back out so you can beep, then I’ll come back in?’ He looked at me with disappointment of epic proportions. ‘It’s too late now. What do you want?’
I explained. He looked in my ear and harrumphed. ‘It’s infected. Take these.’ And he thrust a prescription for strong antibiotics at me — the good ones, the ones I usually have to go to Eaton Place to get hold of.
I felt deep gratitude as I scurried off, but also dreadful confusion. My experience either means the system is brilliant or terrible. I just can’t decide which.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
Comments