Today the BBC reports that the the Government intends to reduce the waiting lists for patients. Whilst the sentiment is right (everyone would like to see fewer ill people around) the approach is wrong. The government should not be measuring the length of the queue, but should be looking at the repeat visits. It is incredibly easy for a Doctor to see a large number of patients and prescribe drugs to treat the condition (take Asthma for example where inhalers that are very expensive and not as effective as other treatments) rather than spending more time to understand the cause to reduce or ideally eliminate the need for the poor patient to return to the surgery.
We must encourage the Doctors to investigate the underlying cause and treat that instead of fobbing patients off with ineffectual treatments for symptoms in the hope that the problem will go away. There are too many people with chronic problems that really should not be the case.
Measuring the number of repeat cases will quickly help to understand if the treatments are addressing the cause or symptoms.
