ref date:3 Jul 2002 (hea)
Scottish patient waiting lists rigged intentionally to protect Labour
It appears that the labour party has been encouraging Scottish hospitals and trusts to hide
patients on 'deferred' waiting lists for treatment, if they were unable to make the first
date they were offered and turned down because they had job or other commitments.
This makes Labour look better as they can say waiting lists are declining whilst in fact they
are simply hiding people on lists that even the referring GPs have no access to!
One doctor from Glasgow said: "We are still not happy with the whole system of deferred waiting lists. Neither the GP nor the patient is being told if the patient is being put on these lists."
"This is causing us a lot of extra work because patients keep coming back to us complaining that they are still not being called. We are spending a lot more of our day-to-day work chasing up hospitals, trying to find out whether patients are on normal waiting lists or on deferred lists."
"There needs to be more transparency to allow GPs to keep track of what the status is for the treatment of patients."
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