PKB - oh no they don't!

Every year I have an annual checkup for glaucoma at the Brighton Eye Hospital. This year with the letter of appointment came a letter with the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals’ logo at the top, saying

We are using the new, free-to-use, secure portal Patients Know Best

Sign-up today to view your Outpatient appointments ….

My immediate reaction is Oh no they don’t! . If I thought patients knew best I would go to the pub for advice, not to my doctor. I am shocked that an arm of the NHS should be recommending an organization whose very name is a mischievous populist falsehood. Lighten up I hear you say. But would you trust your data to a business that peddled such a crass plea? Or to one run by people who are unaware of how crass it is?

Unless I am mistaken the marketroids who came up with PKB were motivated by The government is desperately offering shedloads of money to those who will digitize the NHS; the public is thick and easily cozened by flattery, however false.

Do you think patients know best?

To quote Wikipedia:

“The system has been trialled in the US.² It is in use in 19 different languages at more than 60 hospitals throughout the UK, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong, the USA and the Netherlands.”

Well, that appears to be a whole 60 hospitals across 7 countries.

It appeals to “marketdroids”. We have marketing people in our establishment ,because clearly we don’t get enough people being sick often enough to keep the clinical staff busy, alongside the “communications” people so essential to a modern hospital.

The government is desperately offering shedloads of money to those who will digitize the NHS;

More like offering shedloads of money to their friends who cobble up barely functional “services” to the health and education market.

people so essential to a modern hospital

I am put in mind of the Yes Minister episode “The Compassionate Society”…

Do you think patients know best?

Depends upon the context.

If the oncologist listened to mom, she might well still be alive today.

(beat)

Mom, that is… ;-)

Patients Know Best

I think, also, this mantra is going to seriously irk doctors when repeated ad nauseum by patients that looked up their symptoms on the internet, got completely the wrong end of the stick, and now expect to be treated for some incurable rapidly fatal disease that they think they have.
Patients know best and won’t accept “it’s a hangnail, go see a podologist” because, patients know best.

I would go to the pub for advice

You must have a much better class of pub than any I’ve ever been to. Football fixtures, darts, rather stupid people who were parts of unions trying to outmanoeuvre their bosses not realising that they were totally outmatched, drunk students doing pointless courses like “Media Studies”, old people talking at length about disgusting medical issues or “how things were better after the war”, and that one guy that props up the end of the bar, drinks endless amounts of beer, and never seems to need to go to the toilet … is about all I’ve ever encountered in pubs.

And lousy badly cooked overpriced indescribable slurry that is trying to be whatever dish was trendy at the time – probably a chicken tikka that every Indian on the planet would fail to recognise as edible, never mind something supposedly from their own country.

Edit: and I’ve lost count of how many stick an extra ‘i’ in Biryani to make it a four syllable word.

But would you trust your data to a business that peddled such a crass plea?

Look on the bright side. At least this time they’re pretending to ask you.

the public is thick

They voted for Brexit.
Then they voted Johnson to get it done.

I rest my case.

shedloads of money to their friends who cobble up barely functional “services”

Hmm, this isn’t one of Cummings’ mates is it?

alongside the “communications” people so essential to a modern hospital.

Just think how many extra nurses you could have if they didn’t take their over inflated salaires out of the budget…

more than 60 hospitals throughout the UK, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong, the USA and the Netherlands.”

Throughout?

Google tells me that The Netherlands alone (not a big country) had 546 hospitals in 2017.
Hong Kong (tiny!) has 42 public hospitals in seven clusters, and 14 private hospitals.

As for America… https://blog.definitivehc.com/how-many-hospitals-are-in-the-us

So, really, I think that’s extremely creative use of the word “throughout”.

So, really, I think that’s extremely creative use of the word “throughout”

I believe the connection involves some bint called Dido (which I keep thinking might be missing a letter – but that would at least be useful)

So, really, I think that’s extremely creative use of the word “throughout”

Proper translation is “in the odd random location”
Similar to an app sold to a former director (who went off to work for that company…) which worked (allegedly) “across the whole site” at the reference location. Truthfully it, mostly, worked¹ in the coverage area of the single AP.
Supposedly all OK to work across a super hospital site and a satellite site – I forget how many hundred AP’s.
It works now, but there’s been a lot of in house effort.

¹ Flakier than anything Cadbury ever produced.

Well at least you are signing up to (eventually) get an appointment. Our local GP surgery has decided that it is going to remain virtual even after covid, and you’ll never see another doctor again. They will phone you back eventually, and dispense gems such as “no I can’t check against your previous test results because I’m in somewhere-on-sea”.

They will phone you back eventually, and dispense gems such as “no I can’t check against your previous test results because I’m in somewhere-on-sea”.

One of the last items I worked on before being hit by a sequence of health problems¹ was access for GP’s from home (via the local “PCT”, IT systems) to the results systems.
That takes care of the immediate look up and the slower notification via the electronic equivalent² of a hospital letter to the GP arrives in their NHS mail account within 24 hours anyway. All things considered they don’t need to be anywhere specific to see the results.³

¹ Covid plus a pain the * plus cataracts plus swollen joints.

When I signed up for patientsknowbest.com at the end of last year I also thought it a stupid name. The site did prove very useful to keep track of all of my Hospital appointments for Prostate Cancer investigation. I’d get emails telling me of appointments 3 to 7 days before I’d get a paper copy in the post. Unfortunately my Radiotherapy was in Hampshire and either they aren’t signed up to patientsknowbest or the system isn’t seamless. n.b. The Radiotherapy seems to have worked as expected but it’ll be five years before they can be sure.

Good luck, Chris!

I have a somewhat older friend who has had success!

Wondering if I’m approaching this situation myself!

I was amused when my wife was allocated a telephone physiotherapy appointment for her arthritis!