AS A general practitioner, I am all for patients undergoing day surgery for appropriate procedures. Essentially, it is in everyone’s interest and is financially prudent. However, in my experience, early discharge can bring its own problems and certainly increases the primary-care workload.
I hope that this has been clearly thought through and that extra resources will be made available for the increased workload for our district nursing teams.
Many surgical procedures have minor complications and the brunt of these will now have to be dealt with by primary-care clinicians.
We will require assurances from secondary-care colleagues that they will have a mechanism in place for early review of a patient if this is deemed necessary by a primary care physician so that patients are getting the best care possible. This is, ultimately, our mutually desired outcome.
One other thing that the success of the scheme will hinge upon is improved pre-discharge liaison. Presumably, this is being addressed prior to any major service redesign.
Dr Robert McGonigle, Dumbarton Health Centre, Station Road, Dumbarton.
WHILE many will welcome the end of hospital car-parking charges, at Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow, it seems inevitable, in view of the adjacent Hyndland train station, that many of the parking spaces will again be used inappropriately by members of the business community as a free park-and-ride system into the city. This was the situation before the introduction of charges and was a significant factor in limiting the availability of spaces for those who had a legitimate right to occupy them.
There needs to be some method of ensuring that parking facilities in hospitals are not abused.
Dr Nigel McMillan, 5 Woodburn Road, Glasgow.
Originally published by Newsquest Media Group.
(c) 2008 Herald, The; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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