NHS Postcode Lottery
I've mentioned before that there is a postcode lottery when it comes to maternity care in the NHS. So far this has been in and out of the press at a trust level, but what about getting into a trust and looking to see if there's a postcode lottery within a trust, rather than just between trusts?
For the smart cookies amongst us you will have figured out by now that as I'm doing a post on the subject there must be. So what have we uncovered so far?
Take a ticketOne would expect that first and foremost, as the NATIONAL Health Service there would be a NATIONAL standard of care. But we know this is absolute pie in the sky stuff, so down on an individual trust level surely this is more of a reality?
My guest author, Chris, and his wife live in the Lothain NHS trust area. As do MOTS and I. So given we received health care from the same pot of cash you could expect the same level of healthcare? How wrong we are.
I feel I should first point out the differences between us here, just so we can try and identify why there is a difference in the care received.
- Age - MOTS and I are slightly older
- Address - we live at a different address, but within the area covered by NHS Lothian
- Hospital - our babies are to be born at different hospitals, but within the area covered by NHS Lothian
- Hair - I'm losing it more rapidly than Chris
So what differences are we seeing in the service provided?
- Chris & Sarah get a tour of the hospital before delivery. We did not.
- Chris gets "Dads-2-Be" classes. I did not.
No excuse for the differences, the same Trust in the same overall organisation, discriminating based on one of those differences pointed out above.
If I find out it's because I'm losing my follicals, I'll lose more than that.
Comments
And the plot thickens - at the dads to be classes I found out that 3 towns not 9 miles apart have very differing ante natal classes on offer for the males. One dad to be was invited to ALL ante-natals, another was told he was not to go to any, whilst I have been told I can go to 2 out of 5 (one physio the other "going home"). Are we all not entitled to the same level of support?
Posted by: ChrisGent | January 24, 2007 7:30 PM
FIVE ante-natal classes? And there's another difference, we had four. 2 on labour, one on breastfeeding, and one on coming home (the last one we missed because Junior made an early guest appearance).
Posted by: Lee | January 25, 2007 1:08 PM