NHS Indirect

Oh dear… just as my landlady thought she was sorted on selling the house it turns out that it’s not going ahead. There seem to be two reasons, first that the woman seems to have put in an offer on another house as well and second that when she looked at her finances she realised she couldn’t afford the house anyway. Back to square one on that then. It seems I will be back to my landlady going through my underwear again before I know it. Actually her latest thing seems to be rearranging the freezer. I have two drawers in the freezer which are solely for my use and a couple of days ago I realised that she had gone through my drawers and rearranged them all. Her organisational skills know no bounds – but she does seem to be aware that she is a bit over the top about things as a couple of times recently she has described herself as obsessive. Interesting…

I phoned NHS Direct a couple of days ago to get some information on what vaccinations I will need to go to The Gambia. What a bureaucratic hassle that service is. I don’t think I would phone them about anything ever again. I hope they have a different system if you’re seriously ill because you’d be dead by the time they got to dealing with your condition if my experience was anything to go by. NHS Direct? I think not. NHS by the most convoluted route possible, maybe.

Basically, you phone and have to give them various details. They asked for the address of where I was phoning from and, as I was at work, I didn’t really think that was any of their business. They said that they needed to know in case they had to send an ambulance and I pointed out that I thought it was unlikely I would need that for some vaccinations. Anyway, once you’ve finally gone through all the bureaucratic questions, you can’t then just get some advice instead they then have to get someone to phone you back. I can understand that they want to make sure they give you the right advice and so on, but it all seems a bit extreme. When they phoned back the call went through to my voicemail and they left a message saying that if I still wanted advice to phone the main number again. So I called back and was told that all they could do was log the call again and they would get someone to call me as they don’t transfer people through to someone who can give advice. I just said to the woman that this seemed totally pointless and was way too much hassle and I would just phone my doctor directly. The woman said that they’d probably refer me back to NHS Direct. As it turned out my doctor’s surgery was helpful and asked me to go in and fill out a form and then they’d tell me what all the vaccinations were when they’d looked at my medical records. Why didn’t I just phone them in the first place?

When I hit my head a couple of months back a friend suggested I get some advice from NHS Direct and I am so glad that I didn’t phone them because it would have made me want to strike my head repeatedly in exasperation. Maybe they have people doing that a lot and that’s why they have to make sure they know where to send the ambulance.

Anyway, I am away with work for the next couple of days and will be home really late on Saturday night at which time I’ll see what exciting tales I have to tell.