Bonfire of the lists!

“I’ll just look in the box for a list. Here we are – oh, no, this one’s from 1998… there must be a more recent one than that. Here’s another one. Damn – that’s even older, and the box has fallen apart! Hang on, I’ll look in the workroom.”

Do I exaggerate about ageing lists of local services on curly paper in scruffy boxes. Perhaps I do – sometimes the boxes are quite neat. But why pre-print a list, which is out of date as soon as it’s printed, when you can get up-to-date information on demand?


Doctor Where

NHS Choices, as a title, invites cynicism. Is it just Big Brother-speak for a lack of choice? Actually, it isn’t. This website really can help you find a local doctor, dentist, chemist, optician or hospital (including emergency hospital), providing you with much of the information you need to make a choice.

Take doctors, for instance. I put my postcode in the box, and what I got for all this effort was a list of doctors starting with the closest to my front door. But more than that, I was told whether each surgery had provision for early (before 8.30am) or late (after 6pm) appointments, and whether the surgery was accepting new patients. This is crucial – there was nothing more depressing for a new arrival than the ring-round of doctors’ surgeries – “are you taking patients or, if not, have you heard any rumours about who might be?”

Of course, circumstances change from second to second, and I don’t suppose that NHS Choices is updated quite that often. But it’s a good starting-point.


What seems to be the trouble?

There’s much more to NHS Choices than a database of local services. If you think you might have caught something nasty, you can click through to NHS Direct, with its symptom-checker, its common health questions (and answers!), and its telephone number. There is, of course, a lot here about Swine Flu, including the dedicated phone line.

Back at NHS Choices, there is a huge amount to read, watch and listen to, on keeping healthy and taking action when you or a loved one is under the weather.

I’ve seen the NHS’s internal ICT systems in action, and I was less than impressed, which makes it pretty ironic that this public face of the NHS should be both so useful and so attractive.

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Health and medicine”. NHS Choices is a Key Link.)

Clipart from Clipartheaven.com