Guest blog by Nan Tewari (in personal capacity):
Last week
the Advertising Standards bods issued a ruling telling Brent NHS CCG to buck
its ideas up and stick to doctoring rather than spin doctoring.
OK, the ASA
didn't actually say that but I do so wish it had! Last week that intrepid ferreter out of goings-on in Brent, Martin Francis, broke the
story on Wembley Matters LINK, of the Advertising Standards Authority ruling against
the 'A & E is only for life threatening emergencies 'posters.
Advertising
is supposed to be accurate and advertisers of products and services have an
obligation not to mislead. One wonders
whether GPs have now joined the ranks of those estimable professionals of the
estate agency and second-hand car sales' worlds (with apologies as always to
the honourable exceptions).
Brent
Patient Voice spent weeks corresponding with Brent NHS Clinical Commissioning
Group when we first became aware of the posters emblazoned on hoardings and bus
stops trying to persuade them to withdraw the misleading advert, to no
avail. Of course, it is bad enough that
BPV had to 'become aware' of the posters and that BCCG didn't even bother to
consult with us before launching their poster campaign.
To try to
give regular readers a succinct bit of context, the relationship of BPV with
Brent NHS CCG is akin to that of Philip Grant with Brent Council – enough said.
We pointed
out that BCCG's own advice on its website had been uncannily accurate in
stating that A & E is for life threatening emergencies AND other serious
conditions. A broken ankle isn't life
threatening but I wouldn't hobble into an Urgent Care Centre with one; no
siree, I'd take it straight to A & E even if I might have to wait more than
4 hours. So clearly A & E cannot
accurately be said to be for life threatening emergencies ONLY, so even more
clearly, some spin doctory type had done some spinning and come up with
offending poster.
You may well
ask why cash strapped BCCG would COMMISSION (ha ha) said posters. entailing
design, printing and pots of glue to stick said posters up. Perhaps Transport for London was running a
cut-price promotion on its bus stop hoardings and some clever COMMISSIONER at
BCCG thought they could please their Department of Health masters by using
public money to place the blame squarely on the public shoulder for the soi
disant A & E crisis.
I say 'so
called' crisis precisely because people presenting to A & E are assessed
(triaged) at the front desk and then either treated by the on-site Urgent Care
Centre or are referred through to the full A & E service, so for the most
part, people are NOT accessing A & E in droves, inappropriately.
Anyway, the
ASA rules and Brent NHS CCG makes contrite apology.......... well, in a
parallel universe perhaps. Instead, BCCG
writes off the entire episode as insignificant because - it arose out of ONE
complaint. The fact that BPV has
ELECTED patient reps on its committee counts for nothing. In fact, BCCG has a proud tradition of
wanting to hand-pick the patients it prefers to talk to rather than being
respectful of the wishes of Brent patients themselves who have elected their
own reps which allows those reps to act independently without fear or favour.
Contrast the
BCCG arrogance with the approach of South Worcester CCG whose spokesman said:
“We welcome the findings from the Advertising Standards Agency”. [Ackn. Evesham Journal]
And finally,
I leave you with news that BCCG's next advertising campaign will focus on
ophthalmology, tackling colour blindness where BCCG hopes to persuade us that
black is white.
In keeping
with the tenets of this blog, herewith my Declarations of Interest -
Elected
Co-chair of Harness Locality Patient Participation Group
Steering
Group member of Brent Patient Voice (writing in a personal capacity)
A patient
registered with a Brent GP practice
A very rare
user of A & E (once falling over in school playground many moons ago)
Nan Tewari
