So the election has come and gone and in NHS circles there has been lots of heated discussion about the future of healthcare in the UK. I have my own views on how I would “fix” the NHS which is better saved for the pub, however I feel I could raise a discussion point about sports injuries.
In the walk in centre where I work (and all others where I have visited) I would see at least 8-10 people every day who have a subacute or chronic injury state secondary to overuse/sports injury/accidents. Many of these patients have been given short shrift by their GP (painkillers and go away which is pretty much all their allowed to do) and get to a point where they don’t know what to do. The long and short of it is that those same patient’s will visit a walk in centre or similar simply to get a bit of direction so that’s already at least two nhs consultations.
NHS physiotherapy has a very broad remit standard waits for physiotherapy are 4-6 weeks which is no good when you consider that at 4 weeks an injury is well and truly chronic and much harder to treat, which means more than 1 or 2 sessions.
I do suspect a lot of problems with wait times and finance are due to patient expectations because our knowledge and scope is much greater and also the working world is a whole lot more demanding.
With all that, is there no way that the NHS can use the ever growing legion of Sports Injury Professionals to manage acute and subacute sports injury? Yes there is cost but I would be happy to take referrals from GP’s on the condition I see the patient within 48 hours, I guarantee that would ultimately be cheaper and for all that I am happy to discuss cost with the local ccg’s as well.
Anyone fancy a pub trip to discuss?