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What does the Fax say!? - England's NHS forced to end fax usage

rcmaehl

Of countries with public healthcare, UK is really far from having the best one, like really far down the list. 

If I remember right, it have one of the longest waiting lists because too few doctors or whatever.

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I think I've sent like, 1 fax, ever.

I get that it could be useful in the case of a cyber attack... But lets face it, it's just extra paper that will end up misplaced and lost somewhere.
An email system with a case/patient number straight in the Subject line and an automated system that sort and transfer the email to the appropriate people in charge of said patient through cross referencing with a database, would be a lot more effective than a fax sent to lord knows who.(building a system like that should be that complicated... along with offsite backups every 30 minutes or so?)

Even assuming every computers are down, "don't you guys have phones!?"

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1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

An email system with a case/patient number straight in the Subject line and an automated system that sort and transfer the email to the appropriate people in charge of said patient through cross referencing with a database, would be a lot more effective than a fax sent to lord knows who.(building a system like that should be that complicated... along with offsite backups every 30 minutes or so?)

Even assuming every computers are down, "don't you guys have phones!?"

For a hospital the reason they got put in, at least here as a backup system, was for IT system outages and stuff like that. Proper paper/digital documentation is a requirement so you can't just ring up medlabs and ask for a blood sample etc over the phone, it doesn't work that way. That would result in incomplete patient records.

 

There's even emergency processes for when both IT systems and fax don't work, which is paper work and runners.

 

P.S. Most phone systems now days are all handled by the same server infrastructure so a loss of that means no phones as well. Again here there are the standard VoIP system phones and then backup phones on a different system (PABX, also used for the fax stuff).

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What does the fax say?

 

Arrrr grreeep  beep beep urrrrrrrrrrr 

                     ¸„»°'´¸„»°'´ Vorticalbox `'°«„¸`'°«„¸
`'°«„¸¸„»°'´¸„»°'´`'°«„¸Scientia Potentia est  ¸„»°'´`'°«„¸`'°«„¸¸„»°'´

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On 12/11/2018 at 11:12 AM, Master Disaster said:

You don't live here. What's the point of free healthcare when you genuinely have to be dying before you can see a doctor?

 

For reference, 2 weeks ago I received a letter from my Doctor's telling me that my yearly asthma review was overdue and that if I didn't make an appointment by the end of December i would lose access to inhalers (standard practice here in England, repeat medication has to be reassessed at least once per year). I rang my doctor's with the letter in hand, after spending 40 minutes on hold (I'm really not exaggerating) I was told that appointments this time of year were reserved for emergencies and there was an 8 week delay before they could get me in. When I explained that the letter said I had to see someone before the end of December i was told I shouldn't have waited so long to call. When I explained i had received the letter that day I was told that's impossible. After hanging up and walking down to see them face to face with the letter they finally agreed to give me an emergency appointment but not until December 28th and only with a nurse not a doctor.

 

3 years ago I broke my arm, I had slipped over on some ice. After I woke up from being passed out I picked myself up, walked a mile with a broken arm to a friend's house and my friend took me to the hospital. I spent 5 hours sat in a waiting room, it was 4am before anybody saw me. When I mentioned this to the Nurse he told me I should have rang 999 and asked for an Ambulance as Ambulance patients are given priority so the Ambulance staff can get back out.

 

You might think these are extreme examples but honestly they aren't. Doctors now routinely refuse to see patients with colds (fair enough with that one), ear infections and chest infections (unless you're asthmatic) classing them as minor ailments instead. 6 hours waiting in A&E with a "minor ailment" is normal.

 

Most of the time you ring a doctor you're assessed by the receptionist on the phone and if it's not deemed serious then you're told to go see a pharmacist and buy over the counter drugs.

 

As I outlined above, you can't even get in when they send for you.

 

Free healthcare might seem great and I'm certainly not complaining (it's not the doctors/nurses fault the system is broken) but it's only as good as the system and right now the system is beyond broken.

I'm asthmatic as well and had the exact same problem, and I just thought stuff it, I haven't used my inhaler for a while and I can't be bothered to jump through all these hoops to get a new one so just never bothered. If I ever have a problem, I'll just call 111 and die while on the phone when they try to type in Asthma into google to see what it is ?

 

What I find a bit stupid is the whole referral process, I accidentally kicked something and ripped off half of one of my nails when I was in hospital (for a completely unrelated reason) and was taken to A&E (I have no idea why, I just assume it's their policy, but we went down when it was empty as it wasn't actually an emergency), I was told that I would have to have the rest removed and that I would have to see a podiatrist, but they couldn't refer me direct.

So they had to send a letter to my GP, once they received that I had to make an appointment with them, which took 2 weeks (and only because the one available appointment in the next 2 weeks was at 8:50 when everyone is taking their kids to school).

I waited around about 40 minutes after the appointment time to actually see the doctor, and I was in for 2 minutes at the most because all he had to do was click a button on the computer and I was told I would receive an appointment in the post. 

 

The GP that one of my friends visits doesn't even let you schedule appointments ahead of time, you just have to phone up at 8am and hope for the best.

 

We used to have private healthcare through one of my grandfather's businesses, but when he retired he decided to not carry on with it because the premiums shot up when it wasn't through the company. 

 

Hopefully when I move into my new house, the GP there will  be better, but it's a bigger town so I doubt it very much

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On 12/10/2018 at 9:23 AM, VegetableStu said:

not saying to remove fax machines entirely, but chiefly if the hospital's IT doesn't even attempt to mitigate or close off "attack vectors"... (strict intranet systems, etc I'm sure the sysadmins in this forum are more qualified to describe this ._.)

Read enough Tales From Tech Support on Reddit and you'll quickly learn that 95% of the problems in IT, come from the people above walking around saying "we don't need IT people, they don't make us money / They only cost us money!" etc. etc.

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On 12/11/2018 at 7:16 AM, Master Disaster said:

Here in England there's a real problem with red tape. The government has created that many hoops to jump through, so much paperwork, so many management tiers and it all has to be paid for. Meanwhile your average emergency doctor doing 12 hour shifts might spend half his day actually seeing patients (if he's lucky), nurses are now doing jobs the doctors should be doing because the doctors don't have the time and around 40% of all funds allocated to any given NHS Trust is immediately swallowed up by paying managers to sit in offices all day doing even more paperwork.

 

By far the biggest drain is health tourism though, people from across Europe know the NHS cannot refuse anybody treatment so they travel to England (sometimes even illegally) and present themselves to English hospitals to get treated for free. A few years back the NHS tried to stop this from happening by seeking to charge anybody without a UK passport for treatment before its given and the ECJ ruled it illegal.

Ahhh the wonders of a free healthcare system with no regulation saying "only the people paying for it should be able to benefit from it".

 

Or something along those lines that equates to "only UK citizens should be allowed to use this service, barring special circumstances of some sort".

 

Anything else is just not financially sustainable. 

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5 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Ahhh the wonders of a free healthcare system with no regulation saying "only the people paying for it should be able to benefit from it".

 

Or something along those lines that equates to "only UK citizens should be allowed to use this service, barring special circumstances of some sort".

 

Anything else is just not financially sustainable. 

Yep, it's not like travel insurance that covers medical expenses is that expensive. Non citizens coming in to the country should be able to cover the costs of any medical care they need.

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On 12/11/2018 at 12:16 PM, Master Disaster said:

By far the biggest drain is health tourism though, people from across Europe know the NHS cannot refuse anybody treatment so they travel to England (sometimes even illegally) and present themselves to English hospitals to get treated for free. A few years back the NHS tried to stop this from happening by seeking to charge anybody without a UK passport for treatment before its given and the ECJ ruled it illegal.

 

Have you got a source for this other than tabloid newspapers? 

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2 hours ago, Camoxide said:

Have you got a source for this other than tabloid newspapers? 

Yes, there was an hour long documentary about it on the BBC last year, they actually filmed the phenomenon happening. It's very real.

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6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Yes, there was an hour long documentary about it on the BBC last year, they actually filmed the phenomenon happening. It's very real.

Would Brexit make it more easy to pass such a change?

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2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Would Brexit make it more easy to pass such a change?

I really cant answer that, I guess so because once we leave the ECJ lose any jurisdiction over us.

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8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Yes, there was an hour long documentary about it on the BBC last year, they actually filmed the phenomenon happening. It's very real.

I'm not denying that health care tourism happens but it being "By far the biggest drain" doesn't seem plausible, what seems far more likely of a drain is A&E being full of drunk people on a Saturday night. 

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On 12/10/2018 at 7:43 AM, rcmaehl said:

Source:
BBC

 

Summary:

England's NHS has been banned from buying fax machines effective January, and usage by April 2020 in an effort to improve safety and security.

Media:

Fax machine

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

 

My Thoughts:

If you haven't already sell your fax machine stocks! This will likely be the first of many nails in the coffin for a technology that should have long been dead. That being said the NHS was notably affected by Wannacry compared to the larger US healthcare system and as such they may need to re-evaluate their cyber security policies before phasing these devices out completely.

Time to go back to the future and use the telegram. 

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1 minute ago, Camoxide said:

I'm not denying that health care tourism happens but it being "By far the biggest drain" doesn't seem plausible, what seems far more likely of a drain is A&E being full of drunk people on a Saturday night. 

The NHS is far more than A&E though, childbirth, operations, dentistry, opthalmology and probably a hundred different things I don't know about.

 

And anyway, assuming they're English then if they're in A&E drunk on a Saturday night they're not draining anything. Those people are paying national insurance and are entitled to it.

 

You wouldn't call an American with health insurance a drain for being drunk in A&E.

 

Can we just make it clear, I'm not racist, I'm not xenophobic and I'm not advocating drunk people filling up A&E either but when some hospitals have entire wards full of non native English people all expecting free treatment, most of them don't even speak English and expect a translator to be provided and a percentage of them don't even have a legal right to be in the country we should be allowed to put measures in place to stop it. They weren't even seeking full powers, genuine emergencies would still be dealt with but polish woman driving half way across Europe a few weeks before they're due to give birth to have the baby in an English hospital? No.

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