Charging review is sensible
SEARCH Guernsey on the social media platform X, before too long you’ll find someone posting a photograph of a poster on the wall of the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, advising of the charging structure for the Emergency Department.
This will be accompanied by dire warnings of what will happen when the government privatises the NHS, and a pile-on from several individuals claiming that all healthcare should be free for all at all times.
Now the structure has been revised and simplified, so no longer do you have to look at the clock to decide if your medical issue is so serious that you need to head up to the hospital and hang the cost. Now you’ll be charged on the basis of the resources used up, rather than the convenience or otherwise if your arrival.
There remains much to be addressed in the hotch-potch of some of our health system, but the ‘gatekeeper’ element of charges for GP and/or the Emergency Department – supported by health insurance or support for the less well-off – continues to make sense.
Health & Social Care believed that the previous structure was dissuading people from attending at certain times of the night. This decision to simplify the charges at the Emergency Department makes absolute sense, whether it makes more money or less, as long as standards of care and accessibility remain high.