For some time now something has been worrying me so I thought I would ask my friends, the Firenetters, whose advice I always respect and trust.
I have a medical problem (hopefully not fatal, so I hope to be around for a long time yet to continue to leap over high buildings, while catching the speeding bullets fired by misguided fire officers in my teeth). Well, not trusting the national 'elf, I have been paying a fortune to a private medical consultant. He seems a nice chap and I do not grudge him the money since he is ekeing out an NHS pension (though I wish he would take the trouble to read the Lancet just occasionally).
Anyway, I was surfing the Net one night, and bored of soft porn, I stumbled across the Sickpeople.Net website. I read the posts with interest. It seemed to me that a number of private medical consultants would go on Sickpeople.net as soon as the private patient was out of the door of the consulting room and ask all and sundry for a diagnosis and proposed treatment, while charging patients for the advice. Some were even cheeky enough to simply begin their postings with the words "The Patient......." and then describe the patient's symptoms on the assumption that everyone would know they were supposed to do his job for him.
Intrigued I scrolled through the postings and came to the following one:
"The Patient: Tall, slimming, good-natured, intelligent Scotsman, extremely good looking with a penchant for younger women........." Immediately of course I recognized myself, so I read on......
"The Symtoms: The patient complains of severe anal discomfort when dealing with many of the officers of the greatest fire brigade in .......London, while claiming to experience a warm glow when dealing with many other shire county and met brigades, and all eight brigades in another nearby neighbouring country."
The consultant went on to say that he was completely baffled but he could not tell the patient this, as he was charging the patient (me) lots of dosh, so the last thing he would want to do was refer the patient to someone who knew the answer. Apparently, he had asked everyone down the pub for advice, and a bricklayer had suggested he carry out a colonoscopy, but he was too mean to buy the BS on colonoscopies, so was asking everyone on Sickpatient.net what the standard said and whether the warm glow the patient experienced was born of euphoria or was simply heartburn.
Lots of people seemed to be giving the consultant willingly of their time and advice, even though he was then charging me for it, as though it were his own. Some of the advice seemed to come from eminent surgeons (but in brain surgery, rather than below the waist problems), some came from retired medical researchers, who said they thought they remembered a case like this around the time of world war 2, and some very helpful advice came from retired ambulance drivers and first aiders. Some of the advice seemed sound enough (like tell the patient to have a strong talisker and kick the cat after each meeting with a fire officer), while others suggested all sorts of bizarre surgery.
See, the thing is, should I be worried that he appears to be taking advice from all and sundry, about whom he knows nothing, and should he be charging me for this advice, which he had always purported was his own?
I noticed that some postings had long dialogues, in which consultants discussed the private matters of their patients in great detail. I also wondered about that..........
Then I noticed that, as I travel a lot, I had put out to tender a contract for advice on contraceptive arrangements in a number of UK countries. One consultant had told me that it would be very difficult and need a visit to some of the countries in question. However, I had decided to instead appoint a leading family planning organization to give me advice. (It was not the Family Planning Association, but to hide their real identity I am going to call them the the Family Planning Authority. They told me they could get the advice for me from their sister Family Planning Authorities in other countries, no problem. Imagine my outrage when I read on Sickpatient.net a posting from one of their consultants asking for help from all and sundry with ....... well I think you can guess. Turns out the guy had placed various postings on medical problems that the Authority were contracted to advise upon (without the knowledge of his management I suspect).
Well, worried about all of this I dug deeper into what Sickpatient.net was all about. It turns out it was the brianchild of a retired doctor, Simpson Collins, a real gem of a man, who had devoted a large chunk of his private time to making the site when he worked in the NHS to try to help medical people with information, etc. As the site grew, a benevolent consultant in private practice, full of amiration for Dr Collins, had paid out his own pocket for Dr Simpsons own server when the Doc's site became too big for the ISP.
In fairness, the site is still used by many NHS wallahs, some of whom need the help as they have never driven ambulances or been to RTCs, while some use the site as a form of anger management, venting their irritation with the private medical sector, all of which was within the vision of Dr Simpson (and his anonymous benefactor). However, it is also now apparently used a lot by private consutlants, who see patients and then, as I have said, ask everyone to make their diagnoses for them and virtually write the private prescription.
Of course, medics need to help each other to help the sick, but the advice I wanted was should I be concerned that this consultant I visit keeps telling all his pals in cyberspace about my medical problems in the hope that someone, the qualifications of whom he knows very little, might do his job so he can charge me lots of my hard earned and sparse earnings?
