Will the fact that your columnist Shirley Mathias has experienced some of the mismanagement of the local National Health Service help improve the lot of all local people (Advertiser, 18 October)? Her graphic description of what she saw and went through while under the care of the Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust certainly set out a clear case to answer by local health bosses.
The trouble is that many NHS boards seem to have not the slightest conception of responsibility and accountability. They shrug their shoulders, and very often blame somebody else (doctors, patients, the Government, now seemingly the weather). They carry on collecting their fat fees.
In other parts of the local NHS large sums of money are expended on re-employing redundant high-paid bureaucrats on large consultancy fees, while at the same time expert practitioners in fields such as mental health are put on the scrapheap. The waste goes on.
Those in charge seem to continue to remain immune from any criticism or accountability. When will this stop, and credible people be placed at the head of NHS organisations? The present bunches of the great and good show that they are fit for one thing.
Institutionalised buckpassing.
Geraint Day
Former chairman of Swindon and District Community Health Council
Southampton Street
Swindon
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