I have no idea if Jessica Lawrence, who is suing the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery to have her medical records altered, is "hysterical", "depressed" and suffering from "psychological problems", as the medical records put it. For all I know, this 39-year-old "girl" - another label applied in her records - could be a nutter, to use the technical term favoured by we non-medics. But her case matters to all of us, irrespective of her mental capacity. She is a victim of the insouciant medical arrogance which is endemic in a health service which views patients as annoying disruptions to the smooth running of officialdom"s days.
Ms Lawrence, who has symptoms which resemble a stroke, has served a Data Subject Notice on the hospital, after first having to force it to hand over her records under the Data Protection Act. She is adamant that her records are simply wrong, and that they make it almost impossible for her to get appropriate treatment.
Whether or not they are the correct diagnosis is not the point. The hospital couldn"t care less. Its response is classic: "We are sorry that Ms Lawrence is unhappy with the information in her medical notes, but . . . hospitals have a policy not to alter medical records." Well that"s OK then. They have "a policy". It might be the wrong policy. It might mean treating patients with contempt. But, heh, it"s "a policy". And as such, it is utterly typical of the NHS"s attitude to its customers - a patient is just a patient (if only they wouldn"t get in the way of the efficient operation of the consultant"s research), a policy - well, just that, a policy. No matter that it might destroy your life; no matter that it operates against your interests; no matter that it embodies a complete disregard for the rights of you, the patient and the NHS"s wagepayer - it"s a policy, OK?
Imagine if your accountant sent you a tax return which included a few incidental expenses which werenot in fact yours. Or if your lawyer went to court on your behalf with a case which included snippets of evidence entirely unrelated to your case. "My client, your honour, was, as you see, only employed by, er, the CarDrive company for a period of fewer than . . ." "I"ve never worked for the CarDrive company - and this is a case about my dead father"s probate." "Right, right . . . so that"s wrong. But we have a policy of not changing anything, you see?"
There is, of course, one critical difference. I pay my accountant and my solicitor directly. They provide a service to me, the customer. If I don"t like what I receive, I can take my business elsewhere. The only choice I am given over the NHS is to pay my taxes or go to prison.
The NHS is, in theory, owned by all of us. But as we long ago learnt with other nationalised industries, the larger the theoretical pool of owners, the smaller the influence they exercise. The NHS - which is, of course, neither national (vast swaths of the country are forced to put up with second and third-class treatment), healthy (hospitals are now the biggest source of disease, killing more than 5,000 people a year through infection), or a service (when was the last time any contact you had with the NHS was designed to suit you, rather than the bureaucracy?) - is no different.
By 2007, if the Chancellor carries on throwing money at the NHS at the rate suggested by the Wanless report, the NHS budget will account for a third of 1 per cent of the entire planet"s GDP. It is, by a country mile, the largest such enterprise in the world. But Mr Brown could spend double what he is planning, or even treble, and it wouldn"t make the least bit of a difference to its culture. Despite the Health Secretary Alan Milburn"s talk of allowing local communities and patients to "own" the NHS, despite Treasury talk of saving the health service "for the nation", taxpayers, consumers, patients - call them what you will - aren"t even allowed automatically to see their own medical records, let alone to correct them, or even (whisper it) own them.

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