‘The hoops we need to jump through to access NHS accounts are baffling’

• EMERITUS Professor Wendy Savage rightly highlights the increasing dangers of digitisation, automated menus and difficulties in managing to speak to “real people” when dealing with various NHS facilities (Blood tests and inequal­ities, February 1) – here are some further examples and consequences.

First, with the moves into automation, millions are being excluded from that NHS access, for they lack internet access and indeed telephone services.

Let us not pretend that those millions can gain access through library and community centres. Over the decade, many have been closed because of radical cuts in council funding and, in any case, remember, some people, through poverty or disablement, lack easy access to those still available.

Secondly, even if with the internet, the hoops we need to jump through to access NHS accounts are baffling. And I write as someone well familiar with internet use.

How to set up the NHS login needs, bizarrely, not merely basic identity informa­tion, but also uploading of relevant passport page or similar. Now, how do people cope who lack such identity paperwork? Incidentally, how many will be unable to exercise the right to vote because they lack required ID papers and are unsure how to acquire them.

Thirdly, even if you have the relevant passport or ID, you may find it difficult to work out how to photograph it and upload it such that it is sufficiently clear for the automated assessment.

Fourthly, having achieved all that, wow, success, you can now log into the NHS? Oh dear, no. You need now to have the computer/phone facility and talent to take a photograph of yourself (via the laptop/phone’s app) that fits a pre-defined oval so that the automated system can then compare with the uploaded ID photograph.

In the end – and putting to one side whether the automation has any kinship with the disasters of Fujitsu’s Post Office Horizon – no doubt these new access facilities are fine for those of us with the wherewithal but, to return to Professor Savage’s point, millions of people are being excluded across the country from such access, and that adds to the vast unjustified inequalities with regard health and longevity.

As a footnote, I add how odd – even obscene – it is that many politicians and commentators have understandably welcomed the early detection and immediate treatment of King Charles’ cancer, yet have been silent on how millions of “ordinary” folk suffer long waits for detection and longer waits for treatment. Indeed, sometimes, so long that an early and painful demise is inevitable.

As ever, let’s not fall for the myth that everyone’s health counts as equally important.

PETER CAVE, W1