Think I've just seen the longest a&e wait time ever

We were there 26 hours once. Next time 23. Next time 15. These were about 18 months ago. Thankfully went recently and it was 4 which felt very quick!

Normal here. I ended up discharging myself after twelve hours as I had to go home by public transport and it was about to shut down for the night. Sitting upright on a hard bucket chair, in a windowless, stifling, airless room, surrounded by very sick people, with not a single member of staff on duty in that room, no system on view telling you where you are in the waiting list, so unable to access healthy food or water, when in crippling pain didn;t seem like the best way to get better.

NHS A&E is a disgrace. I know they are horrifically understaffed, but our local hospital set up seems like intentional punishment for people who dare to get acute symptoms. Why design a waiting room for very sick people which is entirely internal - no daylight, no air circulation, no reception staff, nowhere to lie down if faint or in agony, when you know they will be stuck there for at least 12 hours?

It’s awful isn’t it? Whether it’s the “longest” or not.

They don’t even have comfortable places to sit whilst you wait, especially not in children’s A and E.

If they had decent reclinable chairs to sit in during your wait it would be something.

At our hospital, they have some of these in the adult an and e waiting room (not enough) but the chairs in children’s an and e are the most uncomfortable imaginable. I get why they don’t - parents of little kids leaving them unsupervised whilst they have a little snooze would be a disaster - but if you’re there for the long term, both the patient (especially if a teen!) and accompanying parent could do with a comfortable place to sit.

It is better for some individuals, that is what I am referring to and you know it. I have not advocated for a US system. I have told you what I want.

I have only had good experiences too. If you go to A&E you are seen on clinical need and unfortunately far too many people go when they really shouldn’t. I also used to work in A&E or ED as it is now called.

But the alternative to the NHS as is doesn't have to be an American style system - it can be whatever the public vote for. Id be perfectly happy with several of the systems used in Europe. Im not sure refusing to have the discussion will work much longer. The reality is we are going to have to pay more, better to ensure the result of those payments is a better service.

@DrBlackbirdthankfully nobody would be getting arrested for debt here that would be a civil case. Our systems aren’t the same as the U.S.

However, I do have to ask, if that lady intended to pay her bill… why did she not do so within 9 months?

I honestly don’t know how anyone can still maintain the NHS is ok. It’s just not. The failings are directly causing misery, worry, injuries, compounding disease and deaths.

The US system isn’t great but honestly I think in a decade we will be worse in terms of outcomes overall.

There are other alternative systems.

Someone said earlier in the thread ‘but who can be trusted to fix it?’, and it’s just one more variation on the theme of ‘nothing can be done, oh well’ - but that’s actually just not true. It might be hard but clearly it’s not impossible. I don’t get it.

And then the people whose response to anyone who goes to A&E or wants to see a doctor on the day they fall unwell is invariably to tell them they’re hysterical and should go to a pharmacy regardless of what the problem is, it just makes no sense. Or take the fact that someone left out of sheer despair after 16 hours of sitting in a hard chair without treatment as proof positive they were fine all along…surely people can see how that doesn’t quite stack up?

I think it’s genuinely horrible and very worrying the lack of empathy and acknowledgement of reality a lot of people seem capable of.

Dd had a pulmonary embolism diagnosed at our hospital after waiting 2hrs (no A&E) so they made her drive 30mins to another hospital. She handed over all the paperwork, d-dimer off charts etc, waited 18hrs and was sent home with costochondritis! Next morning blue lighted back in when they finally did a CT rather than an x-ray and found it - they said because she could walk they thought it couldn't be that bad!

I am now never surprised that so many people have health anxiety.

This argument doesn’t make sense. What it’s saying is that the NHS needs more money - that’s all paid systems would provide. But they would also exclude people and make people delay seeking help. Better would be to just fund the NHS better. If we need to increase tax for that, it’s no different to paying for the service direct, it’s just shared out more fairly. But I expect someone will be along in a minute to say poor people, or people with health issues requiring frequent treatment, don’t deserve care as that seems to be the way this country is going unfortunately.

I went to A and E recently as gp was worried I had an inflamed gallbladder. The place was packed with people who were quite obviously not that ill. Think going up to reception asking if they had time for a smoke, playing music on their phone type.

When I was seen and assessed the doctor just gave me the medication. I asked how to pay and he said you can't at the moment, something to do with the hospital pharmacy...anyway it transpires that a lot of the patients use A and E for that sole reason...so they don't have to pay for their prescriptions. No wonder the NHS is buggered.

Part of the issue is that the people who do want to make NHS better have differing views on how to do it, with others saying throwing money at it won't help.

At this rate we already have a 2 tier system with more people paying for health insurance and private care than ever before. I would have expected that to have helped the NHS, taking waiting lists down (which apparently has just happened under Labour) but it isn't enough to stop the fear that non-preventative healthcare isn't working in this format. It's all very well discussing lifestyle changes and diet with people, but if they can't even do a CT scan when someone presents with all the paperwork and clear signs of an embolism, you are not going to have a system people trust. This is just from our family but I know most families have similar stories. I think most people want the NHS but many don't believe it gives as good service as they could get elsewhere.

Actually, the average wait time waiting in an ER for the USA is 2 hours and 42 minutes. Most of that is in the big cities that are overwhelmed in their ERs.

I've never had to wait more than 30-45 minutes and usually get taken right in. But then, I usuallly am pretty bad off when I get there. I mean, those paper cuts HURT! (/s)

Totally agree, it's so frustrating when any discussion about how the NHS can be improved is met with resistance for fear of ending up with a US system. There's an awful lot of in between all over Europe and I'd be more than happy to pay a fee in return for an improved service as it's clearly not working at the moment for so many people

Or make arrangements to pay over time. Something, anything. Doctors have to take their patients to court and if they don't show up when they are summoned, they can be arrested.

Doctors have overhead, staff, equipment, medicines, disposables, taxes, social security for staff, workman's comp, rent, utilities and on and on. If people don't pay their bills, he can't pay his bills.

Can you not see a pharmacist as they are able to give antibiotics for a simple UTI under pharmacy first.

What was he supposed to do? Write off a few hundred thousand in payments? Not pay his rent, his utilities, his equipment charges, taxes, workman's comp, social security and all the other costs for his practice?

Did the NYT tell the whole story or did they leave out the important facts so they could turn it where they wanted?

I doubt the doctor had them arrested. They probably did not show up for court so a warrant was issued. They also seem to not have tried to arrange a payment schedule, because if you pay something, anything, that shows you are trying, there isn't much that can be done to punish you.

Why didn't the lady pay her bill or arrange a payment?

Same here. The only time I've had to wait more than a couple of hours was when I'd broken my wrist slipping on an icy, snowy pavement. A&E was absolutely full of people who'd done similar. I had to wait around 4-5 hours to be seen.

Even then, if it had been a straightforward fracture it could have been sorted at my local minor injuries, but it was a Colles fracture so had to be manipulated back into place before it was plastered.

They'd plastered so many fractures at A&E that day that they came very close to running out of plaster.

It took 10 hours for the ambulance to arrive for my 93yr old DF after a fall. It was fortunate that he had been to the toilet 30 minutes prior. He was all night face down on the floor. We could not pick him up because we knew something was broken. After about 7 hours we managed to get the urgency escalated because he had hit his head (damn I had not known to say that when I first called the ambulance and the bruise did not show up immediately). It was then about 6 hours in A and E.

I have nothing but praise for the ambulance staff and nursing staff once he got his hospital bed. It was just that there was an overwhelming number of other people also waiting. It is grim.

Agree, but that is a part of the massive population growth we've seen, so I consider that to be included in my comment.
But I take you're point re: the elderly being particularly high needs with regards to health care. The cynic in me thinks this is part of the obsession there seems to be to bring in assisted dying at the moment.

The problem is this isn't an A and E issue, it is a hospital and social care problem.

My partner and I have had several fragile elderly grandparents that spent years on the unstable ground of being able to cope at home when well, sometimes being unwell and needing hospital treatment but then needing respite care before being able to go back home. We have seen how the mismatch in timings has a huge knock on effect on time in A&E.

This is some years ago now but one relative spent and entire week in A&E, too unwell to go home, hospital wards that could have taken her were closed due to D&V, she started as too unwell to go into a care home but after 2 days was starting to improve enough to be transferred but, someone had mixed her up with a different patient and put that she was violent in her notes so none of the care homes would accept her. Once this was rectified she was moved 1 day later. The week in A&E exacerbated her dementia and tipped her into needing full time care so she then didn't go home which was probably a blessing in the fullness of time but there were also physical consequences of spending a week on a trolley, trying to sleep without pillows and lacking adequate nutrition because it's only meant to be a place you stay for a hours not days.

My sister had a heart attack last year. She begrudgingly went to A&E as she was fairly confident it was just a panic attack and was wasting everyone's time. She was in A&E for 6h before they diagnosed the heart attack and it was another 24h before they could find her a bed on a ward. It was a further 24h before they could move her to the cardiology ward she needed to be on.

If you flip the situation on its head, she was blocking a bed in A & E for 24h because she couldn't be moved on to the wards. During which time other would be waiting longer to go from triage to cubicle. People going to A&E unnecessarily may well slow down triage but I think they are often used as a convenient scape goat for the bigger problem and that is, there moving people that need treatment to the appropriate place for them to get treatment.

Mine is hereditary. If I go to A&E. They make me wait for at least 12 hours then refer me back to gp. Gp refers me back rinse and repeat.

Yes, normal. Worse if it's the weekend when you have the idiots who drink or do drugs and get priority over everyone else because of triaging scores

I got bit by a Clegg a while back , my arm trebled in size, was red and hot.

Nick or Miriam?

Told elderly father to go to A&E recently…. Sudden swelling of his nether regions. He had to wait 4 hours but was seen, given antibiotics and came home in a positive state of mind, waxing lyrical about the wonderful staff who were doing a brilliant job and remaining cheerful.