Can we rely on the nhs anymore?

[Nc4post99]

I was reading a thread about a poor lady who’s been diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer, she’d been fobbed off with something for a long time before her diagnosis, got diagnosed in May and still nothing has been done.

there was another thread about a woman’s sister a while ago who was deathly ill losing weight and not taken seriously, i think in the end it was late stage cancer.

I was reading that our healthcare system is one of the worst now in developed nations. It’s such a sorry state of affairs. And 40k excess deaths last year. The GPs at my surgery have all lost their licences to ‘gross malpractice’ for sitting on referrals, refusing appointments. I know they are probably an outlier but all in all it’s just a really concerning picture

Then there is social care, with an older mother and a parent myself I find these things on my mind. I’m quite worried about what the future brings, things being missed, misdiagnosed, waiting lists. I’m genuinely worried one of us gets ill, needs the health service and it’s just not there the way it needs to be.

OP you are aware that while the GP surgery receives NHS funding, it is a private business, much like a private hospital.

We’ve had positive experiences with the NHS and we’re a tricky family, I have a chronic life long condition, two of us have life threatening allergies, one of us has a physical disability and another is likely going to be diagnosed with cerebal palsy.

My husband has recently had two hospital stays due to a burn that required surgery, care was good, he was appropriately provided for regarding his disability, food was obviously shit, but that can be easily fixed. A few months ago I had a lump that needed investigating, from calling the GP to my referral appointment was five working days, it was a further 7 working days for all tests to be complete and for all results to be in and shared with me.

The blame lies with people who kept voting Tory because they wanted to pay less tax. The blame lies with people who voted for Brexit when many of our doctors came from the EU. The issue is that the people who didn't vote for this shower of shit suffer as much as those who did.

The thing is there is no magic trick where you can pay virtually nothing in tax and have great public services and wonderful social care. Those that tried to kid you of this have private healthcare and send their children to public schools. We all end up worse off in the end. It's like the farce that is privatisation. We were lied to told that it would result in better services as greater private investment. Where has this led us? We've paid much more in bills which has just been funnelled into shareholders' pockets. There is still crumbling infrastructure and we will now have to bail out the companies that have gone bust. Thank you Margaret Thatcher. Good work.

i don’t think it made the national news definitely made the local news. There are about 10,000 patients at this practice and we all get a secure letter saying the impact to us, ie GPS wouldn’t be practicing there anymore, not to call up for more info etc,

If you look at this from another angle and you think about how corrupt our government is right now. Maybe they aren’t interested in making people better. It’s a case of survival of the fittest….

I had a consultant appointment recently. I was in on time, had bloods done. In and out in 40 minutes. Great service. Letter for my next appointment was in the post 2 days later. The consultant himself knows his stuff despite his social skills needing a polish. The nursing staff couldn't have been lovelier.
I'm not daft enough to think great service happens all the time but I'd like to think it's happening often.

I went to A&E on Saturday night in severe pain and had to wait 4.5 hours until I was finally given morphine to relieve the pain - I was ‘lucky’ to only wait 4.5 hours. Then I was told I would be admitted, a while later a consultant sent me home as there were no ultrasound slots on Sunday, I was told to return the next day. I was then admitted again - in 50 hours I had four beds as there was no space on the wards. When I finally got to the ward they weren’t expecting me which led to staff arguing and a nurse crying while another shouted at her on the phone.

Then I was discharged despite the dr stating he needed to check my bilirubin levels again and without any pain relief. So this morning I’ve had to make a request via my GP.
The staff were doing their best but the whole system is broken and we are all suffering.

Exactly.. one nurse I think she was walked past first with a disgusted look on her face and said get up you can't sit there and sitting won't make you feel better. It was only when someone else spotted him and went to get the nurses that they came over and was telling him to stand up he kept saying he can't but they just kept repeating he needs to get up. They also made a comment under their breathe "oh right infront of children's emergency ward, lovely". The hospital staff are like robots it's such a weird place to be.

Wondered how long it would be before someone brought up brexit lol.

As if the Nhs was amazing upto 5 years ago.

And I’m just wondering how low taxed you are, because I’m certainly not. I’m taxed on income, spending, savings, fuel, travel, water, etc etc. They just haven’t figured out how to tax Air yet, so I suppose I have that.

While it's fair to blame the Tories for allowing the NHS to crumble I think it's time we all accepted that the free to all NHS can't carry on in the same way, it's just not a model that works anymore.

We have a larger population, people live longer, lives are saved but that means more babies and adults survive but with long term health conditions etc and the free healthcare for all model is impossible. Not forgetting that we now (rightly) provide many medical procedures that 75 years ago would never have been offered eg fertility treatment

Only by charging for some things can we realistically get some more funding into the system and change the way people use the NHS. It will certainly help with the GP crisis.

Also, Social care is in complete collapse and that really needs addressing too because it has a direct impact on hospitals and GPs with users going to the NHS out of desperation.

My 16 year old was critically ill.in February and honestly I cent fault the care,he had from ringing the paramedics to them stabilising him.enough to.rush him.to hospital and straight through to.resus,and he was in critical care within an hour
There are big issues in the NHS and long waiting times ,but in my experience at least in a life and death situation they were brilliant.

My son has type 1 diabetes and his treatment has been excellent all the way through.

However in the last 12 months we have paid privately for chiropody for both children, and carpal tunnel surgery for myself, because the NHS wasn't able to help us in any sort of reasonable time frame. It's cost us a fortune.

I have lived in a country where you have to pay for medical treatment (proof of funds before you get past reception).

Try it..... then comment on the NHS

This. I've been in an UTC with a child with a broken foot who wasn't triaged for 5 hours and when I had the audacity to complain the nurse refused to treat him and sent him away, so he had another hours long wait in another UTC in the small hours. I've been called at twenty past midnight while I was sleeping, by a nurse asking if my hospitalised mum had a downstairs loo or a stairlift, certainly not to send her home as she's still there and this was 2 months ago. I've waited with my mum before that, while her appointment time for a routine procedure was missed by 4 hours, and again when I complained as I had to get to work was told, by a nurse with her hands on her hips, that it'd be OK as I probably wouldn't lose my whole nights wages, I might make the last hour. I'm a single mum and this was just before Xmas.

It's like they have no basic compassion or clue how to treat people like human beings anymore. COVID was just ridiculous, highly trained highly paid professional people refusing to do what they are highly trained and highly paid to do. I've also just had to spend my entire post divorce house deposit on private surgery to keep me out of a wheelchair as the NHS refuse to treat the chronic progressive genetic disease I suffer from, and my life is made much harder as they also refuse to fund ADHD meds for adults where I live. Both of these are impacting my financial security and quality of life. The only saving grace was that I may inherit my mums house one day so I would have somewhere to live in old age, but no, I've just been told that that, along with all it's contents now has to be sold to pay for my mum's care, despite her paying taxes all her life and still paying taxes on her pension. I agree with previous posters who say the sooner the whole thing is disbanded and the staff all sacked the better tbh!

@TheSnootiestFox if the staff are all “sacked” who is going to provide your healthcare? Do you really think the UK has an army of doctors/nurses/etc just sitting around doing nothing? Either that, or you must think that having no healthcare available at all would be better-which borders on the insane, tbh.

Well, the decent ones that want to be there could then be reappointed to their jobs and the not so decent ones could part ways with the NHS without costing a fortune in pay-offs. It's not actually rocket science.

Whateva UTC?
A broken foot whilst painful.is not an emergency when my 16 year collapsed in Diabetic ketoacidosis,which is a life-threatening condition in February he wss in in critical care within an hour,
Im.not for one minute suggesting the NHS, doesn't have many faults but they do.have to prioritize patients .

I'd like to see an AIBU vote on this.

I.e. to say the NHS has been run into the ground

What's a*

NHS not fit for purpose. The nurses arent all angels and some are as rude as fxxk. Late DF was treated appalling and the attitude of especailly the younger junior doctors made me wondeer why they even started their career in medicine.

The waste is criminal and as soon as anyone starts a conversation about co payments all the unsual suspects come out and say some people dont have 50p to their names and wouldnt go if they needed to pay so we muddle on and its a dangerous set up.

Spain and France have perfectly good systems but I truly think its because its free to some people (yes, some have paid in but others havent) that it gets used and abused. A friend is a parmedic and she says the shift is often going out to very old people who are horribly confused or people who have had too much to drink and are feeling unwell!

An urgent treatment centre. Google is a marvellous thing. And a broken foot could well be an emergency if the bone had been placed so it was cutting of the bloody supply leading to him losing his foot. But as he was never triaged, noone would have known if this was happening.

But its not an either/or. There are other systems. In fact right now, I would be better off in a system where I had to pay something but the healthcare provision was subsidised by the government. There would be some sort of price controls. Right now, i use private healthcare and am dependent on my employer/health insurance and there doesn't seem to be much regulation.

I follow the lady's thread who is really sick with pancreatic cancer.

She was diagnosed around 4 weeks ago I believe and from what I can gather, she's only just had a biopsy. I just can't understand why she hasn't been able to have surgery or chemo or just something two weeks ago when she was stronger.

I don't know anything about the health care system as luckily I've not needed to have first hand experience, but surely they can be doing something! She had her MDT meeting two weeks ago and I don't think she's had any treatment at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong obviously

The once top of the world NHS has become a laughing stock with so many GPs refusing to see patients face-to-face, various medics and orderlies on never-ending strike demanding even more money, transgender medics refusing to treat any patient who will only see a bio male or female ... even those patients who are senile etc. who can't make their own mind up any more are being removed from hospital/care/treatment because the trans medics think they have the right to pick and choose which patients they treat....and I'm NOT against trans people, I actually support the LGBTQ+ community, ... but their chosen gender shouldn't affect how/which patients they treat!

Certainly not all, but definitely some medics etc. have become exceedingly greedy and selfish.

The rest of the medical people are doing a brilliant job working extremely hard trying to keep the NHS going, thank you!

There is no doubt the NHS is in an appalling state.

The problem is nobody likes the solutions

• pay more tax aka a public health insurance system (but we already have a CoL crisis)
• part self fund so we pay a fixed fee or % for each visit (but that’s regressive and will put people off getting medical treatment)
• cut back drastically what the NHS offers, nothing expensive or cutting edge (but then you lose the best drs), nothing “inessential” (but who decides what’s inessential)

Any other solutions welcome!

I actually think she was diagnosed a bit longer ago which makes it all the more outrageous. I’m right there with you though, I don’t understand why she hasn’t had treatment, it comes across as ‘oh well your prognosis might not be great, so why bother, kick the can down the road, let whatever happen’ but the point is regardless of cure she’s been left to suffer and there is another thread by a woman who’s father has brain cancer and he’s been left in a terrible condition and she’s been fighting with the incontinence team. It’s just horrendous