Wtf is going on with the nhs, is this the new normal?

[letdownchristmas]

I was in A+E with a relative yesterday with a suspected pulmonary embolism (has a history of this ) although luckily turned out to be all clear. We got there by ambulance at 3pm yesterday and was on a trolley in the corridor until 9pm. There were 15 people in the corridor on trollies with ambulance crews waiting to be handed over. All I could think was how the fuck are there any ambulance crews left on the road when they are all waiting in here to hand patients over. I was told that that this is a fairly normal day now. On the electronic board I could see that there was a 42 hour wait for an inpatient bed and only 56% of people met the four hour target. A 7 hour wait to be seen for walk ins. It honestly frightened me as to how the nhs is going to survive another winter.

And part of the reason we have less taxpayers is the number of people unable to work because they are waiting for NHS treatment or operations. I am in my late fifties and have a friend unable to work because she is waiting for an operation.

Disagree. I worked in AE from late 80s for 10 years In Brighton. We definitely did not have these waiting times and generally the department was pretty empty by 1-2am in the morning. When I worked on a ward in the 00s it was rare for a patient to breach the 4hr arrival in AE to a bed on the ward .

I too disagree with you.
Our children when a lot younger, one of them suffered from severe bouts of asthma and we were often in A&E. The waiting times were often around 4 hours

I guess it depends on where you live

I know three in their 50s in same position
I also saw first hand the hours of waiting in ambulance queues recently too.

I remember going to A and E under labour with a sprained ankle, query broken. I was seen within 10 minutes, quick x ray and sent home with crutches. Another time under Labour taken in by ambulance, saw a Dr almost straight away, and admitted to the ward within half an hour. Nowdays I would be in an ambulance outside the hospital for hours.

The biggest increase in the percentage of A&E attendances waiting longer than four hours was seen in England, where the percentage of attendances waiting longer than four hours in A&E increased from 8.1% in January 2013, to 42.4% in September 2023.

I can't argue about A&E waiting times because I'm not sure if like is being compared.

https://rcem.ac.uk/rcem-stands-by-concerns-over-welsh-ae-waiting-time-data/

The confirmation comes after the Welsh Health Minister issued a statement rebutting RCEM’s concerns.
Data obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, and shared with BBC Wales, shows that the true length of A&E waiting times for more than 45,000 patients in Wales for the first six months of this year (2023) were not reflected in official monthly figures.
The discrepancy is caused by a policy introduced in 2011 which allows for the length of time patients whose waits in A&E will exceed the four-hour target to be excluded from the data if they are expected to complete their treatment within the Emergency Department.
These so-called ‘breach’ or ‘clinical’ exemptions mean that the length of waits faced by tens of thousands of people are not represented in the official published data. They are referred to by clinicians as ‘stop the clock’.
When you look over the longer term, from January 2012 to June this year, more than 670,000 patients were not included in published figures – 23% of the total.

One minute Welsh minter are boasting about their better A&E times next minute its' all comparing apples and pears as Wales isn't including all the numbers and then next I'm hearing the exiting Welsh first minister interviewed saying wales haven't met for over 20 years entire time of deviation any of the A&E waiting guidelines and blaming drunks.

I don't think it's worse than England but won't say it's better from personal experience.

The NHS was not perfect back then. To be frank it will never be perfect, no healthcare system is. But I felt confident that if needed I and my loved ones would get the treatment we need. Now I am no longer confident.

This is terrible. People unable to work because they are waiting for treatment or operations, sometimes for years.
This is why a good healthcare system is essential for a good economy. The two are intertwined. The more sick people you have, the more our economy suffers.

I think there's a lot different factors
The nhs was set up for fewer people...with shorter life expectancy ...who died from things that are more treatable now
Even in my own adult lifetime the cancer stats have gone from one in 3 people getting cancer to one in 2. I'm pretty sure survival rates are much better but it means a lot more people needing treatment.
Living longer and successful treatment means more demand on a service that potentially can't keep up.
Even if new hospitals were built you can't magic up Dr's nurses HCPs and everyone else needed to staff them (which was seen with the Nightingale hospitals) especially if they can be paid better wages elsewhere.

Regarding missed appointments I'm sure there is a percentage of people who miss/cba to go to their appointments, there's also a decent amount of missed appointments due to the appointment system being inefficient. I called (with plenty of notice) to change or cancel 2 or 3 appointments when DD was having some treatment. Every time we were given a lecture by both the receptionist and the Dr for missing the previous apt. We would be included in their "no show" numbers when I followed their own instructions of what to do when you couldn't attend!

Add to that letters that arrive after the apt or on the day, letters that don't arrive at all, appointments cancelled with No notice until the day, people who wait x hours after their appointment time without being seen and then have to leave for other commitments....

The NHS was set up after the second world war when you had many soldiers returning from the trenches with major injuries and many civilians with long standing health complaints they could not afford to get treated privately.
My father was born before the NHS and my grandmother told me when the NHS was created how they all rushed to NHS Drs to get things treated they had just tried to manage with. This was after the war when the country was virtually bankrupt.
Please do not try and pretend just after the second world war was an easy time to have an NHS. It really was not. My own father as an infant was hospitalised for 3 months with dysentery, and serious infectious diseases were still common.
It is true that the type of treatments the NHS gives has changed over the years, but when it was created many small children and infants were still commonly hospitalised for long periods of time for diseases that these days are extremely rare.

And the letters arriving late is often because the Royal Mail is also fucked up. But the Tories sold that off. We only seem to get letters delivered to our street about two or three times a week.

Labour do better in some areas of healthcare than the UK, also, both countries measure things different, 1st hand experience of the NHS in wales showed me its not vastly different from England, it also has huge rural areas which bring about their own particular problems with community care.

Wales is also not a separate country, it is forced to adopt measures on healthcare, training and immigration that a truly independent country could do differently.

The NHS are dealing and managing far more complex needs now as medical science has advanced so much

What the NHS provides now just isn’t comparable to what the service was set up to provide

Yes the NHS does not do what it was set up to provide e.g. treating many soldiers after the second world war with major health issues, hospitalising many infants for many months because of now rare infectious diseases, dealing with untreated health complaints people could not afford to be treated before the NHS.

The NHS is actually chronically under managed for an organisation its size. That's part of the issue. Less than 3% of its workforce are managerial. It means that the clinical staff are pulled in to do managerial work instead of clinical work, and there are not enough clinical staff as it is.

Claire Raynor talks in her autobiography about nursing in and NHS hospital for weeks a young man who was very ill with an infection. It looked like he was going to die. A consultant got hold of this new drug called an antibiotic and it was a miracle drug that restored his health.
These days he would have just visited his GP and pharmacy. No need for a hospital bed at all.

Snap! I seem to get a wad of mail through twice a week! And they say privatisation works 🤦‍♀️ same with the water companies. 40 years of privatisation is going so well. I could link the fact we will need an extra 50 million gallons of water in the next ten/twenty years that private water companies have not afforded for despite our bills going up.....

"Too many 'managers' sat on Teams talking about pronouns and diversity etc. "

You been reading right wing scaremongering sites? Are the NHS going to cancel Christmas this year as well?

Whilst very true, how come many other european countries have 3 or 4 times as many beds/nurses/scanners/wards than the UK ?

We all face the same challenges but healthcare funding, whilst different in other countries (though all are mainly tax payer funded) has been historically higher in Europe than in the UK.

Bottom line is if you underfund the NHS by 2 or 4% per year over 50 years, it all adds up to a very poor service in comparison.

I also think we just don't do public health as we should & our attitude to exercise is terrible.

These days he would have just visited his GP and pharmacy. No need for a hospital bed at all.

if he could get a gp appointment or even get through to the surgery at all

But yes in principle it's a big improvement.

It doesn't help that GP surgeries don't seem to have any rota for working BH's. Our local surgery is closed until Next Tuesday. If the hospitals and care homes can work out a rota for staffing why can't the GP's work and surgery nurses?
I've worked my share of BH's before anyone has a moan. It just seems so old fashioned.
I tried to get an appointment as my asthma was really flaring up with a chesty cough, but they just said I would have to call 111 if it gets worse as no appointments for 2 weeks.

Why are there still so many screenings - bowel, breast, cervical? What's the point if anything is found on those tests, there won't be any treatment when it would actually count?

I've had this conversation with several people recently. I thought they were wrong but I'm not convinced that they are.

Whilst very true, how come many other european countries have 3 or 4 times as many beds/nurses/scanners/wards than the UK ?

Because their figures include all the privately provided/contracted services. If you included private provision in the UK, you will probably get a similar figure.

I agree with you Alexandra2001 personal responsibility for our own health is something they absolutely needs to be encouraged

but what you get is a backlash of it’s too expensive, it’s to time consuming and a number of other excuses made

but we have to

I think everyone who works in the NHS is well aware of how much time is wasted having pointless meetings even if they are not involved in the meetings it’s not right wing conspiracy it’s cultural to the NHS.

Every one keeps talking about old people living longer with conditions , but lets not forget we have so many more premature babies that survive too . Vaccinations that we never had before . More children are surviving infections than ever before . Children's medicine has really come a long way .