To think the NHS is bloody wonderful and that we're very, very lucky?

[ScaredyDog]

I know everyone will have had a bad experience (I know I have) but generally, I think we're so lucky.

I've been to one hospital today as an emergency and been referred elsewhere. I don't have to pay to see a doctor, the staff have been absolutely lovely (which I hope they will also be at the other hospital) and I was seen immediately. We even had a laugh about my ridiculously sized elephant foot :)

I know prescriptions can seem expensive, but really, that's the only bit we pay for upfront so to speak (and most people don't pay for their prescriptions, I'm told).

Hoping for another good experience at the next hospital anyway :) Yay for HCPs and the NHS.

Do people realise that the NHS cost more than £2,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. So, for taxpayers, maybe an average of £4-5,000/taxpayer. And, for those in higher earnings, maybe they pay £10-15k PER ANNUM for the NHS.

So, without mentioning my personal circumstance, I was more that right when I said that what my family has got out of the health service is less than 10% what I have contributed.

I am not selfish and am happy to subsidise others in a socialist system but the NHS abuses its power in so many ways, from spending £350mio on management consultants to overpromoting nurses into 6 figure management jobs and, even more importantly, taking a high handed attitude to its customers, especially the old and vulnerable.

Far better, some form of co payments, where the wealthy pay more but people do at least feel they are paying and those in the health service feel that they owe a service to those doing the paying, rather than a faceless "government".

I still very much doubt that. You're vastly underestimating what the services you have been provided with costs. Unless you haven't had NHS births, seen your GP, got presecriptions, had any operations at all.......
Also you are misrepresenting individual costings and payment. Your taxes go into a far bigger pot than just the NHS.

YANBU. And we don't even pay for perscriptions! £7.40 or whatever it is is nothing in comparison to what the drugs actually cost. And where I'm living you have to pay the first £100 of medicine. And your own contraception. And the free stuff is limited.

I have worked in both the NHS and the private sector and I know which one I would choose every time for my own personal care - the NHS every time. TBH i've been quite shocked by the standards I have encountered in private care.

Ha. PMSL at "the NHS abuses its power in so many ways, from spending £350mio on management consultants to overpromoting nurses into 6 figure management jobs" - oddly enough, none of that ever happened before the Tory Government White Paper recommendations that started the NHS Trusts.
Import executives from outside, gain Trust status and boom! Spend a load of money on fancy shmancy new offices and cosmetic effects. Never mind putting the money where it's needed - at care level - oh no, import a whole new level of non-NHS management who have little clue and care less about the NHS's job, which is patient care. All they care about is cutting grass roots spending, while maintaining their own Trust's bank balance.

Yes I am somewhat bitter about it - I worked in one hospital when it gained Trust status and what happened was disgusting - loads of money spent on a new foyer, new offices - while what was needed was new covering on the corridors floor as the old one was getting slippery.

Combining Trusts to "save money" - no. Just introduced a new level of management required in both hospitals, while maintaining a joint executive board. More money spent on admin and finance staff, less spent on care.

Some NHS managers are very good - some have been promoted from within the service and understand it better, some have been brought in from the outside and have brought fresh new ideas that have helped. But some are Very Bad.

You can NOT "blame" the NHS as a whole for mismanagement or power abuse - it's not that kind of entity. Some of the people who work within the service mismanage or abuse their power, and many don't; but it is no bed of roses being an NHS manager. I have a friend who has been told her budget needs to be trimmed by X amount every year - she managed it the first year, just. She managed it the second year by paring everything to the bone - how the fuck was she supposed to manage it a 3rd year? Hospitals have closed over this sort of thing.

A mental hospital near where I used to work closed in the early days of the new regime - an inspector went in and spoke casually to some of the ward staff, asking how many people were needed day to day to run each ward. They said a minimum of 4. So their staffing levels were cut to 4 per ward. No space for annual or sick leave - the hospital closed within a year.

I work in the NHS (I'm a GP) and on the whole I think it is fantastic, despite its severe financial constraints, and serves people who need it very well. I have also worked in private hospitals. My son was 2 months prem and spent all that time in SCBU. He has cost the taxpayer a small fortune with this and several operations and longterm medication. I have had excellent experiences both as a patient and as a relative.

I think one of the best measures of the quality of the NHS is that the VAST majority of doctors and nurses use the NHS as patients themselves rather than going privately. Lets face it, they have the insider knowledge of the NHS which allows them to make this decision in the most informed way possible.

We could easily afford it, but I would never pay for private healthcare insurance in the UK. NHS care is nearly always superior to its private counterparts, assuming you are interested in the medical care you receive and not in the quality of the consultants suit or the carpets in his consulting rooms... [The one exception to this can be the waiting time, but in my area, in most specialities, the NHS wait is the same, or shorter, than the private wait.]

thumbwitch the NHS does not abuse its powers, individuals do. The trusts you speak of became health boards some time ago and clinical governance frameworks in transparent reporting and publishing mean that they can't hide where the money goes and have to justify every penny. hospitals are now fined for not meeting heat targets, patient safety needs, waiting times etc and so the focus of management is very much patient care.
Board papers and published for all to see and contains lists of every item that costs more than £10000.
I don't think that investment in management training is a bad idea. Most of the managers in the NHS were clinicians who had never been formally trained in management!
You wouldn't ask a management consultant to 'perform' surgery without being trained, so why did we expect clinicians to do it?
Yes the NHS has had some very dark rough patches, but the episode you are bitter about is a very distant past!

Oh for the love of God would you read that I was answering Larry Grylls post!

And whilst there are two or three posters bitterly criticising the NHS on this thread, it is clear that no one with experience of other health services are attempting to say that their experiences of care are even close to equitable let alone superior.
Laryg. 2-4000 per yer??? If you added up the cost of every visit, every hospital stay, every medication, vaccine, access to nhs 24, a and e, out of hours, itu stay, antinatal and post natal care, I think you would find that you more than got your monies worth!
In Switzerland the average bill for care of a birth (alone -excluding anti-natal and post natal care) is £40,000 more if you have a section or require any higher level of care

I did read your post. It was difficult to see the positive points you were making for all the bitter criticisms. Maybe you should read it again. It doesn't really defend the nhs, just identifies a horrible period in it's history and some of it's current criticisms

Not that distant past - friend is still an NHS manager. Trained up on the NHS management training scheme from within the NHS.

Anyway - this was a response to Larry Gryll's post specifically - perhaps I should have put his name at the front - because of his ridiculous claim that "the NHS abuses its power". I therefore strongly object to you suggesting I had actually said the same thing, which is what your first line of response did.

There have been a lot of negatives in the management of the NHS. There still are - or it would work better. And no, it's not all the managements' fault, but a lot of it is. And some of it was the various Govt's fault - but it does no harm to remind people that this started with the previous Tory regime, not the Labour.

YABU only in the sense we didn't get it through luck - it was a fight to establish in 1948 and we're fighting to preserve it from back door privatisation now. The Coalition's plans will see the effective end of the NHS we know and love.

Pimsoclock you appear to have missed the posts from those of us living in mainland Europe experiencing far superior healthcare.

Mind you, the artwork in my local hospital is a bit shit.

Then we agree it does not abuse it's power!

As for "there are still a lot of problems with NHS management"
I can not agree. That is a massively sweeping generalisation.
Our local health board have bent over backwards to ensure that they are easily accountable to the public.
All their board papers adverse events reviews are published, they are not in a minority in doing this!
All hospitals hospital standardised mortality ratios are published monthly in national news papers and managers are being held to account.
Managers work more in partnership with the clinicians and the national standards bodies to ensure they are providing the best care possible.
Individuals will always let an organisation down, but we are more lucky than we realise when you actually look at what we receive and what we are entitled to regardless of age class or income

Have a look at In the News 'foreign NHS takeovers'. The comparisons with other European countries have been challenged by Ben Goldacre (Bad Science) and Tim Hartford (More or Less)

Alpine pony
I have re read the posts again and can not see anyone who reside on mainland Europe giving specific examples of why there systems are better for the whole population?
we have a poster who thinks that lower cancer survival rates prove that health care is better (surely you agree that is quite short sited) and someone else who had experience of repatriation costs being covered by the NHS in belgium.
I fail to see how this makes the superior to a system that offers a standard of care based on national and international guidelines and targets free TO ALL at the point of use.

The fact that you think your local hospital is rubbish just only proves that no system is perfect. Fundamental principles are hugely important

even if it is just a criticism of the art work

I do not have experience with the dutch system, but my dh, who is dutch and lived across Europe and who does have intimate relationship with health systems has nothing but praise for the dutch nhs equivalent and the swiss system.

The problem with the NHS is not the principle of "free at the point of care", but its structure and its value for money. Arguments that it has health tourism is just flawed because I do not NHS is inundated by the patients coming from the developed countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands, but I do hear a lot about African countries for example...

Do you really want to compare NHS to what one gets in Uganda and pat yourselves on the back??? Maybe take the better example of German or Scandinavian system, where similar amounts are spent per person and see what similar money buys there and reform the system accordingly?

To PIMS - my consultant told me that the tests that would have shown my infection were not done on me was because it is too expensive to do on everyone. Now that they know that I have streptococcus (my baby died because membranes were infected and she had to be born), they would treat me differently next time (will there be "next time" it is a different story, i have IVF treatments that I pay for myself). Please do not argue with my consultant on my case.

To "Thumb" - My dh had ascending aortic pseudo aneurysm. He also had 5 previous open heart surgeries and had massive scarring issue making access to aorta v difficult. After it was diagnosed by paying privately for MRI, doctors took a few days to decide how to approach it. This is when I had my discussion about the risks and what happens in emergency. The risks of his particular operation were 50% death and risk of further stoke if survived 80%. Luckily he is fine, but we had to go through the private system to get the operation he needed. If he waited for the NHS, he would have to wait for at least additional two weeks. His surgeon was the same as in the NHS btw...

Again, there are a lot of arguments on this thread that I feel do not address the real issue with the NHS and I think they are:
-private care in the UK is not designed to provide emergency treatments, so it really should not be directly compared to the NHS. The private system has no emergency facilities, because the purpose of private is usually to provide more comfortable environment or shorter waiting times, not treat emergencies.
-do we as a nation want the system that we pay for out of our taxes, NI contributions, or some form of direct health system payments, which is universal and free at the point of need? Judging by the consensus, we do, so all the comparisons to US system (for example) are superfluous.
-how does the NHS compare to systems similarly build and financed and can we do something to improve it. I personally think there are other systems that are superior with similar funding.
-chanting "thank God for the NHS" does not help anybody, neither the patients, nor the NHS... actually.

A friend of mine (who likes to be a bit argumentative) loves to point out that the 'middle classes'/earning over min wage working population in the UK love the NHS without realising how an insurance based system like ?most/all mainland EU has would result in them receiving health care that was so much better.
Admittedly the NHS has got so much better at the 'fluff' than it used to be (in response to patient demand)

Hey i've worked for these companies and believe me it makes no economic sense to invest in the level of staff training seen in the NHS. It's all money off the profits. Believe me these are companies in the same vein as microsoft, apple, BP or any big corporation. The bottom line is the shareholders and their dividends.

londonlottie I am with you here. My dh lived in Geneva for 8 years and this is exactly the system he describes. He had a heart surgery there, his two dc were born there, all hi-tech, gleaming, amazing quality of medical care, very good stats and all free at the point of getting it.

good points bemybebe

londonlottie so what is the difference for the Swiss? healthier population, some sectors not treated (homeless etc etc)

my friends point was that for some the service would be worse in an insurance based system

I am in the Netherlands and have nothing but praise for the health system here, which does not appear to be abused.

Pims, I'm sorry to read you value a fancy architectural atrium more than the one in your heart.

If the nhs is so shit hot why do people go private?