To ask what YOU would do to help save the NHS?

[TamiTayorismyparentingguru]

I don’t care if you’re an HCP or not, I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care what you think about Brexit - all opinions welcome.

Opinions on practical suggestions on how to save the NHS only though.

Our local hospital is getting worse and worse with regards to staff shortages and waiting lists getting longer and longer. I will say that our GP is really great and we’ve never really had a problem with getting appointments etc, but as soon as you are referred to the hospital things go massively downhill. (We did have a GP misdiagnose/miss DH’s cancer which was pretty shit - but I wouldn’t say that was a particular problem with the system - more just one of those unfortunate things that happens, that really shouldn’t happen, but that are just a matter of course.)

The hospital is a different story though - wait lists for some departments are insane (current wait time for an initial cataracts appointment is 42 weeks and then up to 18m for treatment, paediatric dermatology is a min of 30weeks, paediatric podiatry is approx 30weeks also. I have been on a wait list for max fax for 14mths so far. I also had an 8week wait for an appointment at the breast clinic after seeing the GP with a noticeable lump.)

DH has also had to fight for every single appointment since his cancer treatment last year - instead of the 4-weekly appointments he’s meant to have had, most of his appointments have been 7-8 weeks apart and have been cancelled at the last minute (sometimes just an hour before) at least 4 times in the last year.

It’s awful and yet I do trust that the doctors, nurses, receptionists etc etc are all doing everything they possibly can.

What’s the solution?

"Another problem is staff retention/recruitment. What happened to nursing being an attractive career ? When and why did it change? I also would suggest a type of national service in care homes. Even when pay and conditions are excellent care homes struggle to recruit. Most people would rather be on benefits than wipe old people's bottoms. I know I would. Perhaps knocking off some student debt in return for six months in a care home would be a plan."

Well this just shows what you think of elderly people. You are happy to put them at risk of abuse by conscripting people (some of whom wont want to be there) to work in care homes. You see elderly people as guinea pigs in an experiment.

Risky and stupid.

Most care homes are privately owned This thread is about the NHS. You obviously forgot that fact while Daily Mail frothing.

@Judygarlandspills you mean children that people with infertility could have with support of ivf? They could be part of that future too? Most infertility is caused by diseases or illnesses. Hence why ivf can be (after going through many hoops and only under certain circumstances) is available on the nhs. Can you guarantee 100% success with all of the other services offered by the nhs? No.

Overhaul of the whole admin side of things. Introduction of subsidised payments for some of the low level, non-emergency services or raise taxes / national insurance payments. No privatisation.

And the irony of saying "if you can't find it don't have it" is my exact point!!! Why would the same not apply to problem free pregnancies?

*fund

Examples of waste: DM goes into hospital and takes all her meds, several boxes of newly GP issued prescription medicine. Two days later is discharged, but only after having all her meds reassessed and RE-ISSUED by the hospital pharmacy. What happened to all the meds she took in...... they were binned. This happens every time someone is admitted and discharged. It has now happened to DM three times. She has also been admitted to hospital against her wishes, refused treatment, and discharged herself, three times......

or raise taxes / national insurance payments.

Labour did that. They raised NIC twice to "save the NHS" but the money just went into the money pit, it was spent. It's like having a leaky bucket. Sensible people would try to fill the holes, but a lot of people seem to think the answer is just to keep filling the bucket more! The NHS will always consume more and more until it's reformed.

Charge £5 per GP appointment with exemptions for people on a low income.

Charge a nominal fee per prescription for all except low income (many people with children can afford £1 per script for example).

Allow pharmacists to prescribe medicine for minor ailments.

On the subject of repeat prescriptions, every month I tick the form with what I want and cross out the items I don't need. Nearly every month, the GP receptionist who processes it issues everything and it goes through to the pharmacy automatically, meaning when I collect it, everything has been issued, so I've got quite a stack of things I don't need. What a waste! The pharmacy is based in and owned by the GPs, so they're profiteering by dispensing things I don't need. I presume it's deliberate to increase their profits.

I do sometimes wonder what people in the NHS actually DO. We pump more and more money into it, but see less and less people getting treated etc. Not to mention that hygene and care standards appear to be falling.

Has the demand gone up?
Is it increased bureaucracy?
Are there more people needing help?
Do staff do less?
is there less care in the community?
Do we expect more help than we used to?
Or do we just do less for ourselves now?

I honestly don't know. But it must be one of these, surely? Unless we can work it out, I don't see how we can just keep throwing more and more money at it. We will run out at some point.

While I agree with many of the ideas here, it's a bit like tinkering with deckchairs on the Titanic. I think the problem is pretty fundamental, and we need to look at the root causes. The iceberg is out there.

Re the lady who needed the transplant, could she not gave made her own way to the hospital if patient transport didn’t turn up. If she could have got to hospital all the subsequent problems would not have happened. Forgive me if she was completely immobile. unfortunately not as she A doesn’t drive and B, it’s not a local hospital but a main one about 1.5 hours away and due to her current lack of stamina etc she is unable to use public transport. Had she been going to the local hospital she could have got a taxi but not in this case sadly.

My parents have similar in that one of their neighbours has MND and had to relinquish her driving licence. Hospital transport has proved to be so unreliable that she resorted to paying for taxi’s to get to the hospital for appointments, but that’s for a local hospital.

Re IVF. IMO one of the reasons why the NHS shouldn’t be funding it is because of its still very low success rate. Even years on IVF is only about 30% successful, something which in many other cases just wouldn’t be funded due to the high chance of failure. In fact this is why the NHS funds three rounds because on average that’s what it takes to fall pregnant if that is likely to happen, and the cost of doing so is prohibitive.

And care work is much more than just wiping old peoples bottoms Perhaps if society treated it as a job of worth there would be more people willing to do the job. Turning it into workfare is not the answer.

My ivf that I paid for you mean?

My 5 miscarriages were from natural conceptions. If that's any of your business, I was playing devils advocate clearly. Obviously I don't think maternity or anti natal care shouldn't be on the nhs. But people always say ban ivf because children are a choice, but it's fine for people who have children by natural conception use nhs services.

Similar to the charge people who go to A&e due to injuries caused after drinking too much on a weekend... middle aged people who have a few drinks every night are costing much more because of the health issues cause. Maybe we should ban treatment for type 2 diabetes? Selfish people caused it themselves.

Banning treatment isn't the answer. Better funding and management of funding is. I'd happily pay more NI . I think we all need to. It's the only way. I'd rather pay more NI and keep service for all to use than go down the private insurance route.

This middle aged person is teetotal and has never been drunk.

But only if the chance of treating that chip is 100% eh @Judygarlandspills

There is no point increasing funding for the NHS as the demands for additional funding are such that the whole of the countries income would have to be spent on it within a few decades if the current system continues without change.
The original NHS model is unsustainable in times where many people who would have died in early childhood and others who develop chronic conditions that would have been fatal now survive (often with little to no quality of life) for many years but require ongoing expensive treatment. Unfortunately it is simply not possible to continue to preserve quantity of life at any cost without caring about quality of life and in many cases palliative care should start much sooner than it does at present (and DNARs should be more commonplace) and certain treatments should not be available on the NHS.
There needs to be a whole committee, made up of economists as well as health professionals, set up to investigate which treatments are actually cost effective, but until it is acceptable to the public that the value of keeping someone alive is not infinite it is impossible for this to happen. Going further it probably needs to be accepted that this value varies between individuals.

Banning treatment isn't the answer. Better funding and management of funding is. I'd happily pay more NI . I think we all need to. It's the only way. I'd rather pay more NI and keep service for all to use than go down the private insurance route.

This.

A penny in the pound would raise £5.5 billion (according to Google), this could be ringfenced for the NHS.

shouldn’t be funding treatments which creates new ones

So charge for maternity care then?

Stop free ambulance transport to and from outpatient appointments. Some people just treat it like their own personal taxi service. The service is needed but it should charge users the same as an equivalent journey by public transport.

And get rid of the outsourced private companies running the catering/portering/parking facilities. They are run for profit so are always putting prices up and cutting corners to make a quick buck. Today a lacklustre sandwich/crisps/drink meal deal in the staff cafe cost me £6.15. It would have been £4 from Marks & Spencer (and a lot nicer). I wouldn't mind so much if the money went back into patient services but it doesn't.

Stop the expats coming back to use the facilities! It's not the immigrants that abuse: it is the expats!!