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?

Stop Brexit so that we don't lose a huge number of current staff and new staff still feel welcome to come and work in the NHS.

Stop voting for the Conservatives.

Think carefully about what is treated. It should be for illnesses and saving lives rather than individual's vanity projects. I had a colleague who underwent a sex change and she was horrified when the NHS stopped paying for her electrolysis. That surely should never be paid for in the first place?! It's not life or death.

Also get rid of 90% of non-medical staff. I worked in a CCG and the staffing there rise from 12 when it first opened to more than 80 in 6 years. That's some wages bill.

Stop Brexit so that we don't lose a huge number of current staff and new staff still feel welcome to come and work in the NHS.

~5% of NHS staff are from the EU

Stop voting for the Conservatives.

This is the childish rhetoric that is going to kill the NHS, using it as a political football is part of the reason we are were we are now.

Luang there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in this thread. People advocating charging people who cant afford it are likely to be the ones who voted for things to be the way they are now.

Luang there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in this thread. People advocating charging people who cant afford it are likely to be the ones who voted for things to be the way they are now.

Or alternatively they are throwing out ideas so that we can have an NHS system for our grandchildren.

The brutal truth is that everyone who has voted for at least the last 20 years have voted for things to be the way they are now, that includes you, some people just want to kick the can down the road and play moral top trumps without honestly assessing the situation.

I would pay extra tax that just went to the nhs, there would be a new line on my payslip that would say NHS and even if it was only £2 per person every penny would go to them.

" some people just want to kick the can down the road"

Oh im so glad youve mentioned this..............the past few Governments KNEW there was a baby boom after World War 2. And none of them have done anything to prepare for it. Thats where the can kicking is.

Mmm... I believe the NHS is on a slippery slope - regardless of which political party are in power.

Maybe everyone should contribute an affordable amount as 'insurance'? Not as much as as private insurance companies want, but enough to keep the NHS affordable for everyone. Maybe £300 a year per adult? Free for those under 18....or something?

The NHS was set up to make sure everyone had access to medical treatment, at a time when the man of the house was in full time employment. Women weren't expected to work. There were jobs for everyone. Times have changed. More and more families have 2 working parents. Other families are single parents, taking out of the pot but putting nothing in. The paternal parent is no longer responsible for providing for their children.

There is only so much money a pot can hold. The NHS is suffering. We all need to do our bit so we can all afford medical treatment when we need it. Otherwise we will all end up having to take out medical insurance at astronomical prices.

That's my take anyway. I'm sure there will be posters who don't like it. Neither do I but needs must. I'd prefer to pay something towards a system that affords me fantastic health care, rather than having to pay an unaffordable amount when the NHS system fails.

£300 a year is unaffordable for a lot of people. And i notice you make it sound like its the fault of the single parent that the father has buggered off and doesnt pay CM

You are obviously having a dig at single parents on benefits

Like i said..................cognitive dissonance.

No Helena. I'm not having a dig at anyone. It's just how things have changed. Yes I get that £300 per person is unaffordable for people. That's £600 a year that me and dh can't afford. Better than £150 per month each for basic insurance without the NHS though...

Never mind... Forget I even said it. I'm sure the NHS will keep going on minimum funds... What if it doesn't? What's your answer?

Honestly - so my daughter attends a hospital that she has been in since birth - she spent 2 years in without coming home and is s regular visitor for a life limiting disease. One thing from the inside that infuriates me is currently they are building a new state of the arts modern NICU
Spent millions and millions of pounds for this new machine to be the first in the country to have it. ( a swallowing diagnostic thing ) again lots of money spent on a top range robot that helps to do with something in surgery although my daughter has been to theatre 26 times I’ve seen the thing once .... but we don’t have working thermometers, running low on blood pressure machines , have to cut back on health care assistance which it vital on children’s wards.
Fancy tech and moving forward in medicine is a great theory but when you don’t have the basics to treat everyone it’s not really priority !

Justanotherlurker - genuine question does cost effective mean cheaper or something else? How is using contractors cheaper? I've never understood how that works in a situation like this. The contractor needs to cover overheads and make a profit, the eg cleaners need to be paid AT LEAST nmw (though they deserve more). So how is it cheaper?

5% = (i think) 70,000 people! That's not an insignificant number!

Luangwa the examples I've seen are of 3 generations of the patient's family inc several children (who usually get bored and start playing up), taking up seats and refusing to give them up even to patients on crutches, leaving the patient completely alone at some points to go eat/smoke/get a phone signal so they can post it on Facebook!

I have of course no problem with patients with complex needs having their carers there but that's not what I'm meaning.

Agree though on the lack of imagination of those who just don't "get" that the people using the nhs most tend to be the poorest.

"I would pay extra tax that just went to the nhs"

"Maybe everyone should contribute an affordable amount as 'insurance'?"

When NI was introduced it was a type of insurance in case of sickness/unemployment. The beveridge report then led to its remit encompassing the nhs.

"at a time when the man of the house was in full time employment. Women weren't expected to work." This was never true for the working class.

"Other families are single parents, taking out of the pot but putting nothing in" nice bit of single parent (mostly women) bashing there! 🤔

"Fancy tech and moving forward in medicine is a great theory but when you don’t have the basics to treat everyone it’s not really priority !" Agree with this too.

Australia has a partially paid for health service. I don't see hordes of people begging for money for their hospital appt when I visit. These countries must have a way of dealing with poor patients.

The bottom line is imv educating people about their latter years. People are in complete denial that they will probably end up bed bound and dribbling into their bib while they wait to die an uncomfortable death. The dementia tax st the last election is proof of that, conservatives lost several seats despite no joined up Labour Party. People won't accept it is them that will need 24/7 care in old age so they will not pay. I would LOVE to pay a lump sum now so I don't have to keep money back just in case. That money being kept back should be several hundred thousand for private care over who knows how many years.
My DM had been a nurse but she had to be bullied into signing a DNR form at the care Home, she was 89. Just totally in denial that her end was approaching. So the conversation has to be with younger people. A few tv progs showing the realities of old age with clear statistics might persuade people that funding must be in place. Also an explanation of where their money will go if they are in a care home for a year or two and how if EVEryone put 40,000 in a pot their last years could be comfortable.

There's a lot of stuff about poor people on here. One thing I thought was that it seemed that people with no savings might be shoved into care homes as the family know the state will pay. Whereas if Granny has a large house and savings perhaps family try harder to keep her at home.

Well I wouldn’t want to pay more than the taxes already being paid by my family until I could go to the doctors or hospital and not see monstrous waste with my own eyes. As I’ve mentioned before, several reception staff and admin who clock off and close down at 4.00 pm when the clinic runs to 6.00 pm. and blood tests not available after 4.00 pm. I think the NHS is being run for the convenience of staff and not patients. I am talking admin and not nursing staff although I’ve seen a fair few of nurses ignoring patients.

Ditto medical centres where you can’t get appointments where you work. I saw a young girl in tears begging a receptionist for an appointment as she couldn’t take further time off and needed to see a doctor urgently for fear of losing her job.

I don't see someone clocking off at 4 as a waste, surely its a saving.

@Fanciedachange1 amen to this!
We have hundreds of DNAs a month and put extra clinics on evening and weekend in our outpatients department and people still
Don't attend! Such a waste of resources.

£100 fine for call outs/treatment to alcohol and drug related incidents. £500 fine for people who keep ambulance paramedics for longer than needed because they waste so much time arguing with them about needing to go into hospital. £20 standard fine for A&E treatments over the weekend that are usually to do with drunken behavior and plain stupidity.

AlmaGeddon What a dreadful attitude to the aged and ageing. Most people certainly don’t end up dribbling into a bib or suffer dementia. The lifetime risk is currently 1:14 with many sufferers not being elderly. Dementia doesn’t necessarily mean an uncomfortable death either -MND is probably scarier for most people.
We certainly shouldn’t be refusing treatment based on age alone. In our village the 85 year olds plus walk further than we do. My 94 year old mother recovered from a fractured femur last Christmas despite being blind and has returned to living independently.
Whilst the discussion needs to be had around DNACPRs consent is not necessary. It is a clinical decision based on the likelihood of resuscitation being effective and in the patient’s best interests. It is not a form used to withhold any other treatment. We can’t just go around bumping people off because they’re old or frail - although there is a precedent for that in the 1940s.

Care home funding is nothing to do with NHS money except that underfunding and closure of local authority homes and reduced domiciliary care prevents discharges, costs more and increases likelihood of further illness and injuries such as falls.

I would pay extra tax that just went to the nhs, there would be a new line on my payslip that would say NHS and even if it was only £2 per person every penny would go to them.

But it's nowhere near enough. It would be £4 per person next year. £10 per person in 5 years. £40 per person in 20 years. Where does it end? Don't forget, and I won't apologise for saying it again and again, Labour TREBLED spending and it didn't "save" the NHS. It just got spent and lost in the waste and inefficiency. Yes, I don't deny there were service improvements, but when funding is trebled, the improvements should have been immense, not just a bit of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Labour raised NIC rates twice "to save the NHS" - but it didn't work because it wasn't enough. You can keep pouring water into a leaky bucket, but it will never be full until you plug the holes.

I've personally had difficulties with my own GP surgery sending text reminders

Likewise. There's no consistency. Sometimes, no reminder, other times you get a reminder the day before, sometimes, it can be a week before. My last "appointment" was for a telephone call back from a GP - the text came a couple of days before confirming I had an appointment with Dr X at surgery Y at 7.30 am. That meant I had to phone them to check that it was a telephone call and not an appointment at surgery Y - more wasted time at both ends to resolve something that could have been done properly in the first place. Not to mention that the appointment wasn't 7.30, the GP finally called mid afternoon, as arranged!

Same with the old fashioned appointment letters which turned up on the day itself or the day after. All go down as missed appointments, and no doubt the patient is blamed, but it's the fault of the NHS administrators, not the patient.

I once had a GP appointment, immediately I walked in, the GP challenged me about my son DNA an appointment earlier. The fact is that I phoned the surgery myself that morning to cancel his appointment, but the receptionist had clearly not done it. Yet again, goes down as a patient fault no-show. When I told the GP, his attitude changed and he just shrugged and said "it happens all the time".

Now I work 2 days a week, no on call and no weekends in a hugely understaffed speciality. If they tried to make me work more I’d leave completely. And I don’t feel guilty.

Someone said right at the start of the thread that the NHS was run for the benefit and convenience of the staff, not the patients, and this comment proves that view. A senior medical "professional" effectively blackmailing the NHS for their own personal reasons.

Of course, no one expects people to work unsocial hours, shifts, full time work forever, we all know peoples' lives change, but for senior, so called professional staff, you'd expect a bit of flexibility and negotiation. It's reasonable to ask for part time work or negotiate acceptable overtime, etc. But was is not reasonable is an attitude of "I'm working the hours I want and if you don't like it, I'm off in a strop" is quite frankly pathetic. I thought we were all expected to believe that everyone in the NHS is a saint and that they all put the patients first. Clearly not!

@CherryPavlova
Dementia. Oh we need to talk about dementia. Apparently we can't let people die. I'm a hospital consultant and I have many colleagues who won't even consider not treating an infection in a frail elderly patient with dementia, partly because they think its unethical and partly because they are scared of getting sued for malpractice. The trajectory of this persons quality of life is only progressing negatively
I was replying after reading this response by weneedtosavethenhs on p13 I think it was. A consultant and she does not have your rosy picture of aging. People were celebrating their 100th birthday in the care Home my DM was in. They'd probably been in for at least 10 years, all funded by the council. All the money comes out the same Uk tax pot!

pacer the NHS treats its junior medics like absolute shit and is infamous for it. When weneedtotalkaboutthenhs said they’d given over of a decade of their lives to be of service to them I’m sure that’s not an exaggeration.

Your doctors are leaving in droves and coming to places like Australia where the work is still challenging but they’re more likely to be paid for the work they do and there are limits on the hours/week.

Presumably the only light at the end of the tunnel for some medical staff is that things will be better. A decade plus of lives dictated by hideous rosters and unpaid after hours work should be sacrifice enough, surely?

In Australia, btw, many consultants mix public and private work and there’s an easy and open relationship between the two settings. Many people chose to work part time, in private, to ensure it fits around their family life without the expectation that they need to continue to be matyrs to their career.

I would remove a level or two of the management structure - honestly there are far too many. In my smallish trust we have 4 layers of management above ward manager but below the directors. They all spend a lot of time checking each other are doing things.

I would also pay more tax and invest in front line staff further. There is a horrendous turn over of staff and high sickness rates, which are clearly due to the levels of stress and a lack of feeling in any way valued. Quite apart from issues around the crap pay and worsening conditions, something needs to change in the attitude of the NHS towards low grade staff (currently people are expected to put up and shut up or leave).

Something needs to be done about bed blocking and the transition to social care. We regularly have a 3rd of our beds blocked by people who could leave but have no where safe to go, while very unwell people cannot get beds.

So much money is wasted. Our son had surgery last December at our local hospital, he had his op on the Monday and was expected to be discharged on Tuesday. All went well but he vomited three times between the Tuesday morning and Wednesday afternoon, the nurses were convinced that it was a combination of him being in pain and the excessive heat in the ward (why is it always so hot in hospitals? Turn the thermostat down and save some money!)
By Thursday he was still there, under observation, and I had a call to say that he was being transferred to the main Trust hospital as the surgical ward he was on closed over the weekend so they wanted to get him moved in readiness. This was at 1pm and we waited until 10pm for an ambulance to collect him to transfer him 15 miles.
11 hours later he called me to say that he was being discharged.