How many people have been failed by the NHS during lockdown?

[Polnm]

My DH has cancer.

His appointment in April was by phone
His appointment in August was postponed until October

How is this acceptable? Hospitals are empty whilst patients can’t access care.

GP appointments by zoom with a 2 week wait for a basic blood pressure check in person or to take bloods

Why isn’t there more publicity and outrage about this?

We can’t be the only family going through this surely?

Even the way the NHS is run is as awkward as possible in many ways. As one poster upthread said - having to see a GP to get the GP to write a referral letter to a specialist - that doesn't really happen in other countries. Its a waste of time and resources.

Or when you move home to a new area, perhaps even just a mile outside your GP's catchment area, you have to change practices. Why? Why do you have to register as a temporary resident when you work away from home for a few weeks? As long as you have a NHS number, your notes should all be online and easily accessible to any GP.

As for not doing things such as treating broken bones and fractures for months (mine) due to a crisis, and the long standing problem of having ridiculously long waiting periods for routine surgery, I don't know how anyone can argue that it is a good service. Will it now be standard to delay treatment indefinately when there is a bad winter flu season?

We know that healthcare in other European countries hasn't ground to a halt, so why did it happen in the UK?

I am still waiting on an appointment...

The appointment is to check I can safely drive my power wheelchair so that it can be destricted and used outdoors. Currently, it is limited to 2mph, and I am not permitted to use it outside.

This means I can't go anywhere, it could mean for some that they can't leave the building at all.

The appointment would take place in a big hall and outdoor space, there would be only myself, and two OT's present.

And yet WCS have cancelled all such appointments, despite it being entirely possible to SD during them for most people.

I am not remotely blaming those who work directly in WCS, but the management that have deemed it necessary to do this without real thought, and the general state of the NHS that it can no longer sustain itself, find its arse with its own bare hands and a map, and the government who have reduced it to a very inefficient time wasting money drain :(

I was thinking the same about the next flu season. Don't remember departments shutting up shop indefinitely then either in the past.

The NHS has never had to deal with a pandemic comparable to COVOD-19 and other healthcare providers are struggling because there has been nothing like this and many are also partly funded by insurance - treatment free at the point of service well what insurance you have can determine what treatment you have. It will not in the UK it’s irrelevant your wealth. If we had had more testing earlier on this certainly would have helped as less people would have been infected and less pressure put on the nhs

Comparing with SARS only infected I believe less than 10 people in the UK. Those who contracted SARS became very ill within a week this helped stop the infection spreading so much as with COVID the incubation period is longer and many people have COVID show no symptoms at all or very mild symptoms. That allows people to carry on as normal they come into contact with more people and then the more it spreads

MRSA is usually spread through contact

We should have learnt from other countries and how they managed SARS. We absolutely should have been in lockdown sooner and the tighter the restrictions the better we would have been able to minimise the spread.

But we only have to see on here the resistance to this but still the government should have ignored this but stupidly they didn’t (though this is much easier to manage in countries where you have a police state)

*Nobody has been failed by the NHS......

Everyone has been failed by Johnson/Cummings - their plan or lack of it has caused all of this......

Don't blame the NHS for the Conservative Party failings*

Did the Conservative Part lose my dp’s blood tests 3 times.

Did Johnson and Cummings tell Dp he was a prime candidate for life extending surgery
Then told him he couldn’t have it because he was terminally ill. Despite one of the criteria being that you had to have a terminal diagnosis.

When Dp was getting really ill and at the end when more symptoms were occurring, was it members of the Conservative Government who were telling him that he was scaring himself when he asked if he had bowel Cancer like his father. Despite having all the classic symptoms of bowel cancer.

The answer obviously is No.

None of the above is about how the NHS is run it is about individual people not doing their job or not seeing what is staring them in the face

I am trying to get my head round why someone would spend money trying to diagnose all sorts of different illnesses rather than go for the obvious one that would in the long run save them time and money because left the operations become more prolonged and protracted.

What did the person get out of dangling a carrot of a potential treatment in someone’s face only for them to know that they would have to take it away because one of the criteria in order to qualify was one of the criteria for not doing it.

That is just sick

NHS fails most people in the end...

'There is poster after poster describing an ongoing refusal to provide medical care because the NHS shut up shop in March and millions of people have been denied treatment. Who is responsible for this ongoing dereliction of duty? Where is the media outrage? '

It didnt 'shut up shop' it stopped admitting people for routine surgery. Hospitals as we know are high risk areas for Covid transmission. Of course there are some terrible stories on here but that will be down to local incompetence rather than your melodramatic 'millions of people have been been denied treatment!!' bollocks.

Did you see my comments, y'know the ones about NHS patients being admitted en masse to private hospitals to get the back log down?!

Sexual health clinics are also still completely shut - which is bizarre really considering most of their focus would be on the ‘other end’ away from faces and mouths etc. Sure they can use PPE and wipe down??!

That's why I don't understand why the government are fully to blame when some places have stayed open. How many medics signed the school reopen now letter because of x, y and z?

I'd like to know that too. All those doctors who were all too happy for schools to reopen whilst they themselves weren't seeing people or dealing with referrals. Why did they think it acceptable for teachers to be back at work when some of then weren't? If schools can be open why not their clinics?
For gods sake you can go to the cinema, you can to the pub, you can go shopping for non-essentials - but you can't see a doctor.

People waiting to be seen for 5 months now. How long are they expected to sit around and wait? The impact from that will cost more to the nhs, tax payers and the economy.

Remember many people have been waiting for referrals pre-Covid, and they're still waiting. Now the backlog is even worse. Forget about the economic cost, what about the human cost? People are in pain now. Waiting for treatment, for scans, for surgery. But in some areas you can't even see a GP let alone anyone else.
Someone earlier mentioned they've had no problems in their area and said they're in SE England.
I wonder what areas of the country things aren't back up and running and what they have in common?

Don't blame the NHS for the Conservative Party failings.

Oh does the Tory party make departments lose referrals, screw up basic admin and then lie about doing so then? No doubt the Tories are fucking up the NHS but as much as it pains me to say it you can't blame them for everything.

For gods sake you can go to the cinema, you can to the pub, you can go shopping for non-essentials - but you can't see a doctor.

And considering in a local bar/restaurant I was sat on a table next to a Doctor from the department in the hospital that is not seeing patients because and I quote "it's just too dangerous at the moment." seems a little strange. Wasn't too dangerous for them to knock back three glasses of wine in a bar with a load of others around them. Not an item if PPE in sight either.

That's taking the piss to be honest.

The NHS have been working under clear government directives throughout. If only people would stop voting for the incompetent fools. One can dream.

The NHS are not to blame and you know this yourself. They have been put in a terrible position and have had to make choices that will haunt them for years to come.

My mum is also waiting for an operation that she really needs so I do get it. I’m waiting for treatment I can’t yet have too. However, the NHS didn’t put themselves, or me and my mum, in this position.

Friends of mine from within the NHS have had the hardest few months of their lives and are going to be struggling with it for years to come. Your frustrations really shouldn’t be at the door of the medical staff who put their lives on the line to treat Covid patients.

@elenacampana Quite. People really need to direct their ire where it is due. At the top.

I am an amputee and apparently it’s acceptable for me to wait for my usual clinician to return as she ‘knows me best’. I presume she is sheilding. I am usually fit and active but the minor adjustment has done nothing. It has been pulling and tearing my skin since April and may cause long term issues.

It’s ridiculous! I work in a pharmacy attached to a surgery. Surgery isn’t seeing anyone and refers them to us. For example I think I have a water infection surgery said to come in and see you. No problem let’s take a sample diagnose and prescribe an antibiotic oh hang on we can’t - that’s a Drs. Job. I’m genuinely puzzled why they can’t see people? Yet seem to think it’s ok to send them into us!

The lack of clear, robust and consistent directives to the NHS Trusts has been ridiculous. Hancock needs to go.

Interestingly, (and Im sure totally unconnected to an email i sent to my surgery Sunday outlining how difficult the last 8 weeks have been having healthcare for slipped disc via telephone) my GP surgery today announced that it was going to start opening up and seeing some patients face to face. It's a good decision imo.

That's great @colouringindoors

The NHS are not to blame and you know this yourself.

They absolutely are to blame for their own incompetence. It's this attitude of "never critcise the NHS, they're all doing their best" that allows them to get away with it. There's no accountability whatsoever, they fuck up, fob you off and outright lie - and they think (rightly in some cases unfortunately) that they can do whatever they want because they know you don't have the option of going elsewhere.
I'm angry at the government, the idiots who keep voted tory AND the culture in the NHS that normalises such a shoddy standard of treatment. I get they're under pressure. I get they don't make the decisions about funding. But they decide how they do their jobs. They decide whether to lie or not. They decide whether they're going to pay attention to their job or whether they're going to be careless and "lose" a person's referral.
Working for the NHS doesn't automatically make someone a saint. I'm sick of this "oh don't critcise them, they're all working hard and doing their best." No, some of them are. Plenty aren't.

Sorry to be miserable, but it's seems very handy that a GP can 'phone you at any random time, possibly catching you at a bad time, and if you actually try to ask questions, you get "Sorry, I must move on."
If you were in a face-to-face appointment, they couldn't do that.

@gypsywater

The NHS have been working under clear government directives throughout. If only people would stop voting for the incompetent fools. One can dream.

The situation would be exactly the same whether Jezza or Sir Keith himself were running the show. They'd have listened to Chris Whitty and Vallance too and would also have restricted routine treatment and elective surgery. Well, I say the same it would probably be much, much worse. Imagine blundering Diane Abbot wearing odd shoes trying to organise PHE and the NHS .

@JanMeyer

The NHS as a collective group are not to blame for the government directed response to Covid, which is the point I was making.

I haven’t once said don’t criticise them or they above contempt so please don’t over dramatise my post to suit your own agenda. You are diverging from my point into other territory and that is just bad reasoning.

@gypsywater

The lack of clear, robust and consistent directives to the NHS Trusts has been ridiculous. Hancock needs to go.

What clear 'robust' directives should he have given them?

In the early days Trusts had hundreds of thousands of pounds chucked at them to get all the extra critical care equipment needed. Staff were put up in hotels to protect shielding relatives, non urgent treatment halted to protect patients. The testing shambles was a problem and PHE need to answer questions about that but imo the NHS coped with the surge and is now addressing the backlog with extra lists, both in NHS and in private hospitals.

What 'robust' stuff didnt Hancock do?

@GetOffYourHighHorse The lack of consistency between Trusts for a start?

But GP’s and hospital doctors are not sitting round doing no work- at least none of the ones I work alongside and know.

All our GP’s surgeries are open. They have a locked door policy to stop people wandering in as they have to know who has been in and also limit footfall as far as possible for the safety of higher risk patients who require to come in and also for staff (especially non-clinical).

However, All patients will either be telephone triaged or seen via video call. The gp will then decide if they need to be seen face to face, and whether that has to be the same day or is a more routine thing which can wait. Data in our area has shown that GP waiting times have dropped noticeably.

Hospital out-patient clinics are still going ahead- either telephone or video, or if face to face required these are still happening. Waiting times are longer than pre-COVID and are taking longer to get through as everything takes longer- rooms have to be cleaned between each patient and all equipment used disinfected. There are a limited number of patients allowed in the waiting area due to social distancing and we don’t want people waiting for longer than absolutely necessary for obvious reasons. Scan waiting times are also longer in some cases as we cannot do as many per day as we’re fine pre-COVID due to additional cleaning measures etc. There are some investigations (aerosol generating procedures) which we have been told to either stop or only do in an emergency cases.

When it comes to routine/elective care, few people understand that we are essentially having to run 3 hospitals within our hospital. We have to keep a “COVID” ICU, a COVID medical and surgical HDU, a COVID medical admissions with some surgical admissions beds, as well as COVID medicine for the elderly wards. We then have to run “amber” medical and surgical admissions- for the not obviously COVID patients who require emergency admission but we haven’t got a negative test (I.e. all acute admissions who aren’t suspected COVID): acute patients stay until negative swabs, after which they can be moved to the green (COVID free, as far as can possibly be told) wards. Add in that certain wards have to have additional measures (haematology and oncology wards, for example). That’s before we even hit theatre issues- there are COVID and non-COVID emergency theatres, for example. This all has to be done within existing infrastructure and staffing levels. So it is inevitable that waiting times for elective care is longer- we have fewer hospital beds that can be used for elective care; staff split between COVID and non-COVID aspects of the same specialty in some cases; some staff requisitioned (e.g. from community teams) to other posts; and reduced number of theatres. We also have to be more careful with higher risk surgery, for example, because we need to be sure that there will be an HDU (or in some cases ICU) bed for that patient to go into post-operatively.

I absolutely understand that if you or a loved one are waiting on a clinic review or surgery which will prolong and/or improve quality of life, the reasons are not really that important to you- you just want to be seen and treated. In reality, life-saving treatment should still be going ahead, although I know some regions are struggling more than others to keep waiting times down.