To ask why the NHS is cancelling operations?!

[CFEC]

I'm due to have a (much needed and waited for) op in a few weeks time, I've just rung my consultant's secretary as I haven't had a pre-op appointment letter through yet and queried it, as I wanted to make sure the operation is definitely going ahead as if nothing else, I'll be off work for 2 weeks and my boss would ideally like confirmation.

She said 'Oh, well they're cancelling A LOT of inpatient appointments, but as you'll be a day patient no, I think yours will go ahead.'

I swear I will lose my sh&^ and cry if it gets cancelled again, this will be the third time!!!

Why is the NHS cancelling operations left, right and centre?! Surely it can't be due to Covid still? If it is, what is going to happen to us all, so many people are going to die surely as a result of not getting treatment? A lot more than with Covid! Most people are double vaccinated now, this virus isn't going away, why are operations for in patients being cancelled?

@Blossomtoes

I've been saying for years that it should be privatised/ or have an income threshold to be able to access it

Alternatively we could just vote for a government that would fund it properly. But, no. People would far rather pay less tax than have decent services.

This 👆 The British public want a first class first world healthcare system on the cheap. Then they are pissed off that they can’t have it.

the problem for those of us long enough in the tooth to recall the NHS under Labour is that it was still shit

It wasn’t. And the stats are available to prove it.

The problem for those of us long enough in the tooth to recall the NHS under Labour is that it was still shit.

Yeah, that’s bollocks though. I worked in the NHS and was a patient in it too during the last Labour government. It was far better then.

If you voted Tory you are part of the problem. In which case go private

Dealing with covid is like having the winter virus season pretty much year round.

NHS cuts mean that the winter delays get balanced out by working as fast through lists as possible in the summer. But when you don't get the summer (because such a large number of beds are for covid patients, not other patients) and when winter means next to nothing else happens unless it's life/death treatment, then backlogs grow.

It's happening all across Europe btw. No country had a health service with enough spare capacity to deal with covid without adding to waiting times. It's more a case of by how much, not whether it happens at all

It's rubbish but it has been like that for years. My 7 year-old has been waiting for a routine operation for 2.5 years. My 8 year-old is meant to be having a major operation in the not too distant future on his mouth that has to be done at a certain time. He should have been having appointments to monitor his adult teeth coming through for about a year now but it hasn't happened because of covid. There are 1 year olds still waiting for cleft lip repair operations that are meant to be done when they are 3-4 months old.

The nhs is amazing at emergency stuff but routine care is awful.

I’d rather pay less tax and have a crap NHS than high tax and have a crap NHS, yes. It’s been in perpetual crisis since the 1940’s, and it will never have enough money to do all the things that people expect of it.

And the bollocks keeps coming…

@CFEC your message 15:28
It has been happening as you describe. I was supposed to have an operation in March /April 2020 when first lockdown happened. Nothing done until I started bleeding in February this year. GP ignored me. Admitted to small hospital late one evening via 111. They discovered serious trouble, they on phone to specialist in another bigger hospital for advice to stabilise me.
Finally a Blue light transfer to Specialist Dept 15 miles away at 2.00am and immediate attention.

Serious deterioration. Never be able to repair some organs.
Still waiting to complete the operation, postponed again because "we are prioritising cancer patients".
They will not accept that my condition is as serious as many cancer patients.
Keep nagging your own GP, write letters to Consultant and to GP. phone calls just evaporate unheeded.
Sorry to rant all over your thread. Good Luck.

Another one saying the NHS was vastly better 15 years ago, the Tories have done what they always do which is cut cut cut. Always money for crony contracts though. No magic money tree... unless you are Hancock's mate, or Johnson's mate, or a big Tory donor of course.

And operations are being cancelled because of covid, there is too much pressure on the system - and it is AUGUST.

If we privatised or semi privatised we'd have to make sure we didn't end up like the States where you are only one bad illness away from bankruptc.

Personally, I think its the politicisation of healthcard that is the problem. It costs £££££££ to keep rearranging things with no obvious outcome other than enabling governments to de like they are doing something whilst being able to say 'it's too early to tell yet'.

[quote NotPersephone]@Blossomtoes those will be the stats that show that productivity went down and the wage bill went up exponentially?

I sued for med neg (Trust and GP) in 2006 over poor care of the kind you read about in the Daily Mail. The only discernible sign of cash was in the consultants’ car park and in the amount being spent on artwork. The hospital was dirty and the nurses were (rightly) complaining there were not enough of them.[/quote]
Anecdote doesn’t trump facts.

www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/general-election-2010/waiting-times

There's no staff.
My ward is supposed to have 7 nurses on each shift and we're running on 5.
We're also having to cover another ward which means we're sometimes running on 4 or even 3 which is totally unsafe.
The ward we are covering is supposed to have 4 nurses each shift. They are generally running on 3 but we're covering because they only have 2 or 1 per shift.

It's due to people leaving, covid isolation, general sickness and lot's and lots of maternity leave as it's a good time to get pregnant as you go off at 28 weeks now.

My ward has 6 staff leaving in the past 2 months and there's 4 on mat leave and 4 currently off sick.

Neighbouring ward has 6 on mat leave, 7 staff leave in 3 months and currently 3 off sick.

This is why ops are getting cancelled. There is nobody to look after you and acute illness gets priority over elective surgery. It's shit but there's not a lot that can be done to fix it quickly.

Germany spends about a third more per capita on healthcare . They have a much better service . UK death rates from covid are 80% higher than Germany which has a lot to do with the quality of their health service (plus a more competent govt)

My DMs has just been cancelled for tomorrow. Staff shortages apparently. Hopefully rescheduled for a few weeks time but won't hold my breath!

I Wondered from the first post if this was an attempt to bash the current uk healthcare approach

Private healthcare tends to cost more to treat fewer people

So the rich get good service ( well actually in many cases the rich get profitable service not necessarily best treatment- think us opioid crisis ) and the rest... well they suffer

The cure is A little more on taxes and a lot less meddling by people ( government etc) who really want it to fail so they can line the pockets of themselves and thier mates with private solutions

Why are you pushing a line that supports the filthy rich ?

It’s so busy with extra patients (covid) coupled with poorly staff, staff looking after poorly kids, people off work waiting for pcrs. At the trust where I do bank shifts they’ve announced they’re putting non clinical staff on the wards which they haven’t done since the first lock down. So admin/office type staff answering buzzers, phones, helping feed patients, etc.

The BBC documentary on BBC 2 was so sad but showed the reality of our situation. The man who had liver cancer whose op was delayed and now it has spread. The woman with a huge aneurysm that had had her delayed treatment was a ticking time bomb knowing it could rupture and kill her at any time. The poor poor young lady who had a work place accident that tore her scalp & ear off who desperately needed reconstructive surgery. All delayed due to lack of beds and staff to look after them post op. Who is the most important? Who take priority with the lack of staff to cover the op?

I am also a nurse with 23 years experience, a few weeks ago we did not have a single nurse on duty due to isolating (lots of us with positive teenagers). I have never known a time like this in all of my career.

@jasjas1973 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 This!

I don't think it's necessarily true that the British would prefer to pay less tax and have a less effective healthcare system. I think many Brits would happily pay an increased rate of tax if there was evidence that these extra funds were being managed effectively and fairly. At the moment the Tories are systematically and deliberately ravaging the NHS, and funnelling vast amounts to their friends under the guise of track-and-trace or PPE. Who wants to pay more to facilitate that? If they were acting in the interests of the people they would be looking to Scandinavian or French models of managing healthcare - instead they are looking to the USA, the most inequitable model in the world.

I don't think it's necessarily true that the British would prefer to pay less tax and have a less effective healthcare system. I think many Brits would happily pay an increased rate of tax if there was evidence that these extra funds were being managed effectively and fairly

Unfortunately history doesn’t bear you out. The NHS improved exponentially between 1997 and 2010. The British public then voted for austerity and here we are.

@anniegun

Germany spends about a third more per capita on healthcare . They have a much better service . UK death rates from covid are 80% higher than Germany which has a lot to do with the quality of their health service (plus a more competent govt)

This Plus the population know it has to be paid for, they don’t expect low taxation & wonderful healthcare we otoh want all the services but don’t want the tax burden plus as another poster stated we sell of every service known to man that may turn a profit & the bits that don’t are subjected to cut after cut until they are not fit for purpose, combined with the attitude that only the ‘deserving poor’ should receive help/support you have the perfect storm & the cherry on the cake is a government on the make & handing out billions to mates/cronies/donors & the like of Serco et al it’s beyond depressing.

'Surely it can't be due to Covid still?' @CFEC are you on glue?

I actually can't believe members of the public think covid is over in the world of NHS? Are people really that clueless??

There's no beds, no staff, no money, a year long winter pressure that is seeing extremely sick people being prioritised. Covid takes up so much space.

In my hospital:

• day surgery has been shut for surgery for 2 months as it's a medical ward due to lack of beds everywhere else
• no elective surgery is taking place at all
• ICU is full all the time, mix of covid and non covid. Can't risk elective surgery needing beds either.
• 5 medical wards are closed with covid outbreaks linked back to visitors transmitting to patients - no movement on or off those wards now, even more bed shortages
• winter pressures type level of acute need
• we still have masks everywhere, social distancing, swabbing everyone all the time, restricted visiting, cleaning everything and it's still everywhere wrecking healthcare for everyone.

Staff have had enough, leaving in droves.

This winter is a perfect storm.

We spend far less than most European Countries per population and refuse to pay more tax to fritter away on nonessential staff.
Blair put in more money but did not control the way it was spent.

Every so often the Sunday Times does articles comparing countries.
We are trying to get it cheap.
Stop increasing the population by allowing relatives to come in for their hips and cataracts and taking priority.

@Theworldisfullofgs

If we privatised or semi privatised we'd have to make sure we didn't end up like the States where you are only one bad illness away from bankruptc.

Personally, I think its the politicisation of healthcard that is the problem. It costs £££££££ to keep rearranging things with no obvious outcome other than enabling governments to de like they are doing something whilst being able to say 'it's too early to tell yet'.

I agree. I think at its core is a fundamental rotten foundation. For a system like the NHS to work (or indeed a system that mixes private and public funding) there needs to be an acceptance that healthcare has a finite capacity to be profitable, most of its benefits are to wider society not a nice figure on a spreadsheet.

One of the biggest failings I observed working over a decade in the NHS was the laughable push making the environment ‘corporate’. So much went into keeping up the facade of a corporate environment when its premise was, frankly, always bollocks. Private corporations don’t just make cuts and savings to increase their budgets, they increase profit. In the drive to make the public happy and think ‘something’ was being done about waste (which there is a lot of) a whole working culture was created to adopt a private business mentality without the side of profit to balance the books. All that’s been achieved in the last decade is a swarm of managers disturbingly talented at saying a lot of things that result in very little. Emperors new clothes.