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?

Vastly increased/increasing population adds to the burden.
The NHS needs reform to do any kind of good service for the people relying on it.
No-one wants to go down the road of American healthcare where people die because they cannot afford treatment but a more European model where insurance is the answer, stopping tourist healthcare, supporting those who cannot afford the premiums and recognise that the current structure (e.g.GPs being independent contractors) does not work.
Local minor injuries/treatment centres that can do the non-urgent cases.

Try to lessen the impact of the numerous PFI contracts that labour under Blair brought in which cost so much that should be going to the front line. They (new labour) have a lot to answer for too.
Oh - and stop the stupid test everyone and ping any contact via the app so the employees are sent home unnecessarily.
Not holding my breath.

@lannistunut

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.

Exactly this! Corrupt government handing out money to their mates and underfunding health care paid for by OUR tax's

Until the government sort out staff retention, this is the future unfortunately.

NHS or private - there are only so many trained staff members in the U.K. in relation to the population.

A private health service in time would entice people to join the ranks for better pay and working conditions (but less AL and pension I expect) creating better service provision but that's years in the making.

For now, a private Heath service instead of the NHS won't open doors quickly, the queue would be just as long with more people trying to jump it 'coz they have to pay now'. And a lot of NHSers disagree with private healthcare so you won't get loads of staff jumping ship to staff these new private super hospitals that take years to build.

None of this helps us with now and coming few years.

It’s tough, I’m waiting for gastroenterologist and orthopaedic surgeons poss for surgery, on my knee, can’t work becuase of it. Nurse so the longer it takes the longer I’m off it’s a vicious cycle of pain and upset and my work are being lovely but I’m an experienced nurse and I won’t To go back to work

There still lots of people in hospital with covid. I’m pretty sure as many people as there was last October (we went into lockdown November). Plus there is a massive backlog of previously cancelled operations. There’s just not enough beds/staff

And of course people on MN always say they'd be very happy to vote for higher taxes/better NHS but the election results for the last 20 years very much speak against that being the reality for the majority of Brits (anyone remember Teresa May's 'dementia tax' which last all of about 10 seconds as a suggestion before being met with disgust/rotten tomatoes/approval ratings plunge?), but maybe Covid will have changed that? I do think most people think it's someone else's problem though, most people think 'the rich' should pay more taxes (conveniently designating the 'rich' as never including themselves) or that 'businesses' should pay more, again forgetting that if businesses need to save money or go outside the UK then job losses will result and no-one wants that either. I don't think there are easy solutions certainly, it's really complex and difficult and certainly not as simple as 'the government should fund it better'...

Absolutely agree with this. I wouldn't pay higher taxes because I don't trust it to be spent on the NHS. But I would be willing to pay a (reasonable) fee for things like GP appointments or blood tests providing the money goes into the NHS. I thought TM's plan was reasonable, if you have the money why wouldn't you you pay for your care? (Speaking as someone whose MIL is self-funding in a £1100 a week care home.)

TMs proposal started a discussion we as a society need to have. But think about who votes most, and how that differs demographically from who posts on MN most...

We at the nhs are on our knees. Staff ill or isolating added to annual leave not taken during the pandemic plus playing catchup. Things are far far from being back to pre pandemic levels.

Lack of staff.

Many of those doctors, nurses and clinicians working through the pandemic have left their professions, are sick with long covid, or burnt out and off sick with stress, or taking career breaks to get their mental health back together.

Private is the only option if you don’t want to wait months/years for routine procedures.

For those asking why I won’t pay for healthcare if I have the means, I have tried!! The waiting list currently for private is longer than my scheduled op in a few weeks, much longer in fact. The receptionist at the private hospital said people are going over to private in droves as they’re not getting the care from the NHS and now private are struggling to cope and have 4 month waiting lists.

Also, my op will cost £5,500 private, we have £6k in savings...it would pretty much wipe us out and leave nothing for an emergency fund should one of us lose our jobs, boiler breaks etc. So I’m reluctant to pay to go private unless I absolutely have to. (And yes before people start I do realise I’m lucky that we have 6k in savings blah blah, it’s hardly an astronomical amount though!!) I’ll try one last time on the NHS.

See people say this sort of thing about America all the time on these threads, but it isn't a binary choice between US style healthcare where it's 100% free market privatised...

Please read my post properly before being outraged. I said not the US, I didn't say it was the only option. Ireland and France both have a hybrid option, both have their flaws as well. Any system does.

The NGS was conceived in a different time. It gets tinkered with but most things are politically driven and short term. I expect, if the NHS, was left to sort itself out, it would develop some kind of hybrid model that was slightly different in each area depending on both the population and the environment.

The NHS has been on it’s knees at breaking point for as long as I can remember. Regardless of what party has been in power.

I can only speak for the one I work in. But we are rammed. A&e is ridiculous most days. We still have more than one ward open for Covid plus ICU/HDU beds being used. Still regularly admitting Covid patients.

But it’s not Covid inpatients causing major issues: It’s like winter with lots of illnesses that people are catching now they are mixing. Also staff are on leave as it’s school holidays and summer, ( lots of staff are owed leave from not taking it during the worst of the pandemic too) or like my ward: staff are catching Covid and are off sick/isolating. If there aren’t enough staff to staff theatres or the ward safety operations can’t happen.

My trust is doing well at still running electives and catching up. We’ve used private and community facilities throughout lockdowns too. But it only takes a couple of staff off sick or influx of patients to take up remaining beds to stop a theatre list.

Someone mentioned the BBC hospital programme. That documents very well the pressures hospitals have to keep surgery going when running low on beds.

See people say this sort of thing about America all the time on these threads, but it isn't a binary choice between US style healthcare where it's 100% free market privatised and if you don't have insurance you're screwed, or the NHS.

No, it isn’t but Tories are taking us slowly but surely down the path towards the US for profit healthcare model.

Yes, the problem is that while non-socialised options other than the US model exist, we all know full fucking well which we'd be most likely to end up with.

@NotPersephone I've skimmed global studies like

www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly#rank

which on the face of it has NHS performance against expenditure might appear reasonable (UK is fourth highest out of 11 richer nations for performance with the fourth smallest spend relative to GDP).

worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world

seems to have the UK as ranking 18th of 181.

I've seen individual specialisms and outcomes rated poor such as those relating to certain cancer outcomes and timeliness of treatment but grateful for references to analyses of overall performance that is 'embarrassingly bad'.

@NotPersephone

I think it’s worse even that *@BoaCunstrictor* - we’re replacing the NHS with a single, for-profit provider. Which means the worst of socialized (no patient choice, same waiting list) with the worst of private (maximizing profit by cheap provision, encouraging low-balling and therefore the barest service).

The British way when it comes to privatisation!

@CFEC

For those asking why I won’t pay for healthcare if I have the means, I have tried!! The waiting list currently for private is longer than my scheduled op in a few weeks, much longer in fact. The receptionist at the private hospital said people are going over to private in droves as they’re not getting the care from the NHS and now private are struggling to cope and have 4 month waiting lists.

Also, my op will cost £5,500 private, we have £6k in savings...it would pretty much wipe us out and leave nothing for an emergency fund should one of us lose our jobs, boiler breaks etc. So I’m reluctant to pay to go private unless I absolutely have to. (And yes before people start I do realise I’m lucky that we have 6k in savings blah blah, it’s hardly an astronomical amount though!!) I’ll try one last time on the NHS.

Yes to this. This week I’ve struggled to get an urgent op on NHS. I tried with my private healthcare which I have with work but rarely use and their waiting list was longer. For lots of ops they rent NHS theatres and there is no space.

FWIW I was told the lack of theatre space was a combo of a backlog of delayed ops from covid and staff shortages (due to covid/isolating).

Private health care is not always as straightforward as it seems. I’ve lived in places were I’ve had to pay for it and it’s a nightmare. Lots of limitations unless you have an extremely expensive policy.

They haven't got enough beds or operating theatres for even the most urgent cases. Dh is a surgeon and seriously stressed by it all. Its unmanageable

@CFEC

But what happens to all these people that need these operations? Do they just have to sit around in pain, probably with little quality of life for another 3-4 years? Not meant in a goady way, I'm genuinely curious, there just doesn't seem to be a contingency plan.

I'm half tempted to just say F it and deplete our savings a fair bit and go private as I really can't wait much longer if this gets cancelled again for a 3rd time but am loathe to do that if it will go ahead but it's the not knowing. I can't plan, just getting fed up of it now.

I appreciate the NHS wasn't in a great state pre-covid, but it just seems madness that a virus that is here to stay, that 87% of the adult population is inoculated against, is still going to grind the NHS to a halt this winter AGAIN.

You have nothing but absolute sympathy from me - I used to be a nurse, and I can appreciate how frustrating it is, to be in your situation, and that of everyone who is waiting in pain or anxiety for a much needed operation.

Unfortunately the NHS has been systematically crippled over the years - even before Covid, it was surviving on the good will of the staff, who were going above and beyond, to make sure that their patients didn’t suffer.

I lost time of the unpaid overtime I did, as an operating theatre nurse, making sure that people’s operations weren’t cancelled. Our surgeons were very good at scheduling the lists of operations, so that they would fit within the time available, but there was no leeway, if problems or complications happened, and things got delayed.

If we hadn’t stayed on, unpaid, to finish lists, people’s operations would have been cancelled - and this was back in the mid 90s, and things have not got any better since then - I stopped working when I had ds3, but I suspect things have got worse.

To give you an example - when I was training, and doing my specialist Theatre training, in the 80s, we would have at least three nurses/student nurses/auxiliaries in theatre for a list (as the scrub nurses who hand the instruments to the surgeon, and the runner, who counts swabs, opens packets, turns equipment on etc etc), and usually at least two of them would be trained to act as the scrub nurse, so one would do the first case, then the second could set up for, and take the second case, with the runner running between us, to open packets, count swabs etc. We could rotate out to have a wee or a cup of coffee and a sit down.

By the time I was working in Theatre a decade later, we routinely did lists with only two members of staff, and if you were lucky, both of them could scrub for cases, but on plenty of occasions I was the only scrub nurse, so I got no break at all, during the whole of the list. As soon as one case finished, it was a scramble to clear the theatre and scrub up again to set for the next case. The surgeons got to have a quick cuppa, but the nursing staff only got one if someone came in and relieved us - and all the other theatres were running on low staffing levels too, so there was often no-one to relieve us.

I am 100% sure that this picture is repeated throughout the NHS, and it meant that there was no contingency whatsoever. People have been saying for years that the NHS was only just coping, and that any major crisis would stretch it too far - and here we are.

But none of this helps people like you, @CFEC, and I am so, so sorry.

The waiting list currently for private is longer than my scheduled op in a few weeks, much longer in fact. The receptionist at the private hospital said people are going over to private in droves as they’re not getting the care from the NHS and now private are struggling to cope and have 4 month waiting lists.

Sounds like what I said - there is only a fixed capacity in the UK for medical care whether it's private or NHS, and that capacity is overstretched. It takes a long time and a lot of money to train more doctors and nurses and to build new hospitals.

I work clinically - I have worked for the NHS for 30 years.

I have never known it to be as awful and scary as it is currently.

Staff vacancies in our department is running at 20%. I work 12.5 hour shifts (which always over run) and I do not stop to even eat during that time. I'm a marathon runner and deem myself to be fit but I am exhausted after a shift.

Workload is huge and I am rushing and cutting corners - this is compromising safety. Colleagues have had adverse outcomes through the pressures put upon them, that they cannot get all the work done. This toll on stress and their mental health is huge. If there's an adverse outcome - it devastates not only the patient and their family, it also devastates us too.

I have of colleagues who I would think of as stoic and really unflappable - they are currently off sick after horrendous shifts where things have gone wrong.

Most clinicians are looking for other jobs.

It's one whole massive downward spiral. The government need to focus their attention on this - the speed of the deterioration of the NHS is alarming as staff are leaving in droves and we haven't any pool of clinicians to replace them.