Do you have faith in the NHS after covid?

[Plumface]

Given that patients were discharged to nursing homes, and other patients not admitted despite hospitals not being full, also that GPs and dentists seemed to close down, but PR/marketing story professionals still got paid, are you still happy to entrust your care to the NHS?

YABU = I trust the NHS and it's great
YANBU = I don't trust the NHS

@SweetPeaGirl And constant suicidal ideation due to cPTSD and chronic insomnia, for which I prescribed myself Trazodone after reading about it online. No NHS doctor ever recommended this, why? It’s for treating PTSD and effective off label for insomnia too.

Seen a few similar threads/posts like this one.
Getting the rhetoric out there that NHS is not fit for purpose and needs to be run on a different model (one which will cost us more and allow the torys mates to make a ton of money).
So when they do actually do destroy the NHS we will just lie down and take it.

Because it would cost more. Most people that work in the nhs would like a European model. Great idea. Can you persuade Rishi?

@SweetPeaGirl My DP has visibly deformed ankles, since he was a teen, and nothing done about it. He’s in constant pain and his job is in his feet all day.

The Cumberlege Report: First Do No Harm describes the poor treatment of women in healthcare, it’s demoralising.

*on his feet, even

I really wish I hadn’t read this when I am preparing for my latest set of night shifts having worked extra to help out yet again recently. I am honestly wondering after 12 years as a doctor why the hell I am doing this. Posts like this make me want to leave.

Actually the NHS isn't too bad with efficiency. It's a massive organization and there is waste but other countries aren't much better - they actually spend a lot of money deciding on who is eligible for what, processsing payments etc. Things which don't happen much in the NHS. The US is atrocious for that - anyone who has ever lived there and had to deal with any kind of illness will know the nightmare of the endless bills appearing, the random insurance rejections, the copays, the deductibles, the wrong codes being used, the hours on the phone appealing decisions/trying to correct mistakes. The NHS is the paragon of efficiency in comparison.

Over ten percent of the NHS budget goes on PFI, initiated by labour.
Another ten or so percent goes down the toilet buying overpriced crap. the Tories cream off their cut with contracts and private hospitals charging the NHS a fortune for well, anything they can get away with.
What's the cost for each covid vaccination?
Then the drug companies all doing rather well and who is buying them up?

Is the NHS perfect? No. Show me a health system that is.

Has it been chronically underfunded whilst being expected to do more and more complex things? Yes.

Has it come through the pandemic unharmed? No. But sadly a lot of that was thanks to the mistakes made at a central level and government level. We tripled our ITU capacity overnight, had new walls built by our estates staff to create red zones in a matter of days, tried to ration our PPE when we had low stocks, we couldn’t save everyone and those deaths will haunt me until I die.

@countbackfromten

I really wish I hadn’t read this when I am preparing for my latest set of night shifts having worked extra to help out yet again recently. I am honestly wondering after 12 years as a doctor why the hell I am doing this. Posts like this make me want to leave.

Why, unless you feel the bad care applies to you and if it doesn't be proud of what you do, that said the NHS is failing many and Not talking about it helps no one.

Denmark has basically the same system as the UK. A lot of the same issues but tt works better there for two reasons in my opinion:

1. More funding.
2. The use of the identity numbers - it's all linked up. You actually can't go to A and E unless it's an absolute life or death emergency without having being given an appointment through the equivalent of 111. If you do, you'll be at the very back of the queue and wait for hours. Otherwise, you're seen almost immediately.

@mummykel16 because it is soul destroying to read when I know what myself and colleagues have been through over the past nearly two years. Is that really so hard to understand?

The NHS already had the worst waiting times since records began, since from before covid, February 2019.

@countbackfromten And equally many people are destroyed by being unable to access (correct) diagnosis or treatment from the NHS. Should we just be silent about it because it hurts your feelings?

I think its a lottery.

Slashed my cornea in half during 1st lockdown and despite my eye jelly literally flapping about I was not seen as bar to entry to A&E. Luckily it never got infected but I still cant see properly out of that eye 2 years later. Its permanently damaged now - whos knows if that would have been resolvable if seen at the time. I may be angry about that for no reason. But I do know if it got infected I might have lost that eye. I should have been seen.

Compared to my current care whilst pregnant; started off very poorly with 5 minute GP slots with midwives who didnt even know what toxoplasmosis was - to being transferred due to a previous MH episode to a high risk team. Hour long midwive appointments with an experienced team, consultant psychiatrist sessions, a support team on standby. The care has been exceptional.

So I think its OK once your 'in the system' - which can be a fight initially.

[quote countbackfromten]@mummykel16 because it is soul destroying to read when I know what myself and colleagues have been through over the past nearly two years. Is that really so hard to understand?[/quote]
Of course not, but it isn't about the good health care professionals it's about the bad ones and the system itself.

because it is soul destroying to read when I know what myself and colleagues have been through over the past nearly two years. Is that really so hard to understand?

It’s also very hard for people who have not received treatment they need, have received substandard care, cant see a GP and have seen loved ones suffer or die unnecessarily amongst other things. Surely it’s not hard to see why people are fed up?

@AutomaticMoon I didn’t say that. But it is soul destroying to read and I am allowed to give my point of view too.

Didn't have faith in the NHS pre-covid. And certainly don't now.

The Prime Minister , or anybody else in Government, does not make clinical decisions regarding treatment or care of patients. What they do do is provide funding and the NHS and healthcare amounts to 40% of all Government spending. Additionally they have just awarded a further £12billion on top of the planned annual rise in funding. At the current rate NHS funding could rise to 50% of all state spending.

On top of this Boris Johnson made an incredibly brave decision to buy into numerous Covid vaccine programmes, way before any other European government. In fact it caused considerable diplomatic upset with the Europeans. The French confiscating shipments ordered and paid for by this country.

The NHS is also as much a political entity as it is a heathcare provider. It has grown to be the third largest single employer in the world and any serious attempt to reform or restructure it would be virtually impossible.

If ppl want to see further funding commitments to NHS Healthcare then they need to accept an increase in personal taxation, along with all the other increases in the cost of living and heating their homes.

@Stripyhoglets1

Seen a few similar threads/posts like this one. Getting the rhetoric out there that NHS is not fit for purpose and needs to be run on a different model (one which will cost us more and allow the torys mates to make a ton of money). So when they do actually do destroy the NHS we will just lie down and take it.

Exactly. And what is that model exactly? Because every healthcare model has its pros and cons. You might pay for varying levels of care (which is fine but quite different to the NHS model), you might have significant out of pocket expenses (also fine but people in the UK are very used to care being free at the point of service and brings in issues of equity and access) - no one model is perfect. Although can definitively say the US model is the worst in the developed world!

It's important to separate the model itself from the issue of funding and implementation. It could be a good model which is poorly managed and funded. The NHS isn't a bad model.

@Herani

Staff are generally wonderful, hard-working and amazing. As an institution it’s archaic and restrictive. I work in mental health an am fed up with it’s focus on CBT. It needs to allow access to more types of psychotherapy and stop BACP from monopolising therapy. So many other evidence-based therapies can help. I left to work in private practice. Rant over.

CBT doesn’t even work for cPTSD but it’s all I’ve ever been offered, for sexual abuse suffered in foster care and chronic insomnia and suicidal ideation. I’m only here by the grace of God and reading online and buying my own Trazodone with minimum wage income from care work. Same with a chronic embedded UTI, had to self treat with long term antibiotics.

@Mossstitch

I'm no expert but worked in NHS for 20 years and I would say it's not underfunded so much, I don't think, but more that there is so much waste. Don't get me started on Matt Hancock's wonderful PPE which is so badly made that it often rips trying to get it on, you can throw 3 away before you manage to get one that is usable. So many matrons wandering around with managers with clipboards whose wages would be better funding extra HCAs so the elderly people could get to the toilet when needed which would save a fortune in the incontinence pads routinely put on everybody whether incontinent or not! And as *@mummykel16* says the prices the NHS is charged for everything is astronomical. I accidentally saw a price list years ago and a simple sliced loaf was four times the price of the supermarket, when I questioned this I was told that they have a list of suppliers they have to order from so they cannot shop around. Somebody is making a lot of money out of this and it should be illegal.

Oh God, I saw a price list too years ago and remember gluten free bread bought by NHS being 7 x the price of it in the supermarket!

@FangsForTheMemory

Are you shilling for the Tories, OP? You sound as though you are. The NHS is plagued by chronic underfunding, and that is because the Tories want to replace it with a private health system that will make them and their friends money. Questions like your last, that suggest the problem is with the NHS per se, only serve to promote the Tory agenda.

They’re already making money from it, as per unusable PPE contracts

@Mossstitch @mummykel16

Quality of healthcare in Japan
For 1% more of its GDP than the UK, the country has created the 12th-best healthcare system in the world, according to a 2018 study published in The Lancet and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That's 11 places above the UK.