To think the NHS is just not working?

[Caketeaandwine]

My toddler has an ear infection. Repeatedly rang the doctor and couldn’t get through. Eventually got through and couldn’t get an appointment, rang 111, had to listen to a lot of messages about covid, eventually through to someone - who rang my GP and sorted a (telephone) appointment.

Isn’t it time we admitted it’s not working at all as a system?

The NHS is not fit for purpose. All of the blame is being shifted onto GPs who are under tremendous pressure but the majority of general public can’t seem to understand this and gobble up whatever the daily mail feeds them.

Well, you did get an appointment.

But yes, like any gigantic state-run organisation a lot of improvements could be made.

I totally agree. It needs dismantled and we need something better like the mixed system most western European countries have, such as France and Germany. Still free at the point of use, but it actually works! The NHS is utterly dreadful to use and as bad to work in. Awful, awful organisation

There aren't enough GPs, as a result of insufficient medical school places and the fact that being a GP is a lot of stress for less money than they'd get elsewhere. This is not actually the fault of the NHS as a system - how on earth could it be, unless you believe that the solution to a shortage of GPs is to shrink the number of patients to match? It's the result of choices made by government.

I agree to an extent. My ds had an ear infection recently and he was seen ok the same day. It could be area dependent, but at our surgery we get through almost immediately and children are almost always given priority appointments.

Yanbu and it's completely deliberate. Boris is desperate to do away with it completely make us all pay for health care. The longer he lets it fall apart the more amenable we will be to the change when it comes.

OP Some GP practices are better than others it may be down to staffing, the owner or any other factor.

I'm a GP and we have to keep a certain number of slots free for 111 to book into directly.

They're telephone appointments and a lot of the stuff they book in is absolutely inappropriate (either not urgent for that day or someone who clearly needs A&E - acute chest pain etc)
We have to do it cos we're told to do it but it doesn't work.

Hope he got sorted at least.

It’s not ok to have to ring 111 because GP surgery will not answer! No excuse covers this poor service.

I know my DD has found, in London, that she’s number 30 in the queue when ringing. Then they shut the calls down before she gets to no 1. So trying to get any appointment has been a nightmare. It was quicker to write to her GP and request the follow up appointment she was told to make. GP made one for her. What a state of affairs!

It’s poor in many areas. My DM is in hospital at the moment. It’s unbelievably poor because there is no attention paid to the whole person. Staff on computer stations all day. Covid on the ward for a second time in 9 days. It’s difficult to see how it can be improved other than finding more staff. We need to look at how other countries work and stop treating the nhs as a sacred cow. It needs to be killed off and reinvented.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a state funded system, but the NHS as it is just isn’t working. There are too many patients and not enough clinicians. It’s basic maths.
I’ve been a GP for 25 years, and yesterday for the first time ever, we had to close our doors. We didn’t have any staff off sick, it was just a normal Monday. But the number of patients needing/wanting appointments meant that we overwhelmed. We would have had to work from 8am till midnight to see everyone, and that wouldn’t have been safe. The on call doctor, also very experienced, was nearly in tears. We ended up telling patients to call 111 or go to A&E, which would of course be equally busy. But at least in A&E you can go home when your shift ends.
It’s a mess.

I think it’s area dependent. Non urgent operations are taking a long time where I live but urgent stuff like the cancer pathway diagnosis (which I’m on) are working very well and we can get a gp phone call the same day.

Well I think it depends where you are. My experience is that my child will always be seen on the day if she needs to at the GP. Also have been fast tracked in A&E with her and found the staff provided and exceptional level of care. I did find my postnatal care (when I lived in london) woefully inadequate however.

It's working very well in my experience but that is possibly because of my illness.
Diagnosed with leukaemia at the start of lockdown, 3 lots of chemo and then a stem cell transplant.
Go to clinic once or twice a week when any problems are quickly dealt with.
Recently I had a scan within an hour which uncovered DVT in both arms.
As I have recurrent infections needing admissions I asked if there was someone I could see who could try to get to the bottom of what was going on. This was on a Thursday, the following Monday the infectious diseases person was at clinic to see me. I can't ask for anything better

@tiredanddangerous

Yanbu and it's completely deliberate. Boris is desperate to do away with it completely make us all pay for health care. The longer he lets it fall apart the more amenable we will be to the change when it comes.

Do please stop spreading this hard left nonsense. It is fiction it can not happen! The change to a mixed system would be bad enough!

Are you shilling for Boris Johnson, op? IT sounds like it. The NHS is fit for purpose, but it has suffered from long-term underfunding. Blame the government, not the NHS.

I think the NHS is awful for old people at the moment as it’s so difficult to get in-person appointments. My DF in his 80s really needs to see a doctor because of his deteriorating medical condition. His surgery were offering telephone appointments only, but he finds them very difficult because of his hearing.

I think for younger people it’s easier to adapt to everything being online (eg at my doctor’s they will often ask to email them a photo) but older people often can’t manage that and just need to speak to someone in person! I don’t know why this is so difficult.

In the end DF got the same advice from his GP as above - go to A&E - where he had to explain everything all over again because they don’t seem to get the notes from the GP. He found it all exhausting.

I am not blaming the staff, it’s obvious how hard they work. We just don’t seem to have enough medical staff and the organisation doesn’t seem to be working.

Sadly, after so many years of chronic underfunding and neglect by successive Tory governments, it is inevitable that it’s on its knees. It needs proper funding to do its job. Sadly, Johnson and his friends will make far more money selling it off a piece at a time, so they have no desire to give it the financial support it desperately needs.

My elderly neighbour has multiple health issues and his life during covid revolved round district nurse visits, scans, cateract operations, blood tests and medical equipment deliveries. My family is registered at the same doctors surgery as my neighbour. My son couldn't get an appointment for his chest infection (his last appointment was over 10 years ago).
It was in contrast to our neighbour who seemed to have weekly appointments and routine surgery.

We must be lucky as getting phone appointments is easy and Dr has twice asked me to go in after phone appointment (both same morning).

If you look at waiting times etc, it was fine leading up to 2010. Then something happened (austerity) and everything fell off a cliff.

It is not a problem with 'the NHS' per se, it is just that it receives significantly less funding than health systems in other countries like France and Germany.

@Acheyknees
We have noticed this too. I rarely see anyone! If I need to (about once every 3-4 years) it’s because I need to. I’m not going to A&E. That’s grossly unfair on A&E. We all know GPS are retiring early on huge pensions or working part time. They don’t provide the service they did because they are getting to their pension max (you pay tax above the £1.25 million threshold) so they leave and go part time or are “consultants” to their own business. Then they say there are not enough GPS. They could work until they are 65!

As for too many patients and closing the surgery! Yes. You might have to be all hands on deck for a few days. As for saying it’s safer in A&E - heaven help us! What an attitude.

We do need a hybrid system of care. I frankly don’t care who provides it. My mother never has checkups instigated by her GP. She’s in her late 90s. She’s left alone - they don’t even check her blood pressure pills are working so she had pills for under 70 year olds when she was 90! They caused kidney damage. I’m frankly sick of this sacred political cow. It needs culling and elements of it re-invented.

It's not just GPs.
I've been referred to a pain clinic and had a letter yesterday to say I will probably end up waiting more than the 18 week limit. I'm still waiting to hear when I'm likely to get a neurology appointment (the GP surgery took nearly five weeks to type and send the letter).
An elderly relative was told last week that they will likely reach the 'end stage' of their illness (not cancer, but still life-threatening) on the next six to twelve months. Their follow-up appointment is not until July...

I think you mean 'the GP system is just not working'.

That I agree with. One crucial key area of primary care is basically privatised and run by people who pay themselves what they see fit and decide their own rules on when to open, working hours, under what circumstances they can choose to see people etc. That does not happen in the rest of the NHS. It is a bizarre situation and the reason why A&E is overrun and not working for people who are genuinely in need of emergency care.

It worked a lot better years ago. It's Tory mismanagement.

The obvious solution is to re-nationalise primary care and bring GPs back into the proper NHS under the same terms and conditions as every other NHS department and service, who don't get to pick and choose who they see, when they open, what they are paid, their specific working hours.
That doesn't mean I think GPs are overpaid or don't work enough, just that operating under their own individual terms and conditions differently to the rest of the NHS is not working out for the patient, for A&E, or for the rest of the NHS.