Angry at long nhs waits

[glitterwobbles]

I get daily headaches and nerve pain in arms and legs.Was diagnosed with cervical myelopathy last summer.
Was referred to another hospital as mine does not have any neurosurgeons and need surgery to prevent it getting worse and possible paralysis.
Have been told that the wait for an appointment is 18 months.
I know that the NHS is struggling after covid. But I have a condition that will get worse and if i had the money could have the surgery privately within weeks.
Just feel let down by NHS and as if the list keeps getting longer as when I was referred it was 10 months. Feel as if I will never get to the top

@foreplace I may be the only person on this thread who agrees with you. I have a thyroid condition so all my prescriptions have been free since I was 29. I don't understand why just the levothyroxine was free. Further, I'm almost 62. Turning 60 rendered me free from prescription charges notwithstanding the fact they were free anyway due to the hypothyroidism. However, I still work full-time in a professional role and earn over £100k.

On the other hand there have been years when DH and I have between us paid £250k tax pa and received pretty much bugger all from the NHS except institutionalised rudeness and sloppy standards

It’s always worth contacting the medical secretary of the consultant you are going to see. You never know, they may have a cancellation, or be able to bump you up the list.

I’m also on a 2 year NHS waiting list. If I had £2.5k to spare I could be seen within a couple of weeks. I have private medical insurance too. It doesn’t cover this problem.

@RosesAndHellebores if you've paid so much tax, your prescriptions were a good investment of NHS resources. That is how a tax-funded system works.

Granted, in my system you'd probably have paid a bit more tax.

How about taking away student fees for nurses and Dr's providing they render the equivalent of 10 years' full time to the NHS with the only exception illness. If they don't they pay it back

Yes i bet you'd have '000s queuing up to tie themselves into 10 years of rubbish pay, hi stress and poor working conditions if that was the deal..... not.

We managed not to charge tuition fee's 12 years ago, why can't we now?
its purely a political choice.

YANBU to be upset but sadly it's all part of the plan to privatise it. Yes there's room for improvement ITO management but this is also very much a funding issue. We are one of the cheapest health services by capita in the developed world. Unfortunately we have a society, government and media who'd rather demonise the frontline staff for this mess and let a once world class health service go under than admit that we simply all need to pay more for it. Of course though it suits the people in power more to quietly dismantle the NHS, systematically demoralise the people working for it and hand all the work to private contractors. Meanwhile the majority of people working for the NHS are at breaking point and the public have no idea just how much worse and more expensive it will be when we're all going to Virgin health for our hip replacements.... At least we all clapped though eh...

I am not a tory......but the NHS needs long term planning

That is never going to happen whilst it continues to be used as a political football by governments, long term planning is never 'sexy' enough for politics.

When labour were in power, there were no long waiting lists

My DH has a shoulder problem. He had an NHS referral to get surgery in 2019, had interim steroid injections, MRI/X Rays, his surgery was booked for April 2020.

On 22nd March 2020 (day 2 of the first lockdown), he had a Zoom call with the anaesthesiologist for his pre surgery assessment. Being so early in the pandemic & lockdown, the guy said that everything has gone into chaos, so 🤷‍♀️ when the surgery would take place - he estimated a delay until the summer of 2020.

Of course, everything was understandably put on hold.

In May this year, DH had a routine appointment at our GP. While there, he asked if there was any movement on his shoulder surgery.

GP looked at his notes & reported that DH had been discharged post surgery! GP sighed & told DH he was the 5th patient who the BUPA/NHS had been discharged without surgery; he suspected it was a command from ‘on high’ in the NHS to reduce waiting time figures.

So now DH is back on the waiting list to star the whole process again, with a 1st appointment to see the same Consultant in July this year. And the new wait time is 18 months to surgery.

DH is in a lot of pain, his shoulder hangs 3 inches lower that the other because the joint is so damaged.

In the grand scheme of things, his shoulder is nothing compared to other critical injuries & illnesses. But there is a knock on effect with his movement, ability to do things etc.

Personally, I wouldn’t piss on a Tory if they were on fire. There has been a bloody obvious decline in NHS services. Nursing & Consultant friends are burnt out, several have moved to the private sector. Others feel bound to the service & feel guilty if they leave what they call ‘a sinking ship’.

I get pissed with the government on a daily basis. There would be so much money if we closed tax loopholes that allow big companies like Amazon to legally swerve paying tax (FFS, my total tax I paid from my business in April was more than Amazon paid, an I have a business that has a turnover a MILLIONTH the size of Amazon’s)!

The Tories will continue to run the NHS into the ground; they want the private sector to step in, they want high value businesses to stay in the UK, they have no motivation to pay a fair rate of Universal Credit (most in receipt of UC are working!), they really don’t give a stuff if people are forced to nick nappies & staple foods from Tesco (because Tesco’s insurances & pricing factor in losses, so it’s not the Torie’s problem).

It is a party of greed.

Actually the ‘restructure using discount retailers’ isn’t such a shocking idea. The first thing they would do (in a socialised health care model) would be to slash the budgets of specialities like neurosurgery which cost an absolute fucking fortune and treat a minuscule fraction of the population, and instead plough the money into recruiting an army of care workers to support elderly frail people at home and an equally huge group of people to support weight loss and smoking cessation programmes.
You’d get a much bigger bang for your buck.
Thing is the NHS isn’t a profit making organisation. Yet.

I also agree. Retired senior NHS manager.

You are targeting the elderly, yet everyone who lives in Scotland and Wales get free prescriptions

It's both- in that funding is provided for the wrong things. Too much focus on trying to make it look better when employing more staff would make it be more effective.
The number of meetings I've been in where the discussions have been around what scheme can be employed to hit the targets, rather than saying we can only reach those targets if we have more staff ( for example everyone being given a phone call two weeks after referral, then put on a waiting list for 18 months means the target of assessment in 4 weeks has been met...)
The focus is wrong- the targets don't help improve services, just take money away from clinical services by employing 'managers'.

The problem is that people have been bulldozed into think all the NHS problems are down to tory funding .

The reality is the problem is multi facited waste and fraud is massive in the NHS costing billions , people's shit life choices making a huge unnecessary demand ,processes that aren't fit for purpose wasting millions .
Staffing in our trust loads of consultants have resigned and come back as locums naming there price and holding the trust to ransom demanding eye watering fees for clinics because they know the trust has no choice procurement is a joke spending millions more than they need and this is just a few of the problems not funding related .

What I find more disappointing is Keir starmers wife work for the NHS and will know the above problem all too well but because the above don't score political point he's not interested .

PLEASE PLEASE don't be fooled into think all the problems are down to funding ask anyone who works in the NHS.

May be of interest:

Information and guidance for patients waiting for a hospital consultation, treatment or surgery, region by region (England only). Data updated weekly:

www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk

NHS management is crap because a) nobody has any training or background in management and b) closed-loop recruitment: pay is too low to attract people from the commercial world, you often need a clinical qualification for management roles, and too many roles are short term secondments that nobody from outside will take as they will be out of a job in 6 months; and too many roles are for internal candidates only. Some of the managers are fantastic, but that doesn’t mean they can manage.

If I have to read another 100-page “strategy” with no objectives, no action plan and no reference to overlapping “strategies” I will scream. And cry, thinking of all the hours of work that went into it.

@rwalker How do you know what Starmer is interested in or not? How would you stop people resigning and coming back as Locums?

Consultants have always been able to do highly paid private work, maybe if NHS work wasn't so stressful, they'd do more of it?

Evidence please on "massive" fraud in the NHS.

On procurement, the NHS has to deal with the huge numbers of private companies the Tories have introduced - v time consuming and v expensive.

Yes i asked my DD who works in the NHS, if funding is a large factor? she looked at me as if i was mad, anyone who works in our local hospital knows its under funded and that leads directly to under staffing.

How much is private treatment? I'd get a loan or try and borrow the money. It's wrong and you shouldn't have to but when it's your health, principles go out the window.

We waited 2 years for a specialist cardiology appointment for DD. Meanwhile we saw him privately and she was on medication within a month after the NHS referral. I can't imagine how poorly she'd be if we'd had to wait for the NHS appointment as she was deteriorating rapidly.

One of the most disappointing things about having a sick DD is finding out just how badly the NHS has been able to look after her. In her case it hasn't just been lack of funding and waiting times, but lack of care, interest and compassion. We all have PTSD from how she's been treated.

Our trust now does nursing apprenticeships , in 6 years they have trained up nearly 30 nurses/nursing associates.
We wouldn't of got them any other way.
Most of our new staff as over seas nurses now as no one in their right mind would come into medicine right now.

Side point. My daughters are epileptic. One has had fantastic experiences with the nhs. Now on the waiting list for surgery. 2nd daughter waited 2 years for an mri scan to find she has lesions on the brain. She's now having a panic as she needs a repeat scan and she's having symptoms of unsteadiness, nausea and headaches. Symptoms she's had for the past year that are getting worse. Symptoms she thought was the epilepsy. Changes in her behaviour. Worrying

The whole thing needs a radical rehaul. Soup to nuts. Its remit needs to be redefined, plus it's funding. We also need to look at staffing (I agree about the outrageous fees of locums, my friend is absolutely coining it). It probably requires more management, not less, but better quality and more skilled.

It needs to be a cross party issue, not a right/left debate.

Just pouring more money into the dysfunction would be a terrible decision. It may well need considerably more funding, but systemic issues need to be fixed first.

Nothing to do with Covid…

There also wasn’t Covid. The NHS didn’t have this major problem until 2 years ago.

The problems are down to sustained underfunding which both major political parties are responsible. The problem is that the Tories are doing it on steroids. Big influencers in the Tory party have shamelessly and blatantly admited that they don't want an NHS any more. They have knowingly made changes which were designed only to piss off and demoralise the workforce (eg junior dr contracts, removing bursaries for nurses) and they allow the media to demonise this workforce and latch onto false or mossguided news stories rather than admit that the problem is about leadership and funding from above not the staff or the patients stuck in this awful system. Of course funding is an issue. The NHS is grossly underfunded. This is the main elephant in the room. There may be other things that can be marginally improved but everything else is just smokescreens. Find me the evidence that we adequately fund the NHS when it's one of the most poorly funded health services in the developed world

I wonder why Chris Whitty and JVT both made the point of the NHS being run down to shocking levels right at the very start of the Covid broadcasts, if that wasn't the case. Chris Whitty was very vocal about why we were in crisis, the media decided not to run with it, though. I can remember seeing a Consultant in 2011 who was thinking of resigning because none of the equipment supplied by a government minister's friend was fully fit for purpose and it wasn't the cheapest bid. He could see the shape of things to come. We know from day one of the Torys coming to power that money was directed to their friends. The budget cuts and none funding of social care, the austerity cuts, including those across the benefit system has caused a crisis in sectors which work alongside the NHS. Things aren't going to get any better.

There's far too many middle managers on ridiculous salaries. I've just left my job as a band 3 medical secretary, I had a band 4 line manager, then a band 5 manager above her then above her we had a band 7! All for one department. It's a fucking joke