The state of the NHS right now is terrifying

[Faciadipasta]

I am feeling genuinely scared for us as a country health care wise. I was reading today about a chap who died of internal bleeding while his family were kept on hold to 999 for 10 minutes as nobody even answered the phone.
Then there are all the people who die while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, because they are all lined up.outside the hospitals unable to offload their patients.
People can't see a GP at all, so there are bound to be loads who are dying of things that could have been prevented if they'd been seen. Waits at A and E are enormous and they don't even have enough chairs so people with serious injuries or illnesses are having to just sit on the floors in the corridors.
We're actually starting to feel like one of those warzone countries that you see on the news and it is scaring me shitless.
I mean even in the US you wouldn't just be left to die because there was nobody to answer the phone although admittedly you'd probably end up bankrupt for paying back the care, but at least you wouldn't be dead!
I personally feel like we have no care, no safety net. And it's scary.
Will it get better? What can be done?

Absolutely agree. I’ve put off going to my GP for quite a few health issues.

Completely agree. We no longer have a reliable or suitable for use healthcare system. It's terrifying......

Unfortunately this government doesn't want the NHS to exist in its current form. When whatever replaces it comes in (privatised) they're hoping we'll be pathetically grateful that ambulances start turning up again.

Won't be long before a poster comes along and says it can't exist in its current form/it's a money pit. That's the narrative.

As a nation we need to make it loud and clear that we will not tolerate this, it’s a state of emergency and should be declared as such by the Government. They won’t do this because they know they caused it. When the HCPs strike they must have 100% support from the public. It’s time to wake up and demand better public services. Shame on us all for allowing this to happen.

Over stretched service.

Also, mumsnetters recommending A&E for a tummy bug.

In the US you wouldn’t receive care if you couldn’t provide proof of funds beforehand.

Much of what you’ve quoted is the extreme stuff - yes it’s happening but it’s not universal. Yes we should demand better but there’s no point getting hysterical.

We need to make some serious changes to the NHS (in line with some European countries rather than the US system). It’s better to pay for some aspects of healthcare than receive no healthcare.

I think the NHS wasn't built to be the service provider it's morphed into today and it's simply not fit for purpose for our large / ageing / ill population. I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but it's just an endless money pit right now!

A&E is being used for things it shouldn’t.
‘I think every one should have a GP 24 hours a day, so that none A&E patients can be directed there instead.

I blame the government. If they funded it properly it would improve. I think they want a US system as it fits their capitalist ideology.

It’s well funded just totally mismanaged.

Yes but the NHS is the ‘best healthcare system in the world’ don’t you know? And it’s ‘free’ so we should all be grateful grateful grateful. Doctors and nurses work so hard - criticising the NHS is criticising them!
(Stands outside house. Clap clap clap! Pots banging!)
I’m sad it has come to this - people actually dying because the phones can’t be answered - for more people to start clicking on to how backwards the UK health system is. It’s like living in a rotting house and not realising how damaged it is until the roof caves in and falls on your head. How are people so blind?

Five posts down and you'll find that poster,

Indeed! Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket 😁

It is terrifying but not simply queuing at emergency departments. Sometimes ambulances could take patients to other, quieter hospitals nearby, but choose to sit and wait outside very busy ones for up to twelve hours.
The very seriously I’ll are ‘pulled’ into the emergency departments and get treated. The issue isn’t those waiting in ambulances but those left lying on football fields for hours or trapped after a fall at home.

In other places people are held in entirely inappropriate situations such as corridors because there are no hospital beds available, few cottage hospital beds and few care home beds or domiciliary care services available.

It is costing lives.

Please don’t blame the patients. Our local A&E is not full of time wasters, it’s full of very sick patients that need emergency care. There are no beds for them and nowhere near enough staff to care for them.

I have a deep and visceral hatred of the Tories for many things, chief among them what they have don’t to the NHS.

But the fact is, its done now and I don’t think it can be rescued in its current form. We do need a system similar to that in France or the Netherlands.

To the poster who said we should have access to a G.P twenty four hours a day. That’s great in principle but we haven’t even got enough G.Ps to cover the current working day.

I've had the misfortune of watching my father and father-in-law die at two different hospitals in two cities, miles apart, over the last six weeks. Everything the OP says is true. Staff wonderful at both, but overwhelmed. A&E flooded with those who can't get to their GP or who need social or mental health care. This is deliberate.

Nobody 'chooses' to sit outside busy hospitals. There is always a reason for conveying a patient to a particular hospital.

One of the major problems is how it's run - it's a joke. The level of 'sickness' is off the scale. Also, you still get paid 'shift' and various other allowances when you are off ill. It heavily relies on 'bank' nurses that cost an absolute fortune. Why go fur an 'official' NHS job, when you can get paid the same for 2 day's work? The truth is, A LOT is staff know how to play the system like a fiddle and it's haemorrhaging money. It needs to be run like a business.

Not sure we're the rest of that post went!!

There's always a reason for conveying a patient to a particular hospital

In the US you wouldn’t receive care if you couldn’t provide proof of funds beforehand

This. I remember one of the Scottish football commentators bursting his appendix during the World Cup in America 1994.
His colleague took him to the nearest hospital, but forgot the insurance policy. They wouldn't let them in the door. The sick man was left on the ground outside the hospital while the colleague went back to their hotel for the insurance policy. Days before having emails on mobile phones.
Don't ask me why that story sticks in my head but it seems horrendous that someone who was ill and in pain was just abandoned without help.

But blaming people for turning up at A and E with a stomach bug is unfair. Nobody would do that intentionally because they'd be waiting 18 hours or so to be seen!
But people probably ARE turning up for 'minor' things because realistically there is no alternative.
My 7 year old had an obvious ear infection and the GP refused to see him as they were 'too busy' and apparently antibiotics aren't given anyway unless it's a severe ear infection. The advice was if he begins screaming in pain to just take him to A & E! We paid for him to be seen privately at a hearing aid shop locally who looked at his ear, realised that he had a severe inner ear infection that had already affected his hearing and prescribed antibiotics. Luckily his hearing does appear to have come back, but I dont know whether it is back to 100% because we don't have the money for another appointment, we've already spent £100 and we just don't have it.
So would we have been wrong to go to A and E? I mean it shouldn't have been necessary as we should have been seen by a GP but if you can't and you don't have £100 what are you meant yo do? Leave a kid in agony and let them go deaf?

Definitely not the case. There are definitely many times crews choose to sit outside hospitals when there are three others within half hour drive, including two with trauma centres. I understand thrombolysis for strokes and cardiac catheterisation is not at all hospitals but they’re not the patients being sat in ambulances. It’s older patients with UTIs and pneumonia that can go anywhere who are in the back of ambulances waiting. Some crews are choosing not to use intelligent conveyancing.