We ride at dawn - for the NHS

[GloGirl]

Seriously, are we the public going to do anything about this? Can we coordinate a mass protest/march? Mini protests outside hospitals? Has everyone been writing to their MP?

I can't read these headlines any more, it's breaking my heart. I was sure during covid it would force the govt to reconsider its treatment of the NHS - that it would force a change in priority for social care, pay, structures, staffing.

How did we hit a new low, and just keep going? Who is with me??

Pay care staff a decent wage like we pay the nurses and get more staff working in Adult care rolls, more beds in care homes, more high dependency care home beds and staff THEN you could maybe start to fix the NHS. Right now its blocked from the bottom. There are 12,000 medically fit people in hospital beds because they cant be discharged into care.

This sole focus on the NHS is stupid and so short sighted. Our carers who look after the elderly and disabled, visiting them in their homes or working in care homes deserve a better payrise than NHS staff do. That's not to say NHS shouldn't get a payrise, but no one is getting a payrise of the rate they want. DH got 2% and he is the emergency services too.

Idk much about Australian politics but I would think that it is also right wing then. New Labour here is right wing so maybe Labor is too.

I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. If you’re pro Corbyn then majority will be to right of that

But to public he felt too left and didn’t do well

I find that U.K. votes quite centrally though

The Tory policy of allowing annual net migration of over 500,000 people into the country must surely increase the pressure on the NHS - would Labour reduce that significantly?

That's kind of my point - Corbyn was once centre left. Now he's far left, according to the shifting political compass in the UK - his politics haven't changed.

@Cuppasoupmonster

European countries spend more of their gdp on healthcare too and most do have charges or additional means tested insurance.

The free at the point of delivery system at the price we are willing to pay in taxes wasn't set up for our aging population with complex now treatable medical conditions.

Like many households, everyone is on prescription meds for something and one member has a complex condition she would have died as an infant of 50 years ago that cost circa £20k in medication costs alone per annum! It's the problem in microcosm but I don't have a solution

Can anyone who thinks that this has always happened/th is happens every winter and the problem is the way the NHS is run explain this graph? Why did the NHS suddenly become so badly run?

I’m a nurse and this is the problem. We need bodies on the ground, but who in their right mind would enter this profession now?
I currently look after more very sick babies than I should on most shifts because we’re short staffed. We should be 1:1 for our sickest patients, we’re almost always 1:2. It’s a very emotionally charged environment to work in and we’re spread so very thinly, it’s so difficult.
Tell someone that may have been considering training to become a nurse, that this is what they’ll face once qualified. Then tell them that once qualified they’ll have at least £27k of student loans to pay back. Then tell them that we’ve had real terms pay cuts for over a decade and the government are currently refusing to even come to the negotiating table to discuss improving our pay. If they had any sense they’d tell you to stick the job, they’ll go somewhere else where they’ll be paid better and valued more.

Every single government-run institution since the dawn of time has been bloated and poorly run. It is an inevitable consequence of working outside of market forces and the pressures they create.

That said, the seminal issue appears to be with the GPs, where waiting times are concerned. Over Xmas they all go on holiday and your only avenue for any kind of medical advice is 111. I came up against this on Xmas eve, and it turns out that I can't even throw money at the problem because all the private doctors are off as well.

111 inevitably sends you to A&E, even for blatantly non-serious matters (not that we ended up going).
This is partially understandable because nobody wants to accidentally miss something that could be serious.

Result: loads of people turning up because they have nowhere else to go, but because they're non-serious they are lowest priority, and thus have to wait for a long time.

@orangeoyster GPs are not state employees and they deserve a holiday at xmas, we simply do not have enough of them to provide cover.
In real terms, we need 5000 more than we have.

Disagree that state run doesn't work, the NHS has been around since 1947 and has, in the main, worked, considering we tend to spend less per pp than many European countries.

It doesn't now because it has been run down between 2010 and 2020, with a series of settlements in nhs GP and social care sectors below historic averages, add in Brexit and Covid and this is the result.

its criminal really, 350 to 500 needless deaths per week... no accountability, just shrugs and that doesn't include those with permanent damage because they were not treated in a timely manner... which will cost us even more in re hab & on going care.

@Alexandra2001

All GPs deserve holidays at the same time but Tesco shelf stackers do not? I'm sorry but I don't see your logic there.

Assuming you're referring to things like OECD, those are not useful at all. The normalisation methods and the fact that there is no universal basket of goods makes everything far too broad to draw meaningful insight.

Ignoring that, you're telling me that the NHS works well, yet is underfunded, yet is a bargain? Seems to me that perhaps we need to move up those spending tables, which defeats the point entirely. People dying while on the waiting lists are very good value though!

Please do tell me what Brexit has to do with the NHS, because you've stumped me there.
I thought it had something to do with the enormous amounts of net migration we've had for the last 20 years straining public services.

That graph is the wait to be admitted. It doesn’t count those that are low priority and shouldn’t be there so are having a long wait. Only those that are so sick they need admitting.

@orangeoyster Staffing issues...? many EU workers have left the NHS & Social care workforce and now they can't come here easily or for free, the visa and health insurance costs are very expensive for relatively low paid work, its hard to bring family in and they are time limited..... , they can work in Germany or Sweden and have none of these drawbacks.

Sounds like you now don't like what you voted for?

The strains on the NHS are primarily due to underfunding for the demographic changes i.e the elderly... migrants tend to be younger and don't need health services quite as much.... they also pay tax and NI.

Everyone deserves time off over xmas but we simply don't have enough GPs to offer sufficient coverage.. most SM's will be shut on xmas day and most do not offer a 24/7 service.

Reference please vinvertebrate?

medicfootprints.org/10-highest-paying-countries-for-doctors/

@Alexandra2001
Apologies in advance for the essay, but I had a lot of points to cover:

1. I didn't vote for the NHS. Your assumptions confuse me.

1. They don't all pay taxes and NI. The non-UK born adult unemployment rate is about 28%. Of those who are working, only the ones earning over roughly £40k per year are paying for themselves, as the individual tax burden for public spending is about £12k.

1. Difficult to quickly find nationality data on my phone but prior to COVID the non-white (so low-end, since many migrants are white) usage of A&E was about 18%. That is at the very least proportional with total population, so they certainly aren't using it less.

1. The number of total GP registrations went up by 1m in the last 12 months alone. You can't tell me that our pensioners are only just starting to visit their doctors. 4% of our qualified GPs were trained in the EEA, so even if we lost all of them, that would be about 1,300.

1. It appears that whoever did leave the NHS after Brexit has been replaced. From NHS Digital:

"At 30 September 2017, there were 1.21 million FTE staff working for the NHS, compared to 1.20 million at the same point in 2016."
"1,230,089 FTE in August 2022. This is 2.6% (31,343) more than in August 2021."

"The number of professionally qualified clinical staff was 569,000 FTE, an increase of 1.3 per cent (7,470) since 2016."
"652,475 FTE in September 2022. This is 2.6% (16,530) more than in September 2021."

Staff is up, the budget rises every year (currently costs each taxpayer about £9.5k annually), and yet the NHS is still failing.

You cannot reasonably tell me that the main factors for this are not raw people numbers and massive inefficiency.

@orangeoyster

Unions and and Doctors dispute the increases in staff given out by UK govt, its just not born out in reality, staff vacancies have increased....

I know a senior NHS HR director, he would tell you differently and (he is based in London) the number of EU staff and the fact they are not coming here is a very real problem.

My dd works in a major hospital in Devon, she recently attended a conference where, whilst being appreciative of non EU overseas staff, the speaker pointed out the issues they create, not least standards in training, practice and language, she would also tell you about the numbers of EU care workers who left her former agency to return home, its not just GPs.

Yes immigration is a huge issue but the fact remains that once you get into your 50s, your care demands rapidly increase.

I'm at a loss that whilst people get all worked up about 40k migrants crossing the channel, they dont seem to care about the 5m HK Chinese who can and are coming to the UK.... many of whom are elderly.

The tory government WANT the nhs to fail. They didn't do anything before covid and they haven't done anything since covid. There is a large personal financial incentive for the torys to encourage and push through privatisation of healthcare. This is why they won't engage in negotiations. I wouldn't believe any numbers produced by a government source. They will tell a bare-faced lie to our faces why would they not 'doctor' the numbers. (excuse the pun)

I had a nurse job until recently and was the ONLY FTE nurse in the team. There were supposed to be 3 fte. The remainder of nursing staff were bank part timers which didn't make up the fte hours. During my time there they advertised 3 times and couldn't get staff.

I also don't understand the policy of kicking everyone out i.e. via Brexit, only to encourage overseas workers to enter the country to make up the healthcare staff numbers. Divergent policies.