How would you fix the NHS?

[PinkFruitbat]

The Government is asking for ideas on how to fix the NHS.

https://change.nhs.uk/en-GB/

What would you do to fix it?

What is their reasoning?

Translation......... come back when your health problems affect your male partner

Not really true though. It took our GP surgery a few YEARS to finally take my OH seriously when he was presenting regularly with various different ailments after never going near the GP for a couple of decades. He saw a succession of different GPs who basically just fobbed him off, time and time again. Wouldn't even give him blood tests! Finally, he saw a locum who actually listened to him, ordered a special blood test, and then he was finally diagnosed with a rare blood cell cancer. Checking on the internet for the symptoms/signs of this particular cancer, it's bindingly obvious as the conditions he was seeing the succession of GPs for were identical to the symptoms of this cancer. I think GPs are equally poor at taking patients seriously, male or female.

GPs shouldn’t have a choice. Who the fuck do they think they are holding the country to ransom?

It's the same with all the heavily unionised trades/professions. They've got the country over a barrel and they know it. Whether it's the doctors, train drivers, teachers, firemen, etc. They're all the same. Snouts in the troughs.

It's why successive governments have tried to privatise, i.e. contract out waste collection to avoid stupidly high pay and pensions to bin men, same with hospital ancillary staff, etc.

The unions WILL ruin this country. They've already ruined our manufacturing industries back in the 70s.

1,200 GPs are currently unemployed. Driving Ubers and working at Tesco. Because there is no funding for their jobs.

Not sure people really understand what's going on in the NHS. Don't fund qualified staff, people go private. People get used to going private, NHS dies. And some people make a hell of a lot of money from private healthcare.

Pfft. Underpaid GPs. 🙄

Not underpaid UNEMPLOYED

ha ha the NHS doesn't even operate to those standards & where does it say that GPs are refusing to work to these?

GP practices and NHS are already integrating IT, its happening now.

Problems always comes back to GPs...? so nothing to do with huge waiting lists & lack of beds, lack of equipment and vitally... lack of staff.

Yes, unemployed. As are nurses, doctors and paramedics. We have enough, we don't employ them once trained. While waiting lists get longer and the NHS struggles with staff shortages. Why ? Because the decisions were made to under fund healthcare in this country. And start out sourcing to private companies. Wonder who owns those.

I agree.

When I had DD2 we were transferred up to postnatal ward at 7:15am. They came round to do the newborn checks at 9:30am but didn't do us because I hadn't been up on the ward in time to make the list. So we had to wait until 9:30am the next day.

Complete waste of resources keeping us for the extra 24 hours, meals for me etc - and could we attend the group discharge chat that first afternoon so we were ready to go the next morning right after the check? Of course not, we had to wait for the next afternoon's chat. So that was another meal for me (the next lunch), plus continued regular checks on both of us, coming round with painkillers, taking up the bed etc etc.
There was no suggestion at any point there was anything wrong, if we'd been transferred to the postnatal ward 15 mins earlier we'd have been on the list, and discharged the same day (they should have told me that in labour, I'd have pushed harder 😂). The newborn checks take hardly any time at all. And we took up far more of their time overall over the additional 24 hours.

I'm sure there's some logistical reason, but for the sake of 15 mins we took up an extra 24 hours of resources.

Listen mate I don’t know where you think you’ve been working but it’s clearly not where I am. GP surgeries should be operating to that standard. That they aren’t is the fucking problem. Fuck GPs.

So you want GPs to be operating to a standard that the NHS cannot meet? riiight.

You ve clearly got a huge issue with GPs, somewhat irrationally.

Oh yes, it would be so much better for workers to have no rights and be wide open to exploitation from the many many unscrupulous shyster employers out these.

Also, 'snouts in the trough'? What planet are you on? Some public sector workers, including those you mention, are having to use food banks at present. These are people performing essential services. For you to suggest they are being greedy for expecting to earn enough to live on is obscene.

I'd love to see how those who like to berate public sector workers over how easy they supposedly have it, would cope without the services they provide.

Also, re the privatisation you mention - are you seriously under the impression that's going well?!

Just wow.

Campaign Against Painful Hysteroscopy has now collated 7500 cases of women undergoing painful hysteroscopies without anasthetic and in some cases told to put up and shut up. One medic even admitted that they would not be attempting the equivilant procedure without GA on a man.

Video
https://x.com/HysteroscopyA/status/1850447745506525290

I thought there were loads of job vacancies for doctors/nurses paramedics and that we were trying to recruit people from abroad to fill them as couldnt get British people? I also thought that we were paying lots of people to locum (presumably above the standard pay rates) because we couldnt fill vacancies. Am I wrong? some of the posts here would suggest that i am?

Often there isn't funding to recruit into a permanent post even if it costs more to use locum staff.

@helpfulperson well that kind of sums up the stupidity and wastefulness of the NHS doesnt it? Paying more for a temp because you cant afford permanent staff who are probably on a lower wage. And yes i do understand politics/budgets etc having been in management for many years

It’s not irrational . You’re just fucking stupid. Why are GPs not operating to that service standard when all other parts of the NHS are supposed to? BECAUSE GPs ARE NOT PART OF THE NHS.

GP partnerships seem to want the best of both Worlds.

They want the rewards of being in business, i.e. ability to make profits, tax planning options not available to employees etc.

But they want to abdicate the risks to the NHS, i.e. paying for premises, paying for systems, etc.

Business, which is what most GP practices are, are all about risk AND reward, not just the reward without the risk.

I agree with some other posters, time to bring all GP practices under direct NHS/trust control and remove the self employment/business option.

Of course, the BMA would never allow it!

I actually found a way to massively improve patients’ experience in the NHS that won’t cost a penny, inspired by threads here.

Ban loud mobile phones, TVs and loud groups of visitors.

A lot of patients know exactly what is wrong with them but trying to get a doctor to let them test and then treat them is a different matter

Even if the initial testing is just what the GP thinks it is and what the patient thinks it is.

The problem is they don’t send you for 10 tests all in one go.
Firstly they only let you discuss one symptom at a time. They send you for a blood test to test for 1 thing at a time. This means the GP has to attend 10 appointments with you, the receptionist has to take 20 calls from you to check if your blood test has returned and calls for her to book you 9 further GP appointments

Then you have the 10 lots of blood tests at the hospital. Which involves 10 times you have to hand your paperwork in, 10 needles for the 10 blood tests instead of filling vials for all the tests to be done from one needle.

It’s the minutes here and there, the waste of equipment, even when it can be measured in seconds or pence here and there it all adds up, the extra GP’s appointments which we are always being told cost money when we miss them but they don’t seem to take the same care when they waste appointments to discuss the same thing over and over.

By the time they have finally identified what is wrong, what would have been at worse a short stay in hospital and a routine operation has become a much longer stay and major surgery

I would change people’s image of the nhs and inform them of the benefits nhs workers get. It’s not ‘poor nhs workers, give them a clap’…. Private sector workers do not get the same - that’s why community care is so fucked up - it’s all private. So a Basic nhs clinical worker - 28 days holiday.. plus 8 days added for holidays - that increases to 33 days at 10 years service. Clinical staff get the extra bank holidays as holiday if they work them or not. Full sick pay from day one.. until six months, then it’s discretionary half pay for a further 6 months. No Stat sick pay!. Fully paid study leave and course fees. A pay rise every year, plus yearly increments. Prospects for promotion like you wouldn’t believe. Maternity leave paid in full, with annual leave added on top. Emergency child care days Plus mandatory training of 2-3 days a year. If you don’t believe this.. read the nhs HR policies online. I won’t even start on the benefits doctors get! You the public pay for this!

How will that improve the care patients get?

That’s wasn’t the question. Money pouring into what I have mentioned would be better spent on patient care.