I know this isn’t the first thread, but the NHS is close to collapse

[Adropintheocean1]

I don’t want to be to outting, but basically I have some symptoms. GP suspected a condition due to these symptoms, and referred me to the hospital.

My hospital (large city) said we don’t test for this condition, please refer to x London hospital. London hospital said we are the only hospital dealing with this diagnosis, we are overwhelmed, we can’t see her. Suspected illness is not life threatening or limiting however does cause horrible chronic symptoms that need to be managed. So that’s it… GP seemed genuinely embarrassed. Basically if I want a diagnosis I need to go privately (can’t afford it.) GP said for a relatively poor area, his making as many private referrals as NHS ones.

Is it not time we got angry about this?

I reported symptoms in 1997.
Diagnosed in 2009 with stage 4 endo.
I’m shocked to see things haven’t improved at all.

I had six operations between 2010-2022.
Finally got a hysterectomy in 2022.

That’s 25 years of agony, severe anaemia, bleeding so badly at times that I couldn’t leave the house. God knows how many visits to doctors, A&E (because the bleeding was so bad I was frightened), to consultants. Aside from the physical cost, I lost jobs due to ‘excessive’ sick leave, lost friends because I couldn’t socialise, had men dump me because I couldn’t have sex or go out or go on holiday.

From my own experience, endo research needs to be funded properly and taken seriously. And if a woman decides the best option for her is to have a hysterectomy at 20 or 30 or 40, she should be trusted to make that decision about her own body, not given drugs / smaller ops as short term solutions “in case you or your partner want children later on.” Mine came back over and over - like fucking insidious weeds.

sorry for rant. I’m so angry I spent my 30s like that. But also - all those smaller ops and appts would have cost £££

This is true. DH is a consultant and whilst a reg in Scotland, some kind of VIP protocol was implemented for a member of the (Labour, at the time) government. No ‘corridor care’ for him. 🙄

My own experiences with the NHS (seriously delayed cancer diagnosis leading to major emergency surgery with no HCU bed available afterwards) have been overwhelmingly shit, so I’ve been banging this drum for years. They all occurred during the Blair/Brown period when money was being hosed into health. “Free” healthcare is a busted flush.

@cocoloco23 I said about a decade ago "I think I have endo" and they said if I didn't want the pill there was nothing they could do

I changed doctors, and they found a random ovary cyst and sent me straight away for a scan

So now i am covered in it

The first GP I saw told me the pain was due to the way I walked and I needed to put up with it.

I know there’s more awareness these days but I’m shocked the diagnosis time is still around 10 years.

I hope you find an effective treatment soon. I know how debilitating and exhausting that pain is.

It is rare that i use the nhs as i have generally been healthy. However i had to phone an ambulance 2 years ago. I slipped and i could not put any weight on my right leg. I was screaming in pain when i tried to stand up. Anyway the minor injuries unit was shut. The doctor in a and e asked the paramedic why he didn't take me to the minor injuries unit even though it was shut. It was like the paramedics were just meant to leave me on the floor all night. There was nobody else who could have helped. I was on a haven caravan park at the time. A few weeks later my gp referred me for physio. I was still having trouble walking. My knee kept giving way. My physio was awful. She made out that it was all in my head. I just ended up looking at exercises on youtube. I still have a bit of difficulty with stairs but i am okay now.

@cocoloco23 the consultants are amazing - it's even a specialist endometriosis centre

To those saying that maybe they are just prioritising the right things, my 16 year old has stage 4 cancer and it has been, and remains, an uphill battle to get her the right care. The NHS is completely and utterly broken and it is not just a funding issue, though that absolutely is a major part of the problem. There are huge issues with systems not working, poor communication, rogue clinicians exercising their professional autonomy at the expense of patients’ safety - and don’t even get me started on the internalised misogyny/gaslighting of parental concerns, over-reliance on how a patient looks (‘she doesn’ t look like someone with advanced cancer’!!!! Guess what: she still doesn’t and now it’s incurable) and general complacency. I could go on - you would not believe the level of incompetence we have encountered at both our local hospital and our nearest large teaching hospital which is a centre of excellence in the type of cancer my daughter has. It is horrendous.

When people say fund the NHS what do you mean? More nurses, doctors? UK is not very attractive for them right now with high taxation and low wages. If I were a doc, I'd be looking to emigrate. Alos throwing money at a problem doesn't always solve it.

I have had a hit and miss experience with NHS. I'm lucky that GP wise, I can get an urgent out of hour appointment for emergency, and normal is usually within 2 weeks. But when I was referred to the hospital, the nurses were clueless, and even racist! And I'm not one who throws the word willy nilly. I had a burn from grease and I am an ethnic minority, the nurse just pointed at my face and said 'look at thatttt' and talked about me as if my burn made me look freaky to the other nurses, and also like I couldn't understand English. Another time, 2 nurses couldn't work out how to TURN ON the scan machine until a Chinese doc came in and scolded them and turned it on for them. I find some nurses are so so thick it's unreal. Some are great btw, but many are hopeless.

The sheer number of people. The country is overpopulated.

Your post is absolute rubbish, too. Insurance policies in the US have out-of-pocket caps. After the cap is hit, the insurance must, by law, pick up 100% of the rest of the cost. My husband had a stroke the same year our daughter had a complex medical issue and needed to be life-flighted, treated in a specialty children's ICU, etc.. We paid a few thousand dollars (providers take payments at no interest) and the rest, many hundreds of thousands of dollars, was paid by insurance. Again, all of these requirements are in federal law.

And for everyone who is aghast at the thought of a US system, we DO NOT have a two-tiered health system. Poor people have insurance called Medicaid. Their bills are submitted by the providers to the state Medicaid portal, and the funding for the program comes from both federal and state governments. Poor people are treated exactly the same as rich people, except the doctors/hospitals, etc. bill Medicaid instead of private insurance. Poor people in the US go to the same hospitals as Elon Musk and Bill Gates: Mayo Clinic, Stanford Med, Mount Sinai, etc. By law doctors are not allowed to know if their patients have private or government cover.

There are several programs like Medicaid that cover those who otherwise would struggle to pay: Medicare pays for those over 65 and the disabled and is paid for by the federal government. SCIP covers children who are not under the poverty line (that's Medicaid) but whose parents can't afford to insure them and is jointly funded by states and the fed. Tricare pays for retired military members and their families and is funded by the fed. There are federal funds for providers to bill for indigent care, etc. These people all use the same doctors and hospitals as everyone else.

The US is NOT a two-tier system where rich people go to private hospitals and poor people go to public hospitals. That's the UK.

1. The UK doesn't have a 2 tier system for most serious medical issues. It's just NHS.

2. the out of pocket costs estimate is what the Americans on the FB community for this illness estimate, not be. It will go wider than strictly medical bills I suspect. In terms of hospital costs, even with hitting the ceiling you mention, were clearly be expected to cough up thousands. In the UK we paid for parking. That's it.

The UK doesn't have a 2 tier system for most serious medical issues. It's just NHS.

Not sure that’s true tbh. My DH is a cancer specialist with a large (and growing) private practice. There are private units at most cancer centres. I had my own cancer treatment in a BUPA hospital (after the NHS ‘care’ quite literally gave me PTSD) and it had both ICU and ER facilities.

I agree with the PP that “two tier” care is certainly more evident in the U.K. than in countries with insurance-based systems like France, Germany, Switzerland, where there is a choice of providers for all, with the lowest earners receiving the greatest state contributions towards payment. There are drawbacks with every system, but it’s also worth remembering that US citizens with decent insurance generally receive the best healthcare available.

No idea which hospital you attend but it doesn’t happen like that at our local hospital or any surgeries where I work.

We have people book the day before, or even on the day that don’t bother to attend. What’s your excuse for them?

On a single day 8 patients did not attend, but in your world that is acceptable?

I meant to say 'the best type of system'. The best approach, the best model, all other things being equal. So of systems run with equal competence, integrity, resources etc, it would come out top. Hence my use of the phrase "So what's the problem?" and the illustration I gave of lack of integrity.

Oh do bore off. Every single NHS hospital clinic I have ever attended people are block booked for appointments, 9 am or 2pm, and you just sit around like a chump until they fit you in. Like bollocks is someone wasting valuable time if they don't turn up - they're doing the rest of us a favour because it means we might be seen within three hours.

That’s not quite how DH’s NHS clinics are run, but it’s true that there are typically multiple patients booked at the same time during full clinics because it’s the only way they can fit everyone in - not enough staff!

The entire public sector is fucked.

Chronic underfunding combined with recruitment freezes and population rises means demands are higher then ever and the capacity is the lowest.

People are off sick due to stress ( a lot of people) as their workload is too big (due to staff shortages)

I wish there was an option to opt out of nhs and just pay for private health care for your fanily and pay a reduced national insurance

I would love the privatised healthcare and the nhs to be scrapped- I feel like I pay so much in to it and those who pay nothing into it clog it up

Look round a and e so many people there do not pay into it

My Dad died from cancer two years ago. We'd been going back and forth to the GP for nearly 6 months before he was diagnosed. Had they detected it then, he'd still be here. Instead we had the most horrific 6 months imaginable, with district and surgery nurses refusing to take his insulin control on board. I had to leave work twice a day and do an hour long round trip to do it instead. Oncology and GP appointments were like hen's teeth and when he was referred to palliative care it took me exploding on the phone at a specialist to even get him assessed. He died a horrible death that I'm still trying to recover from 2 years on.

And the Government is predicting a 5 million population growth over the next decade from migration. God help us all. People who've paid NI and taxes are at the back of the queue already.

Even if you dont personally use public services like schools healthcare, fire services etc you still benefit from the fact that we live in a country where these things are available.

A few years ago I developed severe, rapidly worsening symptoms which GP felt strongly indicated a serious neurological problem. She said " if you have private medical insurance, this is the time to use it " as the waiting list for an NHS consultant appointment was several months, even for urgent cases like mine. Luckily I could go private and saw a neurologist two days later. An aggressive fast growing brain tumour was diagnosed which the consultant said would be pressing on my brain stem within a couple of weeks. Which would mean I would just stop breathing or my heart would stop. I had surgery two days later and luckily made a full recovery. If I had not had private health cover i would have been dead before I even saw a consultant.

This.