The nhs is falling on its knees :(

[BrowHair95]

And I’m sick of chasing everything up!! This is more of a rant really.

I had a gynaecology appointment on 29th July. I was prescribed birth control which is really important for me to have following a sad but necessary abortion.

The gynaecologist told me to hand my prescription into the on-site pharmacy. They advised me this would be around an hour wait, which was a little frustrating but I made it work - I waited in the cafe.

After an hour I approached the pharmacy. Once they did, I was told “we don’t do that tablet here”.

To make matters even worse, I was told I could collect it from my GP “in about a week”. No set time or urgency, just very casual about it.

And lo and behold, here I am over THREE WEEKS later, with absolutely no prescription to collect at my GP.

I have sent two complaint emails with no responses.

I just called the hospital. I spoke to a rude lady who said that it’s not their fault, that it’s been lost and they don’t have the prescription anywhere. It’s not been communicated somehow and that they can’t prescribe pills, I need to do it through my GP. The hospital said they sent a letter to them.

I’ve just contacted the GP and they have absolutely no record of a letter!!

So I now have to spend my time AGAIN trying to contact the same lady to tell her this doesn’t exist.

How is this even happening?? Honestly I’m sick to death of it. I work 9-5 and having to spend time chasing things up that other people should be doing!

It's a fucking shitshow. my 70 year old dad has unstable vertebrae in his neck with symptoms increasingly worsening including numbness, his operation was cancelled for the second time the morning of last month, his new date has come through for June 2026

This is after his knee replacement was cancelled and rebooked 4 times in 18 months when he was unable to walk.

Friends Urgent 2 week cancer pathway referral is missing after 5 weeks.

Other friends daughters "urgent" mri scan has been canceled and the new date is fucking November 2026

Mum has cataracts that need removing, she's waiting on a new date after the second cancellation in 3 months.

Getting a doctors appointment takes weeks.

It's in a fucking shameful state

I fully appreciate that people have had negative experiences and my positive experiences do not in any way detract from them. But last week I got a gp appointment within 20 minutes of making the call and spent today having various breast examinations in hospital and it could not have gone more smoothly. I truly appreciate the NHS for what they've done for me. I'm sorry for people's bad experiences.

I'm in Scotland so I dont know if I'm just lucky with my area? Perhaps it really is a lottery. I am genuinely sorry to people who have had lost test results or appointments, but for all the reasons I have had to use the NHS over the years, it has honestly been great.

When you're really up against it the NHS is brilliant. I suddenly became acutely ill in February. By the time the ambulance arrived i was in so much pain i couldn't speak. Turned out i had pneumonia and pleurisy. They walloped morphine into me almost immediately. I was in hospital for more than three weeks and the care i received was wonderful. I couldn't fault them.

Then a friend developed cancer. Over a couple of weeks they did about five different tests and scans in the hospital's specialist cancer centre. It was done so fast - they were determined to identify his cancer to give him the best chance. I was really impressed.

We have exactly the same every sodding month for my husbands' chemotherapy drugs. Between the oncology dept (various staff involved) and the hospital in house pharmacy, they screw up, every sodding month. He's been on maintenance chemotherapy for 8 years, on a regular 4 weekly pattern, so it should be so simple. But no, they constantly "lose" blood test results, the staff (apparently different every month) who review the blood tests and issue the prescription are completely incognito and can only be contacted via in-house pinging - they don't take external emails, phones nor texts, and sometimes, they completely ignore messages or ignore their system (as I say, simple monthly repeating pattern). Even when they finally "tick the box", the in house pharmacy either don't notice it, forget it, etc - apparently because it's a chemotherapy drug, it's on a different system. It typically takes OH 4/5/6 phone calls every month to finally get everyone to do their bit and get the drugs ready for collection. He starts the monthly treatment on a Monday, and starts phoning the depts concerned the Monday beforehand as, like I say, messages need to be left for other staff who take 2/3 days to respond. There've been months where he's missed the start date because the drugs havn't been ready, worst was a two week delay meaning he started on week 3 which of course buggered up the following month's pre-booked blood tests and their diary system, so that took about a dozen phone calls to get the ducks in a row. The NHS is absolutely hopeless when it comes to admin, and no, it's not staff shortages, if anything it's the opposite as so many people are involved, there are too many "points of contact" that can fail, and of course, if someone is off sick or holiday, no one else automatically takes over.

That really isn't true for everyone. There are endless tales in these threads of women being denied timely pain relief in labour. And the NHS litigation bill is enormous.

I would fight tooth and claw to keep the NHS but it's in a sorry state at the moment and good care is far from universal, even in extremis.

Depends on the hospital and staff at the time. MIL was blue lighted in and languished for 48 hours in A&E with no "care" at all, just shoved in a corridor. We had to take turns to give her food and drink and take her to the loo. It was the third day when she finally got sent to a ward and they started doing x-rays, giving antibiotics etc., but it was too late and she died on day 4!

I work in the NHS and I can tell you it's a
massive shit show as is every thing else banks call centres delivery companies, you name it and it's shit.
I spent this afternoon with my head in my hands trying to work out what evri has done with my parcels and trying not to start screaming.

It's a shame that there are such variations of experiences - especially when things are vert acute, chronic or serious.

My last three interactions with the NHS have been superb - one only yesterday in hospital and I received a text survey to complete today and was happy to give the the highest rating in all areas and it's the busiest MIU in the country.

But historic underfunding is showing in so many places now, it's awful.

Just contact your Gp.

And try being disabled with a triple prolapse due to reapeat missed birth injury 12 years ago, waiting for surgery, if you think three weeks waiting for a prescription you could have easily asked your Gp for is a massive hardship.

Why didn't you just phone your gp surgery and ask them to prescribe the pill for you. Don't rely on the hospital to contact them.They've got too much to do.

You are asking for the contraceptive pill, not benzodiazepines, a gp would have prescribed that pretty quickly and easily.It's a very common thing to prescribe.

The gp doesn't need to wait for the go ahead from the hospital to do it.

I do think things could be improved.If patients took a bit more of a proactive approach rather than saying someone hasn't done this for me.

Is there a copy of the letter on your NHS app?

Are they? Bevause I count being unable to to do my job, waiting for a prolapse operation that could have been prevented if I’d have received decent maternity and post part ij care, up ‘against’ it - but maybe becoming homeless and starving isn’t an issue.

2.5 years after my symptoms started and I’m no closer to getting a resolution, despite me doing everything, my symptoms getting so so much worse and no one cares.
Now my heads screwed up and I’m about to off myself because no one will listen!

Haha wait until you have been seen at 3 different hospitals, one in our trust can share results with GP. Neither of the other two can and they both have different IT systems. I now have 3 logins to 3 different hospitals accounts.

I just point out two are in the same NHS area one isn't. The lack of joined up communication has caused no ends of hassle and me having to chase results to pass onto the GP (GP'S are not part of the NHS they provide a service for the NHS and are run independently, apparently its always been like this). So watch this space for GP'S turning into private practices just like the dentist have done.

My DH GP often sends a message to his hospital consultants for information/advice. I would assume yours can do the same.

Not everyone has a good GP surgery.

I'm still waiting for them to refer me for an MRI scan. I saw the GP in February and they said they'd do the referral. I've phoned radiography at the local hospital several times since asking where I was in the queue and timescales, and every time, they said they'd not received a referral letter, so I keep phoning back the GP surgery, and the receptionist can see on the system that the referral hasn't been done and they keep saying they'll send a message to the GP asking them to do it, but then nothing happens.

Several years ago, I went to the GP asking for hearing aid referral. He checked my ears and said he'd do it but they had a waiting list of a year or so. I waited and waited, but after 9 months, I phoned audiology to ask where I was in the queue - same story, they had no referral request. Phoned back GP surgery who said they couldn't do it without another GP appointment to check my ears again! When the GP finally did the referral, the audiology dept called me within a couple of weeks to make the initial appointment - they said they had no long waiting lists at the moment, but I'd basically lost a year!

Likewise, OH's oncologist has told him a couple of times to get some drugs prescribed via the GP, such as strong iron and vitamin D supplements (chemotherapy is playing havoc with the chemical balance in his body). The oncologist won't issue these himself and keeps saying it's the GP's job. But again, the surgery won't grant him an appointment with a GP, and the receptionists just say they'll send messages to the GP, which aren't acted on. Once, he did get a call back from the receptionist saying the GP couldn't give a prescription without seeing the blood test results, which apparently he can't access even though it's the same town and the hospital is less than 5 miles away, and wanted a letter from the oncologist with blood test results - of course, when we phoned oncology, they said that they couldn't do that and claimed the GP should have access to the blood tests. So a chicken and egg situation with neither end remotely helpful and just blaming each other and fobbing off OH!.

Yup, when my OH was diagnosed with cancer, he had full skeletal x-ray, MRI scan, CT scan, bone marrow sample and blood tests. The local hospital wasn't "specialist" in his kind of rare cancer, so they referred him to the next town (same trust) who had a specialist oncologist. First thing he did at the initial consultation was order it all again as he claimed he couldn't access any of the results from the first hospital and having all those tests again was "easier" than requesting the results from the first hospital!

My child has to attend regular appointments. Every appointment letter informs me they have had to reschedule my original appointment… of which I don’t actually receive a letter about until days after the apparent reschedule letter.
Last visit we were totally ignored at the reception while the receptionists carried on discussing their weekend.
Saw the consultant, and was asked to take a seat before we needed to see the next doctor. Waited over an hour and a half, while being told repeatedly by the receptionist that they were clearly busy and would see us when ready. No, actually the paperwork hasn’t been sent through and no one was ever going to call us. A lot of the staff are basically incompetent. We are made to feel that we should just be grateful, but serious change is needed. Not simply pumping more money into a broken system.

The treatment that another relative has had at our local cancer hospital however has been absolutely fantastic. Completely different experience.

Why hasn't the NHS embraced a fully automated IT setup? Why are they still sending letters between departments? It should just be a matter of a few clicks to give you what you need.

It's hardly 'falling on its knees' to be honest OP. There's been a miscommunication for a non critical prescription.

It's frustrating that you have to chase the prescription but I think you are massively over reacting & quite entitled if you think that you have experienced an unacceptable failing. Trust me you haven't.

Ah yes the brain child of Blair that he spent billions on that had to be scrapped as it would never work.

Since moving to Scotland, I’ve experienced many more organisational issues with the NHS due to the woefully inadequate patient record systems. Communication between departments often just does not happen, or is recorded on different systems. I was recently diagnosed with a serous rare condition and am under multiple departments and hospitals as a result. I am now essentially in a role of care co-ordinator for myself, spending so much time having to contact departments in an attempt to improve communication. It’s not right.

I also work for the NHS, in mental health. There are NO electronic patient records! Which means so much important information gets lost and/or cannot be accessed. Talk about being stuck in the dark ages.

A lot of what the NHS does could be done by AI nowadays and it would save billions but the unions will never allow it as it would cost jobs.

Absolutely this ! This situation - It’s not life or death at all…
A lot more serious things are happening day in, day out !
the OP has just come here for a rant tbh, she hasn’t replied to anyone trying to advise .