So grateful we are not in the UK for this

[soglad]

We moved from UK to Italy a year and a half ago. On Monday this week my husband felt unwell and his smart watch told him to go see the doctor immediately. He suspected he had atrial fibrillation (AF), as he had it 5 years ago.

He booked to see his GP at 5pm on Tuesday. She diagnosed him with AF and immediately referred him to a specialist hospital.

He was triaged into the hospital the same day at 8pm. At 9pm they started a procedure to correct the heartbeat chemically. It did not work.

At 9am this morning they performed a cardioversion, which restored his normal heart rhythm. They are discharging him today.

So total time from the very first appointment to successful treatment -- 16 hours. Free state healthcare.

This is in a country which a lot of people in the UK describe as poor, corrupt, slow and backwards.

All his doctors spoke good English and even nurses did their best to google translate everything for him.

By contrast, my last experience of helping mum get NHS treatment after a road traffic accident which required urgent operation left me in tears -- weeks and weeks of delays / cancellations meant she almost missed the window of opportunity for surgery as bones started to heal incorrectly. I'm so glad I didn't go through this again.

Clearly great state healthcare is possible, even in a country with a much lower GDP per capita than the UK. Why aren't we doing something?

That would happen in the UK with acute onset AF.

Thank you for your help too. Have also done quite a few and have seen the odd one turn funky. Perhaps the team with all the info felt the OP’s partner was better managed more conservatively initially.

I'm in Italy too, been here around 25 years. The healthcare is excellent, but I do think only if you live in the right area.

I'm in a large major city, so I have a lot of choice, for example I can get an MRI in around 7-10 days of asking the Dr for one and results a few days later. But this is because I'm in a region the size of Wales, so there are so many places to choose from when booking it ( here we get a prescription for the specialist treatment or scan needed & then book it ourselves in any of the hospitals and clinics in the region that offer it, but we pay a small contribution too, an MRI is around €50 for example). I was recently in A&E in Milan on a Friday lunchtime for a suspected broken ankle. I was there 8 hours which included three x-rays. My memory of the UK was about the same for a similar thing back in the 90s.

I have friends in Puglia and Sardinia that have had to be flown to Milan for treatment, even things like hip replacements and stay in a hotel near the hospital for outpatient visits, so it really does depend on where you live i think. This also goes for the UK too. My family are in rural Derbyshire and haven't had the best service tbh, but other friends in the Bristol area have had outstanding NHS service. One thing the UK excels at (in my past experience there) is bedside manner, It doesn't exist really here so much or to the extend it does in the UK. Swing and roundabouts.

Nhs has literally saved my life once and is currently doing it again. It's amazing and I am so thankful. You will never hear me say a bad word against the Nhs.

NHS are wonderful. I hear all these horror stories about having to wait for ages for an appointment, but I personally never had to - always been seen in less than a month time, sometimes within a week. Only time I had to wait 6 month was for BUPA to approve my treatment - so bloody frustrating (hundreds of forms, letters, phone calls) I cancelled before I got a decision. And after that, getting to be seen by an NHS specialist within a month of asking for appointment.
And I'd hate our health system to be like in the US, for example. I had an experience of getting treatment there (with insurance) and it was crap - not the actual treatment - which was the same as everywhere else - but the set up, where you have to discuss pay before getting seen, like checking into some sort of a hotel (but while feeling very ill and nearly passing out) and then getting pestered by bills for the treatments you did not receive, on the off chance you will pay.