Hospital

[Igottastartthinkingbee]

Anyone watching? A stunning insight into the running of a busy London hospital. Cannot believe the amount of time highly skilled doctors are forced to waste waiting for beds to become available. And the poor man with oesophageal cancer who's operation was cancelled for the second time. Wow. NHS is at breaking point!

We have just caught up on iplayer

The thing is when we go to NHS dentist we have to pay the bill before we are allowed into the waiting room let alone to see dentist

That is even if it is an emergency in pain like I was last year

When my DH went to see a private consultation at a spire clinic they took payment beforehand

Shouldn't it be that a new patient without NHS number or previously known to system have their card swiped and passport photocopied before admitted if they don't have insurance just like us at our own dentist. That way they could take a deposit that was then paid back if they were actually entitled to NHS treatment and could prove it by letter or note from GP practise or border control or whoever it might be

I don't know whether you'd call it a conspiracy theory or something similar but I've heard an opinion that the Government's aim is to make the NHS's job so difficult (by starving it of money and making the staff's jobs so hard to do) that the only solution is to privatise it. It only takes time and the worse the NHS situation becomes, it starts to be a believeable theory.

It will be even worse when all the EU nurses leave because they no longer feel welcome and their future status is uncertain.
Just watching BBC London and there are 7000 EU nurses working in London.

So today Jeremy Hunt announces that non-UK residents will from April be charged upfront for non-emergency surgery carried out by the NHS. Great. But hang on, when those who will put this into practice are asked for their reaction, it seems that there are insufficient staff to collect the upfront payments (a whole new army of frontline accounts staff then?) and the problem in the NHS is as much about capacity as about funding. Even if poor Priscilla (to whom my heart went out) had paid for her spell in an NHS hospital, she was still occupying 3 out of the 10 paediatric intensive care cots for a period of months.

I really don't know the answer, but if upfront charging discourages those who come for a free ride, at least it will help with the capacity problem.

No visa without medical insurance and only emergency surgery to be carried out under the NHS. If all travellers had medical insurance then non-emergency surgery/treatment can be done in the private sector and not take up NHS capacity.

My friend is a consultant at St Mary's; in fact she appeared in this series. She is clear that overseas patients are not at all the cause of the crisis in the NHS. She can talk for quite a long time about what ARE the causes but unpaid bills from visitors to the UK are nowhere near the top.

Still, looks like the government found someone to blame that doesn't involve looking at their own doorstep.

My friend would agree far more with your first post, Draylon.

But draylon scanning people with dementia can help classify what kind of dementia it is and what treatment if any will help preserve what function they have. This could mean someone being able to remain in their own home for longer and that in itself would cover the cost of a scan.
I do agree that too many elderly patients end up in hospital because family want them to 'give them a chance' to recover from whatever acute condition they have, when at times it really would be kinder to stay at home/nursing home and allow them to die with some dignity, in familiar surroundings. some relatives seem unable to accept that everyone has to die at some time and wish their family member to receive full treatment regardless of their quality of life. For patients who don't have dementia they can tell you their wishes but for those with dementia it's not so easy. I know of a patient with advanced dementia who had a surgical procedure which has no doubt prolonged his life. But his behaviour is so far from the man he was, he is in a locked ward, and perhaps we have to question if this really was the best thing for this man. If I get dementia I want to be allowed to die of whatever acute problem comes along rather than fading away slowly over many years. However I accept others would want to live in that scenario, and that's ok too.

Frontline NHS worker here, Draylon's post is spot on. Unfortunately often this over medicalisation causes huge problems. For example fitting feeding tubes in dementia sufferers. The studies shown this doesn't improve the quality of life and can cause considerable distress to the sufferer but families see granny is not eating and demand they are fitted. Same families then find very few care homes want to take on a person with a feeding tube and so they stay in hospital blocking a bed until a placement can be found. On NHS tourism if I had a medical condition and lived in a country where medical care is expensive but knew the chances of getting free treatment elsewhere were high I'd book a holiday there too

Yes draylon I agree that what your are describing is wrong, but we have to be very careful in all of this to make sure we don't go down the road of 'they have dementia so we shouldn't treat them' as there are many patients with mild dementia who can still live a meaningful life.

The rest of my post was basically agreeing with what you said - allow people to die, not in hospital, stop trying to treat every last thing just because we can, and think about whether it's really in the best interests of that patient. For someone with severe dementia to be put in a strange and frightening hospital where they may die despite painful/ uncomfortable intervention will rarely, if ever be in their best interests

Yes, I find myself getting more and more frustrated with it.

I've just caught up with last night's episode and I am in awe of what our nhs does every single day. That thrombectomy was amazing!

As a mental health professional I would like to see a similar expose of our services. We are in crisis and I'm close to a breakdown due to the emotional stress of seeing so much need but feeling helpless to respond :( bashing individual trusts is not helpful, although a favourite pastime of the government and media. We need more honest conversations about what we can afford to provide for free and less bullshit from the PM about how much money they are giving us - whilst cutting much more via 'efficiency savings'

What distresses me is that every time the government are challenged on the NHS crisis they just spout crap about how much money they've given us

Well I've just watched question time and sadly found myself nodding along with Ann wide come

What was she saying?

She spoke a lot of sense.
She said all political parties should stop using the NHS as a political football and stop arguing over which party put more money into it and start having a grown up conversation with the public about it.
As she said, the belief when it was founded that over time it would be used less as the population's health improved, is clearly way off now due to medical advances, an ageing population etc etc.
She said, no matter how much money is put in, it will never be enough as demand is increasing at a faster rate.
I also feel that people need to be made aware of the importance of having a Lasting Power of Attorney for Health and Welfare, if you want you or your relatives to be left in peace if/when you get to the stage where you can no longer make your views known about your care needs.
Maybe the government could make completing this process cheaper/free to encourage some individual responsibility among the general population.