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A 24 Hour Wait In A&E Is Now A Reality.
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The strikes arent.
I think that if I was younger, I would probably have a serious look at private health cover.
Earlier this year I had some blood tests one morning. At 7pm that evening the Doctor rung me & instructed me to attend my local hospital immediately - as in NOW. They told me they had rung the Hospital & booked me in for 8pm & I was to be prepared to stay in for a while as it was potentially life threatening if the tests were confirmed. (Turned out they were OK & just within permissible ranges).
I arrived at the hossie half expecting to be ushered straight into a ward, only to be greeted with these three signs on rotation on a plasm screen; (and they were uncannily accurate, I was there just under 8 hours, of which 7.5 hours was sat in a waiting room).
For balance, when I had a heart attack 7 years ago at 0130am I dialled 999 & the ambulance arrived in 7 minutes, & upon arrival at the hospital 15 minutes later I was wheeled straight into the operating theatre. By 3am I'd had a stent fitted & was safely in bed & under observation in a recovery ward.
To be fair, that's service of the highest order.
So it's not all bad.
This is a worry.
He was very ill when they took him in.
The ambulance arrived at 3pm.
He was stuck in the ambulance for 12 hours.
Until he eventually got a bed at 3am.
@HAYSIE
That is, almost literally, criminal.
I am asking that question because how ever much money they are given, it is never enough.
There is a limit to how much the government can take off us in tax to pay for it.
They cant retain their staff.
Many are leaving to work in other countries.
This may be because they are not paid adequately.
If they were this would cost another load of money.
More expensive treatments are becoming available.
People are living longer.
Everybody used to have an NHS dentist.
Now they are as rare as rocking horse sh1t.
You cant get one.
Will GPs be next?
Can hospitals continue to offer the level of service illustrated on your 3 signs?
I'm not sure to be honest.
It's one of those things that no matter how much money you throw at it, it can never be enough. And remember, we pay that money, via our taxes. (Or most us us do...).
It's really not an easy thing to solve.
I can remember when Matrons ran the hospitals and did all the hiring and firing, all catering, cleaning and laundry was done in house and not subbed out to some faceless company.
That meant that all the staff were answerable to the hospital who was the employer and not 3rd party concerns who are only after the money.
They didn't need 60 people on a trust all with new cars every 12 months, they didn't require 100 faceless people with offices doing sod all to run the blooming thing.
More money is spent on the bereaucracy required to run the NHS than to administer to the sick and ill.
It shows how out of touch the higher ups are, Waiting times at the Royal Stoke are at an all time high and they are spending about £15,000,000 building a.............. new fkn car park.
Many of the senior staff have pension pots in excess of the Lifetime Allowance, (the LTA is the point above which extra charges are made when you take your pension benefits). The government announced the removal of the LTA charge from the beginning of this tax year to encourage senior staff to stay in position and not retire. Labour immediately stated that they would reintroduce the LTA charge if they won the next election (which they probably will).
When the pensions industry pointed out that this could lead to a massive outflow of senior NHS staff (taking pension benefits without penalty before penalties are reintroduced) Labour then stated that they would make special exemptions for NHS staff but didn't explain what those would be. Also what about police officers, teachers, fire service, civil servants etc who would argue that they deserve the same preferential treatment? But by then the damage was probably done. Labour had a very good try at killing the NHS whilst in opposition, although to be fair I don't think they knew they were doing that!
I have a friend who's a retired GP. His NHS pension is over £100,000 per annum. When he and his two colleagues retired a few years ago they went to a lot of trouble getting 5 young and enthusiastic GPs in to fill their roles. I spoke to him recently about how the surgery was doing, his reply? 'Not good, the new GPs don't want to work, 4 of the 5 have gone part time but who can blame them, they can earn over £100,000 per annum working 3 days a week, they also don't work weekends or evenings or do on call. It's certainly not the same as it used to be.' Not great is it?
The NHS is beyond broken and probably unrepairable. That, an ageing population and younger generations that are weaker (physically and mentally), do less physical work, play less sport, are less nutritionally aware, take more drink and drugs, are less physically active generally, more likely to be overweight and more reliant on prescription drugs, it doesn't bode well.
i think the youth are fitter and healthier than they used to be. All the youngsters (16 to 27) i know have gym memberships, they are more aware of what they put in their bodies too.......the pressure from social media to look good is what drives it imo.......obviously not everyone is like that, but to a large chunk of the youth being fit and healthy is very important..... when i was 18 to 25, it was popular to go to the pub and party all the time, stepping into a gym and working out was very low priority, i defo see a shift away from that with the young folk around me.
1. Agree that the NHS needs massive additional investment to continue the way it is now. Realistically, we are talking about each and every taxpayer paying on average an extra £2-5,000 a year. Every year.
2. Undertake a massive restructure within the NHS. For example, in the massive cost of the 1 million or so non-medically qualified staff. Together with the working practices of staff, particularly out of hours care
3. Scrap the enormous cost of medical research, and funnel that money into the running of the NHS. The various research organisations tend to be nationalistic-as though it is a UK-based charity that is the only 1 that can work towards cures
4. Scale back the operations of the NHS. So that it concentrates in emergency, life-saving care for all, while restricting other services only to people who cannot afford private healthcare
All of those answers have massive disadvantages. Of course they do. But-for example-why do you think we have massive waiting times at A&E? We already have a 2-tier NHS. People can only skip queues by jumping them via private healthcare schemes. And for every thousand people seen for the ailments that are non-urgent but may lead to urgent need further down the line, the people waiting in line are 1000 places further down the line in the queue. And GPs no longer providing weekend services adds to this.
People can't skip A&E using private healthcare, they can skip long waiting lists for operations etc. I have some experience of this having had private healthcare for many years (due to being self employed and reliant on my health to be able to earn money). I have been treated privately and via the NHS. My private treatment has been far better than NHS treatment, even in just the way they deal with you and talk to you and the real irony is that this is often BY EXACTLY THE SAME PEOPLE.
@goldon has a point too, why are we continuing to send aid abroad when we have 8 million people on waiting lists in the UK? How many of those people are off work due to awaiting an operation? Get those people fixed and back into work first.
OK didn't pay tax on money going in but being taxed on it now. Often thought, should we be allowed to say where our tax money is spent...... All tax & no play makes Jack a shoplifter...... hic!