Elderly Parent had a fall - Ambulance took 7 hrs

glen8 said:
The health care in Japan provides healthcare services, including screening examinations, prenatal care and infectious disease control, with the patient accepting responsibility for 30% of these costs while the government pays the remaining 70%.
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I would imagine that the 30% they pay is far from the 30% of a price gouged fully private health service that is available in many parts of the world.

VincentHanna said:
Their children probably look after their elders....
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^
And this
 
Freakbro said:
Mum phoned for the Ambulance at about 9.45, saying they suspected he had broken his hip as he couldn't walk or lift his leg. They said they were really busy and because it was a non-emergency (really? :confused:) they would get there as soon as they could, but it could be up to 2 hours.
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It isn't an emergency, he needs to get to hospital that day but it isn't a case of a few minutes delay = death. thus you also had a wait when you got to A&E as the staff there also agreed that it wasn't an emergency - it isn't like they rushed him into surgery as soon as he arrived or anything.

He was conscious, had someone with him and was indoors. It does suck that it took 7 hours and must not have been pleasant for him :( You'd hope that an hour or two would be sufficient. However they're also dealing with rather more urgent cases too and I wouldn't want them to suddenly disregard their priorities simply because someone is getting upset/worried and has called a couple more times. There might well have been a heart attack, traffic accident etc.. somewhere else.
 
So glad I don't live on UK mainland when I hear stuff like this.

Sadly we're getting all your NHS management rejects over here as highly paid 'advisors' so no doubt similar experiences here will be had.

Hope your dad is on the mend - really not nice when you have to watch anyone in extreme pain, let alone a parent.
 
Mr Jack said:
Tories gonna Tory.

It's no surprise the NHS is suffering. They do this every time.
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Shall we borrow our way out of trouble? Oh wait...we tried that.

If you like, maybe we should start talking about reducing benefits so money can be used elsewhere?

Without getting to political, it was struggling before the Tories ...it still is.

Maybe a raise in tax's by 1% would help resolve it? That will bring us more inline with the likes of Sweden. They pay a set fee, a one off, every time they visit a hospital, maybe that will reduce time wasters sitting in A&E for toothaches?

All in all, it's a difficult one to resolve.
 
Ouch that sounds horrific :(.

Although is the hospital far away? Could you have not got a taxi or driven there?

I remember being a low priority for a broken shin (obvious break) so got a taxi as it was quicker than waiting 2 hours. Suffered the 20 minutes drive taxi driver and mate helped me in. Thankfully found a taxi who'd happily take my ID to get the cash later as we didn't have any money on us.

It's not right but when you have people like that woman recently in the news wasting money it's going to happen :(. I'm not sure how many ambulance crews £240k a year would pay for but I bet she's far from the only one doing the same :(.
 
As somebody who's married to an NHS worker i'd say the problem is ever increasing demand, decreasing budget (yes yes, the government say its going up but I know for a fact that spending cuts are massive and ongoing) and an idiotic layer of management. The actual grass roots staff do there utmost to provide the best they can working above and beyond their hours and duty.
 
Freakbro said:
So I put this in TIAM yesterday, but I would like to describe the events yesterday in more detail.

So my dad is 71 and has had a bad form of arthritis that has been eating away at his skeleton for years. He has had 2 hip replacements, a shoulder and the latest was a knee replacement last Easter.

Yesterday he was putting up a curtain pole, when it slipped and fell on him knocking him off the small steps he was on. He fell in a crumpled heap, bashing his head open and in extreme pain unable to get up or support himself without mums help.

Mum phoned for the Ambulance at about 9.45, saying they suspected he had broken his hip as he couldn't walk or lift his leg. They said they were really busy and because it was a non-emergency (really? :confused:) they would get there as soon as they could, but it could be up to 2 hours.

At this point we would have taken him in the car, but he said he was unable to walk, let alone get in and out of the car, hence the need for an ambulance.

So they got him onto a dining room chair and he sat waiting. At 12 they rang again, only to be told the same thing, that they were busy etc. At 2pm, still no ambulance and another phone call, when they upgraded the call to 'priority'

At 4.30 my mum rings 999 again, understandably very upset and finally the ambulance arrived at 4.45.....7 hours after the fall! With the poor guy sat in extreme pain all day in a high backed chair.

He is then taken to the local A&E, and unfortunately as we all know they are over stretched, it was another 3.5 hr wait before he had his X-Rays. It turns out nothing was broken, thankfully, but he has torn all the muscles around his hip joints and in his groin. So they discharged him last night, with him still saying he was unable to walk, sit/stand. So they gave him some crutches and said he would have to be picked up.

I have seen this guy cut his finger off, go through multiple joint replacements and all the physio....I have never seen him yelp like he did last night when i picked him up and had to get him in and out of my car :(

Now we are generally not people who make a fuss about things, but this does seem unacceptable, how can an elderly person having a fall and a suspected broken hip be classed a non-emergency and left 7 hours before the ambulance arrives. Is it worth making a complaint? Who would I complain to?
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I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. Certainly my service would have treated both the head and hip injury as an emergency and responded appropriately. I'd happily discuss how we triage calls with you if it would help your feedback - e-mail in trust.

In my experience it's often the reluctance of the caller to participate in the triage or their inabiliy to effectively communicate what they're seeing which leads to a call being wrongly triaged. Not saying that's the case in this case, but perhaps it's also worth considering your role as well. I don't blame callers for being challenging because as a service we don't educate the public on how to call 999, and therefore can't expect them to be good at it but its rarely a completely one sided thing.
 
There is a new Hospital in Cramlington, Northumberland which opened last year and it's state of the art. My wife was rushed to it recently after a routine GP visit. Everything turned out alright but we were absolutely stunned by the lack of efficiency just witnessing the daily goings on.

I thought that when you went into a modern A&E they would register your name into a system and track you as you moved through the departments. This is a brand new multimillion pound hospital and they are still using white boards to track patients. My wife required a number of scans and each time she was moved to a new department we had to explain who she was and why she was here etc. There was no ticket system to track her details or even name!

While we were waiting in one ward a woman came in and gave a letter to the doctor who was seeing her. He returned later and asked to see the letter again. The woman explained he had it. He went off looking and was unable to find it!

The building is world class but it just seems haphazard the way things are running internally. Coming from and IT support background and working within a multi layered team it just seems incredible there are not some basic measures in place. The doctors are great, but you can tell the people running things have probably never worked in a professional corporate environment.

To top it off when my wife was discharged we were given a prescription. We wandered around looking for the pharmacy for a while and eventually went back to the A&E desk to ask where it was. We were told the hospital didn't have a pharmacy, so I asked where the nearest one was as it was late at night. The women behind the desk asked around but weren't sure. I said do you not have a list of 24hr pharmacies? No was the answer....and a look of surprise.
 
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We are getting to the breaking point and people need to decide what the NHS is for.

Should it be performing boob jobs, sexual reorientatio,n even IVF treatments.

Should it be treating health tourism and immigrants when it can't sustain emergencies like this?

We as a nation need to think about what do we want it to offer, how much can it afford.
 
Health tourism is not really an issue. It is a tiny fraction of the cost and can be gotten back but our poor admin and management of it means we actually claim next to nothing of it. Outside the EU that story is different but that poor management is to blame for not having a system that can charge these health tourists.

As for immigrants, they use the NHS far less and also pay tax when they are over here. Their money comes into the pockets of our government when we didnt pay for their education and neither will we pay for their treatment after they go back home to retire when people are the most costly.

Boob jobs and sex changes are just media fluff stories. They should not be performed at the NHS cost and luckily take up a negligable fraction of NHS costs, like health tourism and usualy grumble immigrants grumble.

As for IVF, i believe it should be supplemented but not fully paid for. It is expensive and TBH if you cannot afford it, can you really afford the kids?


The biggest NHS costs are boring, such as poor management, extravagant pay to irrelevant top tier management jobs which are held by politicians (and their mates) rather than health professionals and extortionate costs of private hiring of nurses and doctors when there is insufficient NHS staff due to cuts to employees and increased demand in NHS services.
 
Its disgraceful.

Given the circumstance how can people say its not life threatening? The guy could easily have ruptured something internally or the knock on his head could have caused a clot/stroke who knows what.

I'd issue a formal complaint, totally unacceptable FB.

Read burnsys post and would make a contrast. If you arrested someone who fell over and knocked their head and they were "yelping" saying they couldn't walk... You presumably would follow a new protocol of "oh its non-life threatening" in you come sunny Jim? Or would you be saying "I'm not a doctor and not qualified to assess what is threatening and what's not".

Hope your dads OK FB
 
I would imagine from previous experience that the people on the phone would have gone through a handful of questions to see if the knock on the head is an immediate danger, i think that mixed with how long it had been since the fall and the call would be enough to make a reasonable enough assessment to make a decision on priority.
 
how can an elderly person having a fall and a suspected broken hip be classed a non-emergency
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Did he die or suffer permanent debilitation?

That's why it wasn't an emergency.

It's sounds callous, but it's the reality.
 
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