NHS=Negligent Health Service

SexyGreyFox said:
I work for them and I can think of lots of other ways.
eg It would be great to ring an ambulance and it would be at your house in 8 minutes like they used to be.
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Call for an ambulance or somebody calls one for you now, you get interrogated by somebody at the other end of the line, even if you're having a stroke, bad ahtsma attack or heart attack when every second count but don't tell them to STOP WASTING PRECIOUS TIME! SOMEBODY COULD BE DYING HERE SO JUST NEVER MIND THE PROCEEDURES, JUST SEND A ******* AMUBLANCE!! They'll just put the phone down
 
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1664kronenbourg said:
Call for an ambulance or somebody calls one for you now, you get interrogated by somebody at the other end of the line, even if you're having a stroke, bad ahtsma attack or heart attack when every second count but don't tell them to STOP WASTING PRECIOUS TIME! SOMEBODY COULD BE DYING HERE SO JUST NEVER MIND THE PROCEEDURES, JUST SEND A ******* AMUBLANCE!! They'll just put the phone down
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triage

noun
  1. the preliminary assessment of patients or casualties in order to determine the urgency of their need for treatment and the nature of treatment required.
    "the clinic will be dedicated to the triage and treatment of patients with respiratory illnesses."

Would you prefer they send out an ambulance and crew to every single call, no matter how small or insignificant and waste vast resources, money and time?
 
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TBH I've not encountered any interrogation when calling for the emergency services recently (police, ambulance)... couple of brief questions, the problem is they then take like 10-14 hours to actually attend... even after the person on the phone saying it warrants an immediate response... fortunately nothing bad has come of it but in at least one case (my 94 year old grandad lying on the floor with a broken hip) that was more by chance than anything.
 
OllyM said:
So many of these anecdotes about US healthcare are old and outdated. This can't happen any more, the No Surprises Act passed a few years ago put an end to it - https://www.kff.org/health-reform/i...es-act-implementation-what-to-expect-in-2022/

I'm not saying the way the US does healthcare is brilliant, far from it - but in my personal experience it's really not the complete disaster people from the UK assume it to be.
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Indeed. If my parents lived in the USA and had Medicare (Government) health insurance, they'd be waiting less than 1/4 of the time they wait for appointments in the UK. Need an MRI? You can wait 4 weeks. Need a simple injection for some steroids to help you with your pain management? We'll see you in 6 to 8 weeks. You can wait that long, right?

As my Mum (who worked in the NHS for her whole career) said, the NHS is falling apart. I very much doubt that it'll continue as it is in the next 10 to 20 years, as I'm pretty convinced that it's going to implode.
 
Werewolf said:
I love the way the article tries to make out that it's potentially a bad thing if the number of appointments with a non gp is bad, when in reality it's normal and healthy for a practice to do that, because it means it's offering a mix of services.

My local surgery will go through dozens of patients per nurse in one of it's half day clinics*, and it does different clinics every day, with about twice as many nurses as it has GP's (and for some things the nurse acts as triage, if they can't handle something it gets passed onto a GP during the same session).

*IIRC Asthma, diabetes, maternity, blood tests, health checks, minor injuries are the obvious ones.
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Also some nurses can prescribe medication. As I was seen by the nurse practitioner at my doctors for infected mosquito bites. She prescribed me with a course of antibiotics.
 
jon86 said:
Indeed. If my parents lived in the USA and had Medicare (Government) health insurance, they'd be waiting less than 1/4 of the time they wait for appointments in the UK. Need an MRI? You can wait 4 weeks. Need a simple injection for some steroids to help you with your pain management? We'll see you in 6 to 8 weeks. You can wait that long, right?

As my Mum (who worked in the NHS for her whole career) said, the NHS is falling apart. I very much doubt that it'll continue as it is in the next 10 to 20 years, as I'm pretty convinced that it's going to implode.
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Yeah well good luck in America if you have a pre-existing or a life long condition. Issue is the UK public dont want to shell out for a better service; people lost it over the 1.25 levy
 
jon86 said:
I very much doubt that it'll continue as it is in the next 10 to 20 years, as I'm pretty convinced that it's going to implode.
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It's going to be sooner than that methinks.
The NHS is well and truly broken.

The govt (whoever that may be) needs to have a conversation with the UK regarding the macroeconomics of funding the NHS... everything else is just putting a band-aid on a bullet wound
 
1664kronenbourg said:
Call for an ambulance or somebody calls one for you now, you get interrogated by somebody at the other end of the line, even if you're having a stroke, bad ahtsma attack or heart attack when every second count but don't tell them to STOP WASTING PRECIOUS TIME! SOMEBODY COULD BE DYING HERE SO JUST NEVER MIND THE PROCEEDURES, JUST SEND A ******* AMUBLANCE!! They'll just put the phone down
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You need to be asked.
Recently watched an ambulance ER series where out of 6 patients they went to, 4 of them were a complete waste of resource.
Two of the patients/relatives claimed they were having a heart attack where in fact they were just drunk.
The other two just had a headache.
Funnily enough the two old dears who didn't want a fuss ended up in hospital for weeks each.
 
Kill_Phil said:
Yeah well good luck in America if you have a pre-existing or a life long condition. Issue is the UK public dont want to shell out for a better service; people lost it over the 1.25 levy
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That and we are a nation that is utterly appalling when it comes to our general health.

I always enjoy listening to people whinge about the NHS and you look over and they are a complete mess of a human. Overweight, unfit and smoking while they whinge about how underfunded and poor the NHS is.
 
When NHS was first set up, life expectancy was mid 60s. Now it’s early 80s. NHS haven’t geared up to people living 12-15 years longer in a space of 75 years. Though some of the reasons behind the increased longevity is themselves.

Problem is that now we have more elderly people who have no quality of life and linger longer than their families can cope with.
 
Kill_Phil said:
Yeah well good luck in America if you have a pre-existing or a life long condition.
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How so? Pre-existing conditions are generally covered by insurance. I know that my insurance covers them all (not that I have any).

Life-long conditions can get a bit complicated if you need a steady stream of drugs and the drug formulary annual refreshes affect you, but I've heard that the NHS has a drug formulary that changes as well.
 
cheesefest said:
When NHS was first set up, life expectancy was mid 60s. Now it’s early 80s. NHS haven’t geared up to people living 12-15 years longer in a space of 75 years. Though some of the reasons behind the increased longevity is themselves.

Problem is that now we have more elderly people who have no quality of life and linger longer than their families can cope with.
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NHS was also never set up to look after chronic/longterm illness
 
Dis86 said:
Or to cope with a rapidly growing population, largely due to immigration, without increased funding to cope with this.
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That works the complete opposite way. Immigration drives working age people which in turn drives tax intake, which obviously drives NHS funding.

This is extremely well researched and understood.
 
cheesefest said:
When NHS was first set up, life expectancy was mid 60s. Now it’s early 80s. NHS haven’t geared up to people living 12-15 years longer in a space of 75 years. Though some of the reasons behind the increased longevity is themselves.

Problem is that now we have more elderly people who have no quality of life and linger longer than their families can cope with.
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Change "can cope with" to "want to cope with" and that's nearer the truth....
 
GordyR said:
That works the complete opposite way. Immigration drives working age people which in turn drives tax intake, which obviously drives NHS funding.

This is extremely well researched and understood.
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Yet it's not because the NHS hasn't received the increased funding it needs.

Has it?

This is extremely well researched and understood.

www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk

The past, present and future of government spending on the NHS

With the Chancellor making further updates to government spending plans and the health service facing crisis on several fronts, there is uncertainty over what the future will hold for health care finances amid such instability. How much is this government really spending on the NHS per person...
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk
 
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Dis86 said:
Has it?

This is extremely well researched and understood.

www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk

The past, present and future of government spending on the NHS

With the Chancellor making further updates to government spending plans and the health service facing crisis on several fronts, there is uncertainty over what the future will hold for health care finances amid such instability. How much is this government really spending on the NHS per person...
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk
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Sorry, I was a bit unclear.

Correct, the NHS has been underfunded relative to its norms, year after year, since around 2010.

www.health.org.uk

How does UK health spending compare across Europe over the past decade?

Icaro Rebolledo and Anita Charlesworth use five charts to compare UK health care spending with EU countries before the pandemic.
www.health.org.uk www.health.org.uk

  • Average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 per person – 18% below the EU14 average of £3,655.
  • If UK spending per person had matched the EU14 average, then the UK would have spent an average of £227bn a year on health between 2010 and 2019 – £40bn higher than actual average annual spending during this period (£187bn).
  • Matching spending per head to France or Germany would have led to an additional £40bn and £73bn (21% to 39% increase respectively) of total health spending each year in the UK.
  • Over the past decade, the UK had a lower level of capital investment in health care compared with the EU14 countries for which data are available. Between 2010 and 2019, average health capital investment in the UK was £5.8bn a year. If the UK had matched other EU14 countries’ average investment in health capital (as a share of GDP), the UK would have invested £33bn more between 2010 and 2019 (around 55% higher than actual investment during that period).
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But that underfunding is a political decision.

Claiming that the issue is due to immigration or an increased population is simply letting politicians off the hook for failing to distribute the increased tax intake that they’ve received as a result of that increasing population.

Immigration largely drives an increase in working age people who pay taxes and contribute to the funding of the NHS, all the while being part of a demographic who on average require the services of the NHS less.

Immigration should actually help the NHS, not hinder it.

It is that that is well researched and understood. Sorry, I had a few beers last night and I can see that I wasn’t very clear in my post.
 
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