NHS=Negligent Health Service

[dlockers]

Health = getting good food, especially in a hospital where you are sick. To try to say that food and health are not linked goes against every academic study. Probably another Tory backhander scam with outsourcing.

Right, but you are well aware that caterers are probably better placed than healthcare professionals to deliver good quality food?

 

[ubersonic]

"Underfunded"

Yeah, it's a sad fact that the NHS is one of the very few things the government could actually fix simply by throwing money at it, albeit quite a lot of money as they would need to both provide adequate funding and additional funding to reverse the decades of underfunding.

problem is though, even though it's so simple to fix they government don't want to as it would reduce the amount of money going to the private sector and many of them directly or indirectly benefit from NHS privatisation. Something that should really be outlawed, like how is it ethical for people with a vested financial interest in mismanaging a public service to be allowed to manage that service /sigh.

Sadly, whenever people try to point out it's almost purely an underfunding issue you always get people trotting out the idiotic "Bring back matrons!" or "too many managers" myths they read in the tabloids

*EDIT*

Oops didn't read all of your post, to be clear I wasn't calling you idiotic, just the myths you were repeating.

 

[do_ron_ron]

Poor food in hospitals has been a problem for decades, its not really a Tory thing, just never a priority.

It has been, there were various TV chefs tasked with getting better menus for hospital areas. Other areas just did not bother, getting the cheapest **** available.

 

[do_ron_ron]

Right, but you are well aware that caterers are probably better placed than healthcare professionals to deliver good quality food?

If only that were true. These companies will/do produce the cheapest to maximise their profits. Dieticians are part of healthcare professionals and they are much better placed than a company trying to maximise profits than produce quality food.

 

[dlockers]

If only that were true. These companies will/do produce the cheapest to maximise their profits. Dieticians are part of healthcare professionals and they are much better placed than a company trying to maximise profits than produce quality food.

You are asking the football player to be the coach as well. It's a different profession. It doesn't have to be a race to the bottom.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Different between self diagnosis and doctor diagnosis is that the doctor is making an educated guess.

 

[Deleted member 236143]

There was another case recently where somebody contracted aids after being injected with a needle which had been dropped and picked off on the floor and used on him.

You cannot get AIDS by an injection. You can get something that destroys your T cell count and as a result develop the syndrome. Most known being the HIV virus.

 

[Haggisman]

Health = getting good food, especially in a hospital where you are sick. To try to say that food and health are not linked goes against every academic study. Probably another Tory backhander scam with outsourcing.

With an infinite budget then sure. However given the limited NHS budget, I'd rather more funding went towards delivering high quality healthcare and passable food, than the opposite.

If I wanted high quality food I'd go to a restaurant (and I certainly wouldn't be expecting them to do a heart bypass while I was there!).

Besides, if it's really that much of a problem, there's nothing to stop you bringing/ordering your own food while you're there.

 

[ahar]

Yeah, it's a sad fact that the NHS is one of the very few things the government could actually fix simply by throwing money at it, albeit quite a lot of money as they would need to both provide adequate funding and additional funding to reverse the decades of underfunding.

No. Structures and organisation matter as well. While its definitely the case that we spend less per head than other European countries that have better health systems than ours, pumping money in to a health system with the wrong structures won't give the same outcomes.
The other thing to note is staffing - in order to meet the demands of population health today, we should have been training the professionals we need years ago. Doesn't matter how much money you throw at the NHS, if the staff (which goes far beyond the simplistic view of doctors and nurses) aren't there.

problem is though, even though it's so simple to fix they government don't want to as it would reduce the amount of money going to the private sector and many of them directly or indirectly benefit from NHS privatisation. Something that should really be outlawed, like how is it ethical for people with a vested financial interest in mismanaging a public service to be allowed to manage that service /sigh.

Ah, the old NHS privatisation trope. Most of primary care is private and always has been, designed like that by Bevan himself. GPs, dentists, opticians etc, mostly or all private.
Better health systems in Europe have a much more mixed economy of public and private in secondary and tertiary care, as well as different ways of paying for healthcare. France, Germany, Denmark etc have lots of public and private mixes and their systems are definitely better than ours. It's not about the private sector per se, its about how you bring them into your health system. Think tanks like The Kings Fund have loads of interesting case studies about what works and what doesn't.

PS I'm not a clinician (my bedside manner would be terrible), but I have worked with NHS orgs, including alongside guys from The Kings Fund. Its a fascinating and complex area of study, thinking about how to organise health systems in countries.

 

[FortuitousFluke]

Health = getting good food, especially in a hospital where you are sick. To try to say that food and health are not linked goes against every academic study. Probably another Tory backhander scam with outsourcing.

As much as I'd like to blame the Tories for this one it's down to the individual Trusts in this case. Having said that the drive towards a large overarching FM contracts awarded to the likes of Serco is likely Government driven, though that may even have been Labour it's been so long.

We're seeing a push to insource at the moment with elements of FM being outsourced where it's not viable. Elements of catering will need to be outsourced though because meal prep takes up a decent amount of space that's needed for clinical delivery. So yeah nutrition is important, but it's probably not core.

 

[heeeed]

Most of primary care is private and always has been, designed like that by Bevan himself. GPs, dentists, opticians etc, mostly or all private.

it’s a gross simplification to say they’re all private. They are in some ways, but they hold national contracts that despite being independent businesses in the main they don’t get to negotiate their contracts themselves. They pretty much exclusively provide the NHS contract with very little that could be considered private in reality

 

[Energize]

Right, but you are well aware that caterers are probably better placed than healthcare professionals to deliver good quality food?

Tbf they could could probably deliver better healthcare too.

Never have I ever been so frightened as when I was treated in an NHS hospital, I ended up coming out worse than I went in.

 

[arknor]

Different between self diagnosis and doctor diagnosis is that the doctor is making an educated guess.

they have like a google search programme internally where they look up symptoms watch the reflection in your doctors glasses the next time you go

they aren't walking medical encyclopaedias although I imagine they know what's more likely based on experience of diagnosing people.

where as self diagnosis probably jumps to the most extreme option.

anyway who thinks a GP is always right is surely wrong.

only with tests can you really narrow it down properly and find out, sometimes they don't want to refer you for tests.

is it negligence? probably in some cases but I'd imagine it's not easy to prove they could argue others would jump to the same conclusions or whatever

 

[Cyber-Mav]

yep doc asks me questions in order and it deffo sounds like he is reading from a script of sorts.

 

[dlockers]

yep doc asks me questions in order and it deffo sounds like he is reading from a script of sorts.

Would you prefer a random list of questions in no particular order at all?

 

[arknor]

there's a PDF about Diagnosis and referral
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/Diagnosis and referral.pdf

it gives an example of bad.

An example of delayed diagnosis was given in a recent analysis of significant
event audits of lung cancer diagnoses in the north of England (Mitchell et
al 2009). The audit found many cases of exemplary practice, but in a small
proportion (9 per cent) of the cases reviewed there was also evidence of
missed opportunities for earlier diagnosis. This example was cited in the
audit as a case of potentially poor practice:
1 week history of cough in a 62 year old smoker treated as a viral
infection. The next presentation was 22 weeks later. However, the
patient had seven consultations before being referred 63 weeks after
first presentation with cough. These consultations included complaints of
chest pain (but tender over chest wall and acromioclavicular joint), pains
in shoulder and neck, chesty cough, cough and chest pains diagnosed as
chest infection, further chest infection, ankle swelling and pleuritic chest
pain.
(Mitchell et al 2009, pp 24–5)
One part of the strategy to reduce delays in cancer diagnosis is to improve
GP access to diagnostic tests, and the government has set a one-week target
for access to tests, to be achieved over the next five years (Department of
Health 2009c)

bet if he went private it wouldn't have taken 63 weeks to realise he had lung cancer, I bet if he just went straight to A&E instead of a GP he would have been diagnosed sooner too.....


with covid now there's probably a hell of a lot of this going on.


GPs surgery appointments all seem to be done how Dentist emergency same day appointments are too.

you can't book in advance at my GP any more, probably making too much money from jabs and giving priority to inviting people to come and get jabbed so the GP can get his easy 25 quid or whatever they are being paid per jab now.

NHS healthcare right now is literally 3rd world for anything other than covid it would appear


there's probably never been a bigger divide in healthcare between rich and poor as there is now in this country, time to get private medical insurance if you can afford it.

your probably way more likely to be given antibiotics too

 

[hurfdurf]

You cannot get AIDS by an injection. You can get something that destroys your T cell count and as a result develop the syndrome. Most known being the HIV virus.

He’s talking absolute rubbish anyway.

 

[theone8181]

it’s a gross simplification to say they’re all private. They are in some ways, but they hold national contracts that despite being independent businesses in the main they don’t get to negotiate their contracts themselves. They pretty much exclusively provide the NHS contract with very little that could be considered private in reality

My Mrs is a pharmacist in a gp surgery, and she says NHS.

 

[do_ron_ron]

With an infinite budget then sure. However given the limited NHS budget, I'd rather more funding went towards delivering high quality healthcare and passable food, than the opposite.

If I wanted high quality food I'd go to a restaurant (and I certainly wouldn't be expecting them to do a heart bypass while I was there!).

Besides, if it's really that much of a problem, there's nothing to stop you bringing/ordering your own food while you're there.

Patients in hospital tend to be weak and need the best food to aid recovery. In this country you are not expected to have to bring in food although we did when my mother was recovering from a cancer op. As far as limited budget goes these same TV chefs were producing menus at a cheaper cost than the swill the outsourced companies were charging the NHS.

 

[Haggisman]

Patients in hospital tend to be weak and need the best food to aid recovery.

You're assuming bland & tasteless = low in nutrition, which simply isn't the case. "best" doesnt necessarily mean restaurant quality when you're trying to make 2-3 meals which will suit everyone whilst being easy to eat (e.g. someone with a weak stomach due to their illness is more likely to actually want something relatively bland and inoffensive)

As far as limited budget goes these same TV chefs were producing menus at a cheaper cost than the swill the outsourced companies were charging the NHS.

Fair enough, I didn't see this documentary, so if this is the case then why aren't the hospitals using those menus?

Like I said, I understand that this is going to be trust dependent, so it's quite likely i've not experienced the worst of it, but I've never had hospital food that I would consider "inedible"