Revamping the NHS

[LadyOnArooftop]

I think you may agree with me when I say the NHS is in dire straits. The usual reaction is to throw more money at it. But will there ever be enough money for the NHS? As an alternative, I've been pondering services that the NHS could stop providing. I accept that this will be painful for some, but something has to be done.
Off the top of my head I can think of...
1. IVF treatment
2. Bariatric surgery
Any others?. ..

 

[Katelyn]

Gender reassignment.

Wokeness

Waving rainbows

 

[Katelyn]

Another thing they could do is, stop the middle non medical management layers, the Diversity and Inclusivity managers which each trust has on a salary of £70k - they serve no medical purpose.

 

[Moriarty]

NHS..
You cant fix stupid.
Stop demanding nurses have a degree and get £30k at least in debt, kills recruitment.
Bring back nursing schools.
Get rid of middle managment, any organisation who has more managers than "Shop Front" workers is doomed to fail.
Fund the NHS in a way which rewards patient care, not ticking boxes.
Stop silencing doctors and nurses who have legitimate concerns about anything, from covid jabs to Tavistock (thankfully closing)

Above all.
Dont let charites, philanthropic societies or action groups tell government how to run it, listen to docters and nurses.

 

[CrazyCatLady]

Everything as above and not quite a deletion of a service, but a reform- A&E.

The very few times I've been there (the last time I was sent by my G.P and the rest of the times were with my kid or as a kid), I've found they were treating very minor injuries & conditions as if they were major and wasting lots of time and expertise on something that could have been treated by the G.P or at a pharmacist. And this is at the expense of more serious conditions. For example, a woman waiting in A&E for nearly 8 hours with swollen eyes and cold like symptoms, having her nurse check her stats every hour after the initial assessment and then seeing a qualified doctor to be told "It's hayfever" and be told to wait another 2 hours for them to give her an anti-histamine (no, this was not me). WHY? Why was she not told at her initial assessment what it was and sent on her way? How the hell did she get through the front door and waste all those resources?
Same visit- a group of drunks hooked up to drips and discussing what a fantastic night they had and how much they drunk. Unless they were choking on their own vomit, they shouldn't have been there.
All this while an old man I got talking to had to wait OVER 12 hours after having a stroke to be seen.

A&E panders to hypochondriacs and it's about time they stopped.

 

[Katelyn]

I don't agree with that, it's accident and emergency, so not just for emergencies, but also if you had an accident. The woman with the swollen eyes, I'm sure if she knew she had hayfever, she wouldn't have been there, but if she doesn't usually suffer, then the swollen eyes may well have alarmed her and a month wait for a GP appointment wouldn't have come in time.

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

A good few years ago a party of around 10 staff from our hospital went on a 'brain storming/fact finding' jolly to Australia, yes, Australia. When they returned, the only thing that changed as far as I could see, was that they rebranded A&E to E.D (Emergency department).

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

Another thing they should stop is the NHS staff car leasing scheme. Cars subsidised by the NHS so that staff can get to work and are able to
'drive the cars they deserve'. There are nurses driving around in Mercedes, Range Rovers etc

 

[CrazyCatLady]

I don't agree with that, it's accident and emergency, so not just for emergencies, but also if you had an accident. The woman with the swollen eyes, I'm sure if she knew she had hayfever, she wouldn't have been there, but if she doesn't usually suffer, then the swollen eyes may well have alarmed her and a month wait for a GP appointment wouldn't have come in time.

I don't dispute what you say- if someone has swollen eyes, without having an accident or coming into contact with something in their environment that would cause them to swell, and there's no rational explanation for it happening (e.g. they don't usually suffer with hayfever), then their first thought would be to go to A&E. However, if able to, why don't they go to a pharmacist for answers and something to relieve them, until they can get to their G.P? That's what pharmacists are for. Most towns- and definitely cities- have 24 hour pharmacists.

Many people use A&E as their G.P or as their pharmacist and that's not what they are- they are Accident- i.e; if you cut yourself badly, break bones, etc- and Emergency- i.e; if you have a stroke, a heart attack/issues with the heart, having issues breathing related to a medical cause, are a having a baby, have had a severe allergic reaction that requires emergency treatment (anaphylactic shock), have a blood clot, dehydration caused by illness/accident, delirium/psychosis/urgent MH issues, end-of-life situations, etc- in general, a condition that is life-threatening and needs a professional medical response immediately.

A&E should not include treating a condition that can be dealt with by a pharmacist or at a G.P and is not life-threatening or needs immediate medical attention, such as a hangover, mild food poisoning, hayfever (unless it's obstructing), a nose bleed and a cold/ mild flu. It's also not the place to go to get medication topped up.

I agree with you- I'm sure the woman in A&E didn't want to spend all that time there. So maybe next she'll get the hubby she kept chatting to on the phone (even though he was in the waiting room) to Google a 24 hour chemist and they won't have to.

The 'reform' I stated- perhaps a quicker, more resourceful way of diagnosing. Instead of waiting around the best part of a night and having several nurses take blood pressure and stats for conditions such as hayfever; diagnose and treat on the spot, and get them out the door. There was absolutely no need for that woman to constantly have those checks, using staff that could have been better used elsewhere, for shock-horror- hayfever.

 

[Moriarty]

I don't dispute what you say- if someone has swollen eyes, without having an accident or coming into contact with something in their environment that would cause them to swell, and there's no rational explanation for it happening (e.g. they don't usually suffer with hayfever), then their first thought would be to go to A&E. However, if able to, why don't they go to a pharmacist for answers and something to relieve them, until they can get to their G.P? That's what pharmacists are for. Most towns- and definitely cities- have 24 hour pharmacists.

Many people use A&E as their G.P or as their pharmacist and that's not what they are- they are Accident- i.e; if you cut yourself badly, break bones, etc- and Emergency- i.e; if you have a stroke, a heart attack/issues with the heart, having issues breathing related to a medical cause, are a having a baby, have had a severe allergic reaction that requires emergency treatment (anaphylactic shock), have a blood clot, dehydration caused by illness/accident, delirium/psychosis/urgent MH issues, end-of-life situations, etc- in general, a condition that is life-threatening and needs a professional medical response immediately.

A&E should not include treating a condition that can be dealt with by a pharmacist or at a G.P and is not life-threatening or needs immediate medical attention, such as a hangover, mild food poisoning, hayfever (unless it's obstructing), a nose bleed and a cold/ mild flu. It's also not the place to go to get medication topped up.

I agree with you- I'm sure the woman in A&E didn't want to spend all that time there. So maybe next she'll get the hubby she kept chatting to on the phone (even though he was in the waiting room) to Google a 24 hour chemist and they won't have to.

The 'reform' I stated- perhaps a quicker, more resourceful way of diagnosing. Instead of waiting around the best part of a night and having several nurses take blood pressure and stats for conditions such as hayfever; diagnose and treat on the spot, and get them out the door. There was absolutely no need for that woman to constantly have those checks, using staff that could have been better used elsewhere, for shock-horror- hayfever.

The corporatisation of medical services, i.e the use of 24 hour pharmacies, etc, is the problem.
Either go full corperate health care or invest properly in the NHS as a national asset.

The NHS has been slowly and deliberatly dismantled for decades, yes even under Labours time in government.

With the next batch of changes due to come in, with virtual doctors and virtual wards where people are treated at home, we can simply expect more deaths due to mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment.

Look at the ONS figures for excess deaths, they are revealing.
Deaths in hospital, social care centres etc, are all static to what they have been for the last 10 years per capita (adjusting for Covid deaths in nursing homes which were borderline criminal).

Deaths at home have risen massively.

People cannot get appointments with fully trained doctors, as in GP's.

I'm sorry, but a pharmacy does not have the staff to properly diagnose as well as a GP or an A&E department.

A typical example is my mum, her cancer checkup was due last November, she is still waiting.
I'm waiting for an appointment for psychological problems, which I applied for and was granted in January 2021.

If I wanted to pay for the help I need, I could have an appointment next week.

As for the "Quicker" diagnosis methods, I hope you arent talking about AI which is due to start being incorperated into the NHS as a diagnostic tool.

The tests that have been run in various medical centres, mostly in the USA have found them to be woefully lacking in accuracy.

During Covid, the Doctors and Nurses on "The Front Line" were touted as Heroic, to me they were just doing the job they were paid to do.
However, that doesnt mean the government should treat them like sh!t.

My cousin is a nurse, she worked all through the "Pandemic" the stories she has told me are terrible.

In the end the NHS will die off as a care entity, it will be a hub for distributing care to private companies, thats whats on the cards in my view.

No one gets rich being a shareholder in the NHS, it doesnt have shares.

"In 2016/17
Virgin Care won contracts worth £1 billion.
Care UK, which had links to the Conservative Party, gained the second biggest share of contracts (£596.3 million).

In 2018
The Department of Health and Social Care awarded £9.2 billion to private providers like Virgin care and the Priory Group."

Oh and guess what, Virgin Care pays no taxes in the UK.

Does anyone think it got better in 2020/21, with the Big Pharma companies, testing agencies and private medical facilites not being awarded billions in contracts?

As always, follow the money.

Edit, forgot to post links.
Private companies involvement in the NHS
Private Companies in the NHS – a comprehensive list.

ONS Excess Deaths by "Place of Occurence"

 

[hell2bwith76]

Not having the time or inclination to wade through pages of articulated writing ,i just want to give my most recent experiences with the NHS.
Para Medics were excellent on three occasions with me . I can find no fault but only praises for them.
As for the Hospital staff ,they seemed to to their job as required and last visit i had a very nice Romanian Nurse who made me feel very comfortable on my stay .
Thank you NHS workers ! you are a National Treasure and should be treated as such imo.

 

[hell2bwith76]

Now we know what the spreader of BS about Covid thinks to our NHS .If i was an NHS worker and a member on this site id send him a strong message about his attitude. The Stupid faced Clown .

 

[CrazyCatLady]

The corporatisation of medical services, i.e the use of 24 hour pharmacies, etc, is the problem.
Either go full corperate health care or invest properly in the NHS as a national asset.

The NHS has been slowly and deliberatly dismantled for decades, yes even under Labours time in government.

With the next batch of changes due to come in, with virtual doctors and virtual wards where people are treated at home, we can simply expect more deaths due to mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment.

Look at the ONS figures for excess deaths, they are revealing.
Deaths in hospital, social care centres etc, are all static to what they have been for the last 10 years per capita (adjusting for Covid deaths in nursing homes which were borderline criminal).

Deaths at home have risen massively.

People cannot get appointments with fully trained doctors, as in GP's.

I'm sorry, but a pharmacy does not have the staff to properly diagnose as well as a GP or an A&E department.

A typical example is my mum, her cancer checkup was due last November, she is still waiting.
I'm waiting for an appointment for psychological problems, which I applied for and was granted in January 2021.

If I wanted to pay for the help I need, I could have an appointment next week.

As for the "Quicker" diagnosis methods, I hope you arent talking about AI which is due to start being incorperated into the NHS as a diagnostic tool.

The tests that have been run in various medical centres, mostly in the USA have found them to be woefully lacking in accuracy.

During Covid, the Doctors and Nurses on "The Front Line" were touted as Heroic, to me they were just doing the job they were paid to do.
However, that doesnt mean the government should treat them like sh!t.

My cousin is a nurse, she worked all through the "Pandemic" the stories she has told me are terrible.

In the end the NHS will die off as a care entity, it will be a hub for distributing care to private companies, thats whats on the cards in my view.

No one gets rich being a shareholder in the NHS, it doesnt have shares.

"In 2016/17
Virgin Care won contracts worth £1 billion.
Care UK, which had links to the Conservative Party, gained the second biggest share of contracts (£596.3 million).

In 2018
The Department of Health and Social Care awarded £9.2 billion to private providers like Virgin care and the Priory Group."

Oh and guess what, Virgin Care pays no taxes in the UK.

Does anyone think it got better in 2020/21, with the Big Pharma companies, testing agencies and private medical facilites not being awarded billions in contracts?

As always, follow the money.

Edit, forgot to post links.
Private companies involvement in the NHS
Private Companies in the NHS – a comprehensive list.

ONS Excess Deaths by "Place of Occurence"

I know the whole corporate medical system is part of the Big Pharma ‘conspiracy’, however, disliking 24 hour pharmacies for what they feed into will not put them out of business, so why not use them to our advantage, rather than spend a copious amount of time relying on a system that is clearly not working? You can buy the generic instead of the named brand of medication in most cases. When you are ill and need advice and quick treatment, do you really care who’s getting your money? Because, frankly, I don’t and I’m not sure many people even think about it. If I can get relief for painful or life-hindering symptoms (not for a diagnosis or in an emergency) while I wait for a doctor’s appointment, I would rather take ½ hour out to visit a pharmacist and spend a tenner than go and sit in a dirty, understaffed and over-populated A&E waiting room for over 12 hours, spending a fortune on bottled water, where I would be liable of contracting something I didn’t originally go there for, either from the waiting room or the toilets.

Absolutely- the NHS does need to be invested in properly and there are many reforms that need to take place, from the A&E system to the numbers of surgery’s; opening times and operation, the number of doctors & professionals, etc. However, a start would be making sure A&Es are not acting as a free for all emergency doctors surgery/pharmacists and dentists and implement a more thorough initial screening and referral system. This would consequently save on resources at the ‘front-door’. Instead of blindly taking stats for hours on end and treating all conditions (bar those at death’s door & bleeding) in the same way, they should be referring quicker and/or pushing minor conditions out quicker. If pushing someone out quicker means an initial health screening and telling them to see a pharmacist or their G.P instead of making them wait for another 12 hours for another screening by someone with more letters to their name than the first, then so be it.

In the recent experience I noted, I was there from being sent by a Dr to go to specific department, yet I had to go through A&E as instructed with a letter, informing of where I was supposed to go. Instead, I was made to wait in A&E for over 12 hours, before being taken to the department that was (supposedly) expecting me. After my 6th hour in A&E, I was finally seen by someone else for tests, then had wait in a packed ‘assessment room’ at the back of A&E for another 6 hours, regularly having my temperature and blood pressure taken. I also had another blood test taken in that time of which the results have never been shared with my Dr. When I arrived at the department I was meant to be in, there was hardly anyone there and only 3 beds out of 7 filled (it was now 3am). There was no one there to operate the scan I should have had 12 hours beforehand and I was told that I could have a bed, but I could be in it for another 2 days before the man with the scan could see me. 3 days on something that could have been answered with a scan within a few hours.
Meanwhile, downstairs, amongst the real emergencies were also the hayfever, dental problems, possible COVID (man on phone to wife: “had a bit of a cough, so thought I better get to A&E”), hangovers and come-down’s, all still setting up their vending machine picnics.

I would have preferred not to be- and if a pharmacist could have helped, I would have gone there rather than my Dr. Even on my Dr’s instruction, I challenged it and said I would rather have an appointment, than go through A&E, but he insisted for reasons completely unbeknown to me.

This needs to desperately change. A&E needs to go back to what it was- Accident and Emergency. Not as a replacement for the Reception, a G.P, pharmacist or even self-help. There used to be 24 hour doctor surgeries that you could go to if you weren’t registered with a doctor or had needed attention from a Dr/nurse, but it was out of hours of your regular G.P. What the hell happened to those? Bringing them back would relieve A&E immensely.

You should know by now, I don’t do politics in this sense. I stand by no party. All are simply different sides of the same dice- built into the same structure and none represent the hand that throws them. Both have fcked the NHS in different ways and neither have encouraged or made it easy for the younger generations to study medicine/nursing in order to produce our own specialists.

(sorry- a 2 poster!)

 

[CrazyCatLady]

The corporatisation of medical services, i.e the use of 24 hour pharmacies, etc, is the problem.
Either go full corperate health care or invest properly in the NHS as a national asset.

The NHS has been slowly and deliberatly dismantled for decades, yes even under Labours time in government.

With the next batch of changes due to come in, with virtual doctors and virtual wards where people are treated at home, we can simply expect more deaths due to mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment.

Look at the ONS figures for excess deaths, they are revealing.
Deaths in hospital, social care centres etc, are all static to what they have been for the last 10 years per capita (adjusting for Covid deaths in nursing homes which were borderline criminal).

Deaths at home have risen massively.

People cannot get appointments with fully trained doctors, as in GP's.

I'm sorry, but a pharmacy does not have the staff to properly diagnose as well as a GP or an A&E department.

A typical example is my mum, her cancer checkup was due last November, she is still waiting.
I'm waiting for an appointment for psychological problems, which I applied for and was granted in January 2021.

If I wanted to pay for the help I need, I could have an appointment next week.

As for the "Quicker" diagnosis methods, I hope you arent talking about AI which is due to start being incorperated into the NHS as a diagnostic tool.

The tests that have been run in various medical centres, mostly in the USA have found them to be woefully lacking in accuracy.

During Covid, the Doctors and Nurses on "The Front Line" were touted as Heroic, to me they were just doing the job they were paid to do.
However, that doesnt mean the government should treat them like sh!t.

My cousin is a nurse, she worked all through the "Pandemic" the stories she has told me are terrible.

In the end the NHS will die off as a care entity, it will be a hub for distributing care to private companies, thats whats on the cards in my view.

No one gets rich being a shareholder in the NHS, it doesnt have shares.

"In 2016/17
Virgin Care won contracts worth £1 billion.
Care UK, which had links to the Conservative Party, gained the second biggest share of contracts (£596.3 million).

In 2018
The Department of Health and Social Care awarded £9.2 billion to private providers like Virgin care and the Priory Group."

Oh and guess what, Virgin Care pays no taxes in the UK.

Does anyone think it got better in 2020/21, with the Big Pharma companies, testing agencies and private medical facilites not being awarded billions in contracts?

As always, follow the money.

Edit, forgot to post links.
Private companies involvement in the NHS
Private Companies in the NHS – a comprehensive list.

ONS Excess Deaths by "Place of Occurence"

The changes to the system, virtual doctors, etc will not only will impact on numbers going through A&E and the higher rate of deaths, but it’s also a barrier to people seeking medical help in the first place. The fact that people can’t get appointments and are being made to wait longer is already off-putting and many are liable to procrastinate minor medical issues until they get bigger. Going virtual, there will be those that do not seek help because they can’t use the technology for one reason or other. Turning healthcare over to technology ensures that those without the capacity to use it (the weaker members of our society) die off. I can imagine that’s already happening with some surgery’s going online to book an appointment and rarely answering their phone.

And we have to look at why this is happening. The blame doesn’t only lie with the Big Pharma connection. With respect to you & Bad, because yeah, I know & get where you are both coming from with the Big Pharma domination, etc, and I’m sure you’ll both know that this corruption in what we know as medical care has been going on for very long time. Undergraduate university psychology courses have been ranting since the ‘80’s about the links between the medical model, which is used in diagnosis, and the link between large profiting drug companies, competing for contracts. Mental health is one hell of a profiting business! However, we also have to acknowledge that everything in life has money behind the motivation for it- whether it's the NHS, corrupt medical companies or dodgy doctors. Medicine may be a necessity, but so is food. It's also a competition, but we rarely highlight their profits, classism between companies, questionable food sources/production or how corrupt it is that only certain groups of society have access to certain foods that others don't.

The thing is, is most people will run to the medical model, because they have been trained to think that a white coat equals help and relief. However, it is still mostly a choice, especially now-a-days when there are so many other choices.

I am sympathetic to your personal experiences- there is no way anyone should be awaiting a check-up for cancer that long and when it comes to mental health, I know where you are coming from. I’ve been ‘known’ to the mental health services since a teenager and few years ago, I sought help and got ‘lost in the system’ for over a year and only got an appointment when I chased it up. Tbh, I’ve had a few therapies (medical & psychological) through the NHS and when you get help, it won’t be worth the wait. If you can, go private, because you will by no means get the same level or qualification of mental health care on the NHS. I now use *cough* home remedies and they have served my mental health well (mostly!) for nearly 20 years now.

Frankly, if I could stop the robbing government from taking my money every month and I could instead put it into private health care, I would. But I have the attitude that I shouldn’t have to pay for healthcare twice, so I don’t. I use the system and I use medication as and when I need it, but if it's a problem I think I can sort myself or find something natural that will relieve it, I'm likely to consider that first.

Another step in righting the NHS is to take away this fallacy that it’s a ‘free’ system. It’s only free to those who don’t pay into it.

Btw, anyone else notice the Left’s push towards privatising medical care but having state owned energy companies? Not going by news stories, but silly messages being put out by my Labour supporting family.

 

[casiquaire]

whatevers going on, deaths are on the increase, Simon Webb (who im not a massive fan of) suggests this backlog on the nhs is causing this.........but the comments in this video suggest its more than that........https://youtu.be/8q9fcdcoIuQ