Thinking about people and NHS in general

I haven’t heard of this here but surely the phone number must appear and they could block the calls. One day it might really be an emergency for them. Tough.

BlueBelle Your neighbour has an ambulance come to her house up to ten times a day!?

Surely the ambulance service should have something in place to deal with her differently?
She is going to be costing a fortune, as well as putting others at great risk.

Don’t know what the answer is. When I was young, if you saw an ambulance, it was because of a road accident or similar, they didn’t seem to be used the same as nowadays.

When my dad collapsed with a heart attack at home, this was 50 years ago, we called the GP, not an ambulance! How times have changed.

Would charging people make a difference?

Just as an aside, my daughter, in Australia, pays $94 for a GP appointment. For her and her children.

Makes you think.

A part of the answer to this one is providing mental health services that can intervene in this kind of situation. I saw the Ambulance programme that featured a woman doing this who was clearly mentally ill. NHS mental health services have always been underfunded and the first to suffer cuts. It’s difficult and expensive to sort out this kind of illness, hence it just continues and staff deal with it however they can. Blocking the calls would never be considered.

My son is a paramedic and he tells me there are SO many calls that's are not really needing an emergency ambulance. They still have to respomd. It's partly because of the lack of mental health facilities , people with alcohol and drug problems, and closure of half way houses etc. Lots of very vulnerable people are just managing (or not) on their own now.

My attitude has always been, get yourself to hospital, unless you need emergency medical care on the spot. I fell and broke my wrist badly in the middle of nowhere. I took my rings off, rang my husband to get me and drive me to a&e. Many, many people view an ambulance as a form of taxi. They moan when they have to wait several hours, when it would have been so much quicker for them to get on a bus or taxi and get there within the hour . Obviously I'm talking about non medical emergencies here.

I'm a paramedic and we have some callers who call up to 100 times a day. The record was a someone who called over 500 times in one day, they didn't put the phone down in between calls so it just reconnected, they would then invent symptoms and abuse the poor call handler.
We are not allowed to block callers numbers but we do have management plans for the worst offenders, generally that means they get one face to face assessment every 6 hours and the rest of their calls get terminated as soon as its obvious it's them. This works but takes call handlers time and they get so much vile abuse.
Of course it takes time and many meetings to get the plan off the ground and that all costs money.

Very interesting LtEve
And thank you for what you do

I called an ambulance pre Covid for my mother who was 90 at the time.
I was told by her GP practice to dial 999.
This was a Tuesday morning, I was told the wait could be 2-3 hours, I drove my mother to A&E, she was seen 8 hours later, this was because she hadn’t arrived by ambulance.
When she was seen I was criticised for not calling an ambulance.

Thank you so much for that LtEve and thanks for the work you do I think some people thought I was exaggerating

FC I didn’t mean to imply the ambulance comes ten times a day every day but when she gets in one of her frenzies ‘I want to die modes’ it can be dozens of times as soon as they bring her back within half an hour she’s on the phone again They CANNOT not attend Yes she is a scarred and scared lady in her 50 s She has has massive, massive, massive mental health input She has a car through what ever scheme people with some health problems get loaned cars she has her own home she has kind and helpful neighbours I don’t know what can be done apart from put her in a home on medication it’s dreadful and if you multiply this by just half a dozen people in one area you can see how the ambulances police mental health and hospitals are pulled and pulled and pulled add on to that your drunks and drug abusers there is no wonder we are in a massive crisis

Sago we had the opposite we called 999 when my grandson had septic tonsillitis and we couldn’t get his fever down at all (he’s 20) 111 told us to call 999 but as there might be a long wait if we could get him there ourselves do so my daughter drove him there he was seen within an hour and admitted on a drip the next day he was abmbulanced to the city hospital because the town hospital were worried about him he was on intravenous drip 3 days thankfully well now

Sago

I called an ambulance pre Covid for my mother who was 90 at the time.
I was told by her GP practice to dial 999.
This was a Tuesday morning, I was told the wait could be 2-3 hours, I drove my mother to A&E, she was seen 8 hours later, this was because she hadn’t arrived by ambulance.
When she was seen I was criticised for not calling an ambulance.

I was lucky when I last phoned for an ambulance to take my mum to hospital following a fall. It was the Saturday before the first Covid lockdown and everyone was very anxious. I was told that there would be a long wait for an ambulance or paramedic to assess mum but if I was able to drive mum to A&E ( provided there was someone else in the car as mum’s injury was on her head) the ambulance service would phone ahead to alert them of our arrival. This worked well, we were triaged immediately and within a few minutes mum was in a cubicle being looked at.

It was a very strange day though, very few walk ins and the staff were very stressed and unsure about Covid precautions. One of the consultants had friends working in London hospitals and kept shouting at any nurses he saw not wearing a mask properly, washing hands on entering or leaving cubicles etc, telling them that Covid was killing people in London!

However, the lack of patients meant that we were looked after very well and quickly. It was not long before the hospitals were overwhelmed and I thought about the lovely nursing staff we met that day.

would more community based support work for people who ring many times a day?

The austerity approach started by Cameron saved money by devastating mental health, social work, health visiting, family centres, drug/alcohol services, police and more. It’s costing a huge amount financially and unmeasured damage to society because we have two emergency services stretched to breaking point. The police and the ambulance service.
We need to invest properly in public services.

Like seacliff on the two occasions I needed A&E, family members got me there (dislocated kneecap and broken arm).
When DH collapsed in the bathroom (during Covid) I was told it would be a long wait for an ambulance, but they arrived in 10 minutes to whip him off to Hospital with another bout of sepsis.
A separate point - but should those will a severe mental health illness be driving?

It's like the boy calling 'Wolf!' One day a frequent caller might really need an ambulance so they respond to all calls, just in case. Can you imagine the stick they would get if the ignored such a call?

Iam64

The austerity approach started by Cameron saved money by devastating mental health, social work, health visiting, family centres, drug/alcohol services, police and more. It’s costing a huge amount financially and unmeasured damage to society because we have two emergency services stretched to breaking point. The police and the ambulance service.
We need to invest properly in public services.

Yes.

I watch '999 what's your emergency? on channel 4 and it features some of the cases of repeated calls by same people. They usually have mental health problems sometimes saying they are going to harm themselves.... They are despe.rate for help but there isn't any.

JaneJudge

would more community based support work for people who ring many times a day?

To be honest probably not, the people that call the most generally have a huge amount of community support and input already in place. They will call sometimes, when support workers are on scene, the moment they leave and sometimes when someone is sitting right next to them. The only way to stop them would be to take their phone away.
We have even had calls from in patient wards in hospital.

At the moment we are so busy with six hour waits for ambulances being the norm, the amount of time frequent callers take up is very frustrating. Most of the callers appear to have researched serious medical conditions so can describe cardiac sounding chest pain, for example, and therefore get a response. Another favourite, is to refuse to answer the phone if one of our clinicians call them back, it then goes down as a concern for welfare and again an ambulance is sent.
Added to this is the fact that, as a country, we have become incapable of dealing with even the most minor illness or injury independently, I don't know what is going to happen. The service is under such pressure now it is totally unsustainable.

Blimey BlueBelle
Thank you for explaining the situation.
It must be quite stressful for you

How awful. I had no idea. LtEve, you and your colleagues deserve medals.

Just an idea, expensive at first, set up a system where instead of sending an expensive ambulance, send a medical person on a motor bike to these people, to assess the gravity of the situation. Less expensive and time consuming than an ambulance in the long run.

Desperate for help but there isn't any this just isn’t true lemsip as lteve has demonstrated these people have reams of help . but it is NEVER. enough just like the paramedics the mental health team are near breaking point I have a close family member a mental health community senior they are over run over worked and stretched and stressed beyond belief It s a revolving door No ONE agency is involved it can take four or five for just one person Multiply that by a few plus the people that ring for a sore throat ot a cut finger and you have your answer
There has to be a firmer way of dealing with time wasters

There are paramedics on bikes mockryna that’s a good idea