Private health and compensation

Yes as another ex nurse, Rosina's 'Truth universally acknowledged' rings very true. It was well recognized that the NHS was a safety net for the private sector.

Old and old, NHS is a safety net for every private organisation that carries out potentially dangerous but necessary activities. Private hospitals don’t have (or claim to have) the facilities to deal with complex emergency cases requiring immediate access to multi-disciplinary medical expertise. Nor do privately operated construction sites. They both, quite rightly, send people with medical emergencies that need such access to A&E.

Oldandbold- apologies for calling you Old and Old!

My husband both hips replaced at the Cambridge Nuffield and he was treated wonderfully on both occasions. I broke my wrist in April, I was treated at NHS hospital and it is still not right. Nuff said, I think!

I hadn't realised that patients do not get told if they are sent to a private hospital.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200792

weownit.org.uk/privatisation-fails

weownit.org.uk/act-now/nhstakeback-action

To get your MP to sign to take the NHS back into public control.

Nobody seems to mention the other reason people go private and that is to have more control over when they have their operation.

I do not just mean getting the operation done more quickly, but choosing when it s most convenient.

DH's employer provided free health insurance. As a result DH was able to delay an operation that did not affect his ability to work from a very busy part of his working year to a quiet time and DD's tonsilectomy was delayed to the start of a school holiday, which meant no time off school, rather than having to go in term time and lose 3 weeks education.

I am having NHS care in a private hospital and chose it. When I got the list of all the hospitals I could be treated in with their waiting times, it included the private hospital and as it had the shortest waiting time and was very easy for me to access I chose it.

I wonder when people say they do not know something, like not knowing they will be treated in a private hospital, it is either because they just assume all the hospitals on the NHS choices list they are sent are NHS facilities or because they have not sat down and slowly and carefully read all the literature they have been sent.

I know I am often guilty of skimming through paperwork I am sent and missing salient features and then saying 'Oh, I didn't realise'. I know I do it and have learnt to shrug and live with the results of my own carelessness.

Private companies buy the right to use the NHS logo. If you see the NHS logo, you assume it's an NHS hospital.
Most people are not aware of the amount of work undertaken in private hospitals.

Just for balance...my husband had badly botched surgery on the NHS that left him 25% disabled i.e. one leg with arterial blockages limiting his walking to yards. The situation was partially rescued by a private surgeon who did an amazing job in the trickiest of circumstances.

Fitzy I think the point some of us were making was about private hospitals sending their patients to A& E when something has gone wrong with the routine procedure that was being carried out in the private hospital. Even if it turns out that it was because of an error that the private hospital made, the NHS picks up the cost of putting it right.

MOnica I agree absolutely about the big advantage of being able to choose your appointment / procedure time in a private hospital. The last time that I needed to do this, the cost of the operation was far less than the money I would have lost if I had not been able to work by having the operation at a time when I was booked to work. I do realise that that’s a privilege though

The choices form I got from the NHS made it quite clear that the hospital I chose was a private hospital there was no NHS branding about it at all. The standard form listing all the NHS facilities in the trust area were clearly NHS hospitals and clinics.

Given the horrendous waits given at the NHS facilities for a quite simple local anesthetic procedure (up to 4 months for the initial consultation and then 1 year for the procedure), the local NHS have obviously let out a contract to a local private hospital to try to get the waiting times down. It is the last place listed and the name of it makes it absolutely clear that it is an NHS facility. Even if someone failed to notice it was a private hospital when they read the form and ticked it, they would certainly realise when they turned up for their consultants appointment. Apart from the quiet waiting room and comfortable chairs the hospital branding is everywhere.

should say 'absolutely clear it is NOT an NHS facility'

I've just been reading "This is Going to Hurt" the diaries of a junior doctor (which should be required reading for everyone) he writes about the time he worked some shifts in a private hospital to make extra money and found that at night they were employing very inexperienced young doctors who would have been totally out of their depth if there had been an emergency.

The private hospital I worked in in the 90's had no doctors at night and relied on being able to get help from the NHS hospital next door. It did have carpets on the floor and they did cut the crusts off their sandwiches though!

Very important, Deedaa, crustless sandwiches. Just shows the clientele it was set up for.

Lovely crusts on my sandwiches when I was in recently. Also good care, cleanliness and experienced staff. It's not all bad no matter how much you wish it was!

Nobody has said it's all bad, have they?
The thread is about the NHS having to pick up the tab when something goes wrong in private hospitals.

As previously said the NHS picks up the tab when anything goes wrong anywhere: building sites, football pitches, drunk drivers etc etc

It’s categorically different picking up the tab from the errors of a private hospital and the other examples you give. I also think it’s categorically different when the NHS picks up the tab from failed cosmetic surgery carried out abroad on UK citizens.

Private hospitals generally do accommodation, catering, public areas, nursing ratios very well IME and that of plenty of my friends. No one is arguing otherwise in general - the issues some of us are concerned about is lack of overnight medical cover and the cherry picking that goes on. The NHS has to cover the big issues - both emergency and complex and pick up the pieces of botched private work. And all the time do this as well as they can in the face of a Government who would love wholesale privatisationif they could think of a way of getting away with it but who, as part of their plan, are starving the NHS of vital resources.

www.energyroyd.org.uk/archives/15820

The influence on the NHS of private healthcare companies.

When I last went to A & E. It was being run by a private company. Less waiting time but I was seen by nurse practitioner and misdiagnosed.

This is privatisation by the back door.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/30/nhs-trusts-accused-of-backdoor-privatisation-over-subsidiary-firms

They are setting up separate firms to employ staff and alter the pension rights of new staff.
This should be against the law.
Hunt didn't mention this when he was on every news programme yesterday, did he?

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