Dispatches: Undercover Ambulance - NHS in chaos

Caleo

Pinkprincess, to turn NHS convalescent hospitals into commercial venues for profiteering is absolutely immoral. The political party that has done so is immoral until it reverses this policy and restores the NHS.

I started nursing just as the NHS was born and the NHS has my loyalty and for good reasons as any nurse will confirm

I agree with you Call

I must have been very lucky, but after I phoned 111 a few weeks ago - shallow painful breathing - paramedics did arrive within a couple of hours and I was blue-lighted straight into resus (‘So that you won’t have to hang around in A&E’). It was pneumonia (followed later by pleurisy) and my heart rate was apparently in the stratosphere (poor dh was quite worried).

Was in hospital for nearly 3 weeks, and I can’t thank all the staff enough - care was excellent.

Pinkprincess, to turn NHS convalescent hospitals into commercial venues for profiteering is absolutely immoral. The political party that has done so is immoral until it reverses this policy and restores the NHS.

I started nursing just as the NHS was born and the NHS has my loyalty and for good reasons as any nurse will confirm

The convalescent homes in my area are now wedding, party, and conference venues as well as expensive country hotels.
In my nursing career days they were all free.The patients looked forward to going, most had been suffering from serious illnesses and major operations.Some were elderly, living alone so need time to get back on their feet before returning to their previous independant living.

There is no objective difference between therapeutic and social care. People at the end of life either due to old age or identifiable terminal illness are more than other people probably going to need medical intervention at intervals.

In the present state of the NHS and of local authorities it will be easier for medics of the appropriate grade to intervene when the old and infirm are all in one place. For humanitarian reasons the "one place" should be local and it should be well staffed and well equipped. These homes should also be inspected and have volunteer boards of governors from the local community preferably appointed from among the relatives of residents.

Caleo

Dickens, I agree and will vote Labour.

The problem is Caleo, in order to garner votes, Labour has to appeal to the Left, Middle and Right. Anything that veers too far Left will alienate the latter two and I'm pretty sure Starmer knows that. In other words, Labour has to become more centre, centre-right to survive. The original purpose and ethos of the Labour movement is pretty much gone.

I shall vote tactically because I want to see this current Tory party gone. My Conservative MP is a good guy in terms of what he does for the local community - he's 'old-school' Tory, so it's a bit of a dilemma.

I think the most we can hope for from a Labour government is a softening of the edges of hard-right ideology (and hopefully less sleaze and corruption) but the free-market economy will still rule. I don't think there's anything radical in the LP manifesto.

Social and ongoing medical care, particularly for the elderly, is a huge mess and it would, unfortunately, take radical measures for any meaningful change. I don't expect to see much improvement in any measurable sense. Convalescent homes funded by the State are not coming back. We're so far down the rabbit hole now that we'd have to excavate the whole damned field... if you see what I mean!

I wholeheartedly agree.

Germanshepherdsmum

Convalescent homes started to be sold off in the 80s. We have had Labour governments since then but still no convalescent homes other than private ones. What makes anyone think another Labour government would provide NHS convalescent homes again?

I have to agree with you.

Which is why I wrote "successive governments" in my previous 'rant'.

I doubt very much that Labour will re-introduce the convalescent home, free at the point of need.

The whole system of Care needs needs to be re-evaluated, not just in the light of 'bed-blocking' but as a way forward for the increasingly ageing population. And it should be multi-party.

Convalescent homes started to be sold off in the 80s. We have had Labour governments since then but still no convalescent homes other than private ones. What makes anyone think another Labour government would provide NHS convalescent homes again?

That is awful glammanana. I remember my mother going to a convalescent home near Oxford after a hysterectomy. This was in the 60’s and I’m sure she didn’t have to pay a penny.

Caleo

I wonder what happened to those designated convalescent hospitals that patients went to when they were not needing acute treatment.

Caleo My friends mum was in need of convalescent care after her recent bad fall she had to refuse the place as the cost was £1.200 per week an amount that the family could not afford to pay.

Dickens, I agree and will vote Labour.

I think most were sold off.

There's two lovely ones near me. But only if you can afford the fees.

There's little in the way of 'respite' care if you don't have the funds. Though there are care homes that will offer short-stay respite, they are so overly heavily subscribed so that care is not really available to most.

We have to accept that successive governments (and the people that vote for them) do not believe in State funding for these facilities as a principle. It is cheaper to place people in the care in the community, underfund it, and offer wages that often prohibit anyone from taking up the jobs in it.

Am i bitter? Yes. If there was the will there would be a way. There is no will - because of ideology and the fact that most of those who are involved in the decision-making about this issue are wealthy enough not to have to suffer the consequences of their decisions.

I wonder what happened to those designated convalescent hospitals that patients went to when they were not needing acute treatment.

‘Bed blocking by the elderly’ has been the problem since I started work in social care 40 years ago.
Sazzl, the old bed blocker could be any one of us tomorrow, if we are unlucky enough
Remember Mr Johnson’s oven ready plan for social care? Must have gone the way of the 315m Brexit was going to give the nhs

lemsip

I would have preferred a person with more years experience to be undercover doing the filming for this.. I didn't like the young man undercover who resigned after of course, only took the job to do the undercover job.
needed showing of course

How do you know he only took the job to do this filming. He wasn’t described as reporter as far as I know. I think it was brave of him. People need to see what it’s like on the front line.

I hate human beings described as “bed blockers” too. It is far too simplistic to say that they are the reason for ambulance delays sazl

I haven’t seen the documentary. Blaming ‘immigrants’ for overwhelming the nhs is a clever distraction from the absolute failure of Tory governments over 12 years.
The junior doctors are on strike today. They report they’re earning £14 an hour. They’re running up huge expenses during their long training period. Like other nhs staff, they’re working long hours in stressful circumstances. The backdrop is a government that demonstrates its contempt for public services on a daily basis.
I’m not a confrontational individual but - when do we March on Downing Street?

I would have preferred a person with more years experience to be undercover doing the filming for this.. I didn't like the young man undercover who resigned after of course, only took the job to do the undercover job.
needed showing of course

The main reason for ambulance delays is bed blocking by elderly
and/or disabled people who are taking up beds on the wards when medically fit for discharge. These people need a care plan and carer visits set up or a care home place. Sadly there appears to be a huge backlog in allocating and implementing this and not enough carers.
So A&E can't send people to wards and it fills up. Then there is no space for ambulances to move patients inside the hospital, so the ambulances queue outside A&E for hours. This drastically reduces the availability of ambulances for people needing urgent hospital treatment.
So to solve this we need more mobile carers, on v good salaries and a good career structure to feel valued and want to do the job. Also more carers and nurses in care homes, to make more places for those in hospital to move to. Also more staff assessing need and setting up care plans and funding.

Some comments as I predicted up thread.

GrannyLaine

Grantanow

It's not simply caused by people attending A&E who don't need the service because they get triaged down the list as more urgent cases appear and then find themselves waiting a long time. The real issue is bed blocking and underfunding which the Tories could solve it they really wanted to.

I wonder how much is underfunding and how much is shocking waste across the whole of the NHS

Maybe part of the waste problem...

It’s the cost of the NHS ‘market’ itself. Administering the hugely expensive artificial ‘marketplace’ created by successive governments to allow both NHS and private ‘providers’ to compete with each other to offer services to NHS and other ‘purchasers’.

No-one knows the exact cost of this bureaucratic ‘marketplace’. A recent estimate by rebel Lib Dems put the figure as high as £30billion a year. Dr Jacky Davis and other doctors and campaigners including the National Health Action Party have put it at £10billion a year. The Centre of Health & the Public Interest put it at a ‘conservative’ £4.5billion a year.

Even the most conservative of these estimates is a yearly amount which would, if re-directed away from useless market activities, fund both the £2billion annual NHS shortfall and free critical social care to everyone, which the Kings Fund’s Barker Commission recently said would cost ‘substantially less’ than £3billion a year.

Successive governments wedded to ‘market reform’ have refused to produce useful figures that would definitively establish the cost of the NHS market. It has been left to academics, MPs and activists to try and fill the void, through historical and international comparisons, as well as tentative attempts to cost different activities that are forced on the NHS by the ‘market’.

(source: openDemocracy)

Grantanow

It's not simply caused by people attending A&E who don't need the service because they get triaged down the list as more urgent cases appear and then find themselves waiting a long time. The real issue is bed blocking and underfunding which the Tories could solve it they really wanted to.

I wonder how much is underfunding and how much is shocking waste across the whole of the NHS

I am not protesting but I have written to MP, my local hospital and the ambulance service.
The ambulance service will be able to use my letter to lobby for support. But you are right that we are in a dreadful state.

Somewhere (sorry can't remember where) one of the NHS trusts have set up a triage and sort-of "1st contact" emergency room. They are finding it very useful to filter the A&E and keep things moving. Another area I believe is building a centre with more beds because the hospital is full.

We need this sorting. It should be a cross-party endeavour too in my opinion so it doesn't keep chopping and changing.

It's not simply caused by people attending A&E who don't need the service because they get triaged down the list as more urgent cases appear and then find themselves waiting a long time. The real issue is bed blocking and underfunding which the Tories could solve it they really wanted to.

It is so sad that it has come to this, and it doesn’t have to be so. Why aren’t people out in droves protesting? I can’t understand the complacency, we as a nation are so compliant and uncomplaining. Do we just look the other way if it doesn’t affect us……..yet?

Those most likely to suffer the consequences of the failing service are the elderly, disabled and chronically sick - apart, obviously, from those involved in RTAs (and we never think it will be us) - who's going to rage and protest for them? The families are too busy with caring duties and I don't think people care that much about issues that they feel won't affect them.

And social media is now an outlet for protest - it consumes mental and emotional energy that maybe once would have propelled people out on to the streets.