Consultant appointment in NHS 3 months, 1 month private

Doodledog

Alison333

Mawmac, you are not undermining the NHS if you go private, you are saving them money and resources which somebody else who has no choice can benefit from. The 2 tier system is disgraceful but that's how it is currently. Hope you get your problem sorted whatever you choose to do.

Can you explain how someone seeing a consultant privately then being put on an NHS waiting list to be treated on the NHS by the same consultant is saving the NHS money and resources, and how 'someone who has no choice' will benefit from that, please?

Surely if a person has a private consultation appointment it frees up a space for somebody who can use the NHS?

Why is it certain that a person will stay on an NHS waiting list at the same time? Mawmac didn't actually say that she was going to do this in the message I responded to! How do we know that is what is going to happen?

I suggest you contact the PALS dept, it's not just for complaints, explain your situation and ask for their advice. Then you can make an informed decision re your future care

I'm afraid that I have lost all faith in the NHS as a whole. The record keeping is atrocious, the waiting lists dire and patient care is designed to get people out of hospital whether they are ready or not. My mother has just been in for 4 months and in that time she did not have a bath/shower or hair wash. Her long hair was literally like a bird's nest and had to be cut off to chin level. The way they treat dementia patients is positively criminal.
That is not to say you don't get the most wonderful Nurses and Carers but the system overall is failing abysmally. Pay for your care if you need to, quality of life is far more important if you are in pain and it won't stop you for voting in somebody who will do something to make things better in the NHS.

4allweknow

I didn't want to go private but with a minimum of a 1 year waiting list I felt I had no option. With sight in one eye already reduced due to macular hole surgery the cataract growing in my other eye was clouding my sight. I woukd need to wait until cataract was in layman's language, fully developed before NHS would consider for removal. No account is taken of already not having full sight in the other eye. Should I have waited until sight really diminished and restricting my life, I think not. The cost was shared with family!

No, that is not what I am saying (obviously I can't speak for others). I am not saying that I wouldn't do the same in your circumstances, and have already said that I fully understand why people pay to jump the queue.

What I am objecting to is that this is necessary in the first place, and to the pretence that doing so is 'freeing up an NHS place'. It doesn't, and suggesting that those who pay for an initial private appointment then defaulting to the NHS are doing so as an act of charity is disingenuous at best, and downright dishonest at worst.

One thing not mentionned, is the time given to NHS patients and private, for consultations. Often double or triple.

I quite agree with you Doodledog about this illogical argument which exhibits the defence mechanism of cognitive dissonance.

Repeating what I quoted in my post on Tuesday:

As anyone in the health service knows, private hospitals do not have any additional doctors to assist in reducing the NHS backlog – in all the private hospitals operating in the UK, the doctors are NHS doctors. In commercial terms, because the private sector contributes nothing to the training of the 17,500 doctors who work in its hospitals, this amounts to a free subsidy to the private sector of about £8bn.

Given that the main constraint on clearing the backlog is not operating theatres but consultants, surgeons and anaesthetists, it makes no sense to suggest that the private sector can come to the rescue of the NHS.

Mr Surgeon works three days a week at the local NHS hospital, one in clinic, two in theatre.

Mr Surgeon also works two days week at the local private hospital, one in clinic, one in theatre.

Mr Surgeon cannot be in two places at once and can only tend so many patients.

Exactly Doodledog. Some on here will say it does not happen- but this is fantasy. It does, very very often.

I didn't want to go private but with a minimum of a 1 year waiting list I felt I had no option. With sight in one eye already reduced due to macular hole surgery the cataract growing in my other eye was clouding my sight. I woukd need to wait until cataract was in layman's language, fully developed before NHS would consider for removal. No account is taken of already not having full sight in the other eye. Should I have waited until sight really diminished and restricting my life, I think not. The cost was shared with family!

Alison333

Mawmac, you are not undermining the NHS if you go private, you are saving them money and resources which somebody else who has no choice can benefit from. The 2 tier system is disgraceful but that's how it is currently. Hope you get your problem sorted whatever you choose to do.

Can you explain how someone seeing a consultant privately then being put on an NHS waiting list to be treated on the NHS by the same consultant is saving the NHS money and resources, and how 'someone who has no choice' will benefit from that, please?

Much as I feel sorry for those on waiting lists, if I can pay I will.

I used to think your way Mawmac, that I was undermining the NHS, but then a consultant pointed out to me that another way to look at it is that it's freeing up an NHS apt for someone else, maybe someone unable to pay for private treatment.

You could turn the argument on its head and say thas as you can afford to pay £200 for a private appointment, and that is not a lot of money at today's prices, then you should do so, and not take up time on the NHS.

It’s not “right” and in a perfect world we’d all wait our turn. But as there’s so many other factors involved and personally if I could afford to pay, then I would, even though I know it’s not fair !

It's appalling.take the private appt and pay, then send bill to NHS and yr MP and tax office saying you want refund for this

Recently I was referred to hospital by my GP, I had a letter from the booking office saying they had received my referral, and to look on the website for my category to see how long the waiting list was. It was 50 weeks!! I was seriously considering that I would have to go privately. However, soon after I received an appointment, and it was 9 weeks.
I am wondering whether they say it's a lot longer just to get some people to opt to go private, and reduce the waiting list that way.

Your health is important. Outpatient appointments are quite stressful in NHS and one rarely sees a consultant, often just a succession of doctors with little continuity of care apart from reading notes. If you are suffering you are entitled to seek private care. I am sure those who govern the country and those who are wealthy do not think twice about having private health care.

Mawmac, you are not undermining the NHS if you go private, you are saving them money and resources which somebody else who has no choice can benefit from. The 2 tier system is disgraceful but that's how it is currently. Hope you get your problem sorted whatever you choose to do.

The problem with the NHS is that, founded in 1948, when many treatments that are routine today were unavailable, it is simply unable to cope with modern day medicine and its huge leaps forward in recent decades. Funding is chronically low, yet no government is going to be able to sustain it going forward, especially with ‘global Britain’ and the population rise we are seeing. We do not expect to pay more for our healthcare and so we do not pay enough compared to those in Europe who pay more to the state for basics plus health insurance. We can expect to be spending 49% or more of total public expenditure on the NHS in coming years if this continues, to the devastation of other public services. It’s a political hot potato that no party wants to take on, accompanied as it always is by accusations of ‘privatising the NHS’ and scaremongering about the American model. Until we get to grips with how the funding of health services in this country is best managed over the next decades, we must accept third rate service and lowering of standards for the hoi polloi while the better off will of course be able to afford better care, as is their democratic right of choice.

I was in chronic pain needing a hip replacement, I was on the NHS waiting list two years with still no end in sight.
My husband persuaded me to see someone privately which I was initially against with both of us being NHS nurses for over Thirty years, but I gave in and I had the operation in a week.

Doodledog

sodapop

Things have changed since the inception of the NHS Dickens so much more available for the patient. It comes at a cost though, we need to pay more for medical care.

I agree, and think that taxation should include a ring-fenced amount for every able-bodied adult in a household, unless they are exempt for an agreed reason. How this would work (eg at what age people became liable to pay, who would be responsible for paying the premiums of those who don't work and aren't exempt, and at what age people stop paying) could be fine tuned when they have been properly thought through - I am thinking aloud here and don't have any answers. It would be a compulsory insurance scheme, if you like.

That way, the premiums would be affordable, as there would be tens of millions of people paying in. Many would never need expensive treatment, but everyone would know that if they did it would be available free at the point of need.

Controversial areas such as IVF, cosmetic surgery etc should be properly debated and decisions taken that apply to all - there should be no postcode lottery.

Yes - all it needs is the will - the belief in the principle.

Obviously what the NHS was able to offer at its inception and the huge advances made in medicine since then have changed the way the service functions.

You make some good suggestions - all of which are feasible if there was an ethical belief in the principle.

sodapop

Things have changed since the inception of the NHS Dickens so much more available for the patient. It comes at a cost though, we need to pay more for medical care.

I agree, and think that taxation should include a ring-fenced amount for every able-bodied adult in a household, unless they are exempt for an agreed reason. How this would work (eg at what age people became liable to pay, who would be responsible for paying the premiums of those who don't work and aren't exempt, and at what age people stop paying) could be fine tuned when they have been properly thought through - I am thinking aloud here and don't have any answers. It would be a compulsory insurance scheme, if you like.

That way, the premiums would be affordable, as there would be tens of millions of people paying in. Many would never need expensive treatment, but everyone would know that if they did it would be available free at the point of need.

Controversial areas such as IVF, cosmetic surgery etc should be properly debated and decisions taken that apply to all - there should be no postcode lottery.

I had my right eye cataract done on NHS but my left eye referal was lost , I struggled from February until mid May not able to see , wrong lenses in glasses , unable to drive, I tried so hard ringing the hospital to get another left eye referal but there were problems and miscomication. Out of desperation I rang Nuffield in Surrey . I was done in 10 days . £3000 I used my savings . Now trying to re save to put some cash behind me . I'm glad I did it . I saved for emergencies and the savings were for my eyesight

Things have changed since the inception of the NHS Dickens so much more available for the patient. It comes at a cost though, we need to pay more for medical care.

Obviously (I hope!) Dr C's secretary made a mess of the appointments, and put mrs A and Mrs B in at the wrong times. This was discovered in time, however, and Mrs A was given the December appointment and Mrs B the September one.

sodapop

Unfortunately that's life winterswhite there will always be a financial divide.

The financial divide is the reason why the NHS came into being in the first place.

A civilised society (well, some of it) believed that dealing with the arbitrary nature of sickness and injury should not be dependent on your ability to pay - something that only the wealthy and relatively wealthy could afford.

So no, that isn't life. It's a deliberate ideology of reduced public spending by those wedded to the free-market creed who do not believe in the greater good. And they are only too happy for you to accept it as an inevitability of "life".