Save the NHS

There is a very interesting article today on GPonline.com concerning the rationing of healthcare.
Using FOI requests it has been discovered that individual funding requests have risen by 19% in the last year, but the number rejected has fallen by 4%.
IFRs are used by GPs to get access to treatments that are deemed non-urgent or of low clinical value. This includes fertility treatment - 20% of applications - 10% for bariatric surgery and 10% for macular degeneration.
Cataract surgery and insulin pumps are also considered unnecessary according to some PCTs, even though they are backed by NICE.
This is the NHS postcode lottery that some people seem to think is acceptable.

By the way everyone, in case of interest, there is a conference on UK drug policy at the moment (chair is Mark Easton) you can watch live on this link: www.ukdpc.org.uk/ukdpc-conference/

Thanks for the links grannyknot

It certainly used to be the case that patients' own ministers/priests/vicars/rabbis etc would visit them in hospital, though there was generally a hospital chaplain as well. Why not discontinue the chaplaincies? In some areas there may even be a majority of non-Christian patients.

On the subject of priorities, drug and alcohol addiction is treated on the NHS ... and is a big drain on available funding. Rehab (in-patient treatment) is expensive and under utilised and many of them are closing down (31 in the past 2 years) www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rupert-wolfemurray/nhs-rehab-is-the-nhs-trying-to-kill_b_1407675.html. There is currently a call on the government and therefore the NHS to provide specialist treatment services for "involuntary tranquilliser addiction" (google APPGITA) because the route into addiction for that group is different, in that they didn't 'ask for it' by experimentation with drugs and are therefore 'different'. So yes, how do you choose who gets what treatment and who doesn't, based on cost? I'm really surprised to learn that the NHS has to pay for chaplains, you'd think that it would be part of their pastoral work, calling on hospital patients.

Done!

harri in the 60's, fertility treatment wasn't available, surely your patients were denied treatment because the machines were only just being developed and not because money was being diverted elsewhere?

Thanks for your post at 1854 yesterday, feetle. I agree. It's a disgrace.

I had to witness patients being denied treatment in the 60s. Renal dialysis was just being introduced and there were very few machines available, I nursed young men with families who were unable to have treatment and died as a result.
It is extremely sad when couples can't have children but it is not life threatening and should not be covered by NHS.

jendurham the NHS should not, and does not, decide that one person is more deserving of treatment than another, or that one condition merits more consideration than another.
What it should do, and tries to do, is provide the most effective treatments and abandon those that are not effective, based on high quality research and evidence.
I regard infertility as a distressing medical condition just as deserving of taxpayer funded care and treatment as anything else.
You seem to forget that cancer treatment does not always work either.
If I had terminal cancer, I would not want my life artificially prolonged if it meant that a young couple desperate for a child were denied treatment.

But then you could argue that someone doesn't have the right to have treatment if they smoke, drink excessively or are overweight. It's a slippery slope deciding who is entitled to treatment. For example, someone allows themselves to become grossly overweight and becomes diabetic as a result [I'm not saying that everyone gets diabetes as a result of their lifestyle, but it could be prevented in some cases]. Is that person more entitled to treatment than a young woman desperate for a child?

955 votes now. 7 in the last hour. Thanks again if any of them were you.
I'll have to go to bed and stop this. It's becoming obsessive.

That was a long time ago, and yes you did.
Kittylester asked me what reforms I would do, and as I said, I think it is more important that people should be able to see properly and walk without pain, if there has to be a choice.
I do not agree that there should be a choice. If we put more of our GDP into the NHS it would not be needed. Which is why we should hound companies and individuals that do not pay their taxes
Women do not have a right to have babies. Fertility treatment is very expensive and not guaranteed to work. Would you rather someone had fertility treatment or cancer treatment, because the way the NHS is going, that is the choice CCGs will have to make.

No woman shoud get fertility treatment on the NHS? Did I read that right?

Thank you, 950 votes now for my epetition on private healthcare companies.

Whatever you say, Jendurham.

Why not? Constitutional crisis? Good, and about time if it happened.

The Queen can't just ask the PM to leave things out....

I agree with that Feetlebaum. When you think the Queen is the head of the Church of England, she could quite easily pay for them. On the other hand, she could also have stopped the govt. destroying the NHS by asking Cameron et al to leave it out of the Queen's speech.
Thank you all of you who have signed my e-petition. 948 signatures, nearly 500 in the last week!
I now have more faith in British people.
10,000 and there could be a response from the govt.
100,000 and it could be debated in parliament.
Get all your friends to sign up.

A good idea would be to stop the NHS paying for chaplains... surely the churches/synagogues/mosques should pay for them, freeing up millions of pounds to spend on useless things like nurses, porters and so on (</sarcasm>.

In 2009 the spend was £26,722,494. If you add in the other costs, like maintenance of chapels, prayer rooms and the like, the spend was
£48,953 per Chaplain.

Details - www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/chaplaincy-costs.pdf

What do you suggest the NHS stops paying for?
Cancer treatment? That's expensive.
I would suggest that no woman gets fertility treatment on the NHS. The population in this country is too big as it is. I think being able to walk without pain and see out of both eyes is more important than another baby being born.
The NHS is not unsustainable. We do not pay enough into it. Only 8% of GDP whereas America pays some thing like 13% and it's a mess over there.
I am not blaming the practitioners, I am blaming this govt. and the last which have sold off the NHS to their rich friends.
Cherie Blair has set up a hedge fund to take over hearing tests. She wants 100 clinics to be set up in Sainsburys stores. Do you think that's okay?
You did not answer whether you think it's okay to have to pay for hip/knee operations and cataracts. Hearing tests are the next thing to be paid for.
You also did not say whether you think it's okay for Branson to take over as much as he has of the NHS.
Should GPs be selling out of hours practices to private companies and pocketing millions? Is that the acceptable face of the NHS sell-off?
I am not aggrieved by the treatment I described above. What I was saying was that we could not afford it if it wasn't for the NHS. In fact, if it wasn't for the NHS, Ken would have died as a teenager, instead of dying of cancer at 65.
I do not pay for eyetests any more, and my husband never did. The glasses I am wearing cost over £500 last year, because I need special lenses to balance with only being able to see out of one eye. It's the first time ever that my glasses cost more than Ken's. Didn't get any help with them either, but I will not be able to pay that again.

jendurham you seem to feel very aggrieved about the treatment you and your family have received from the NHS. The truth is that it is totally unsustainable to have everything available to everyone nowadays.

When the NHS was set up, few of the fantastic, but expensive, advances of the past few years had been made. Various governments have sought to recoup some of the huge cost of the NHS by introducing things like charging for eye tests and part-payment of dental treatments but it is wrong of you to blame the practitioners for this.

I find your attitude aggressive and confrontational and you still haven't put forward your suggestions for reforming the NHS.

The NHS does not have a current form. It has been reorganised from the top down by the Tory govt., even though it promised it would not.
Before that Tony Blair messed it up.
My mother was a nurse, and started work before the NHS came into being.
My grandfather died because they could not afford medication for him.

For years now the NHS has been sold off piecemeal to GPs and companies like Virgin, Careuk, etc.

My GP practice was part of Virgin Assura, half owned by a company called Assura a long time ago. Do not know exactly when because the details are covered by confidentiality. The new NHS was supposed to come into being this year. In fact Branson has owned over 100 practices for over 3 years.
He takes money from the NHS, then sends it overseas and does not pay tax on it, just like Amazon and Starbucks.

The difference is that this is not cups of coffee or CDs we are talking about. He is ripping off our NHS.

Look at the National Health Action Party website, and the Green Benches website to see what is happening.

The NHS was supposed to be free at the point of need. Dentists are not and haven't been for years. My husband and I were "lucky" because we had things wrong with us. All I have had on my free prescriptions have been thyroxine tablets to keep me alive.
Ken's prescription went onto 4 pages, most of it to do with his accident and subsequent bladder and bowel problems, and the fact that he had been diabetic since he was 11. If he'd had to pay for subscriptions, like many people do, even those with asthma, what would you suggest he gave up?

Last year he had two cataract operations because he was diabetic and they needed to see his retinas to check for diabetic retinopathy. They kept him waiting for 6 months between operations. The month after he had his second one they discovered a brain tumour which affected his sight, so he never did get any benefit from not having to wear glasses for the first time for over 50 years.
If he had not been diabetic, they would now expect him to just have one operation on the NHS, and pay for the other one. This obviously comes from people who have no idea what life is like only being able to see with one eye.
I had an arrow fired into my right eye on my 5th birthday. I know what it is like.
I think it's appalling that they now call hip, knee and cataract operations elective. My sister is in pain from her first hip operation, so will not have her second one done. She now walks with a stick and a limp and in pain. This operation was done in a private hospital, paid for by the NHS. When she told them she was in pain, she was told to go to the NHS hospital as she was not a private patient. There was no follow up from the operation.

I agree with most of what you say kittylester. From where I sit, there is no "THE NHS". It is already a mish-mash of obfuscated and impenetrable contracts, targets, payments by results, services within services and layers of management. Plus my NI contribution (up until I could no longer contribute at age 60) was pretty high, so my medical care didn't feel like it was free. I've just changed GP practices because after 7 years, asking for it to be explained to me, reading their many leaflets and pamphlets, I still hadn't managed to 'crack the code' for making an appointment convenient to me. Without fail - every time I called, I was told to call back, because somehow I called at the wrong time. On one occasion, the receptionist said to me 'unless you say it is an emergency, I cannot give you an appointment today'. Although I felt really ill that day, to me an emergency is ambulance and flashing blue lights. But to keep her happy, I parroted, "It is an emergency" and I got my appointment. I worked in the NHS 12 years ago (when I came to live in England having grown up in South Africa). There was a young receptionist who worked in the same clinic as me. She now has a management post in the NHS (we still meet up for coffee occasionally) at a very high salary - and she was never very bright. It is what my DH would call a 'nothing job' because when you ask her what she does, you never get a straight answer. I know she gives a lot of powerpoint presentations to groups of people. When I worked in the clinic I was gobsmacked at people starting work and within a matter of months they would be on long term sick leave for stress (this happened serveral times during the 2 years I worked there, different people). I know there are many hardworking people in the health service and mostly they provide marvellous service, just as there are good GPs, dentists etc etc but 'the NHS' is unsustainable in its current form. It needs radical reform.