NHS

Of course we all are biased by our own experiences. My BC treatment was first class and swift. My GD, born with an horrendous cleft lip and palate has had 17 years of wonderful care and it is ongoing. I am on the waiting list for a TKR,I will comment on that when I have had it, but so far so good. My H's experience with Alzheimer's is almost non existent. CPN has discharged him to the care of the GP surgery and they do not want to know. So if that was my only experience it would not be good. The NHS is like the curate's egg.

Good post GandTea.

As Alea says, our experiences are good indicators. I know that the people on the ground work their socks off, I'm married to one of them, but their efforts are very often thwarted by the layers of management that get in the way and cost large amounts of money that could be better spent on practitioners. If this is happening in our very small bit of the NHS it is going to be multiplied thousands of times in the rest of the NHS.

This is not hot air Eloethan and I object to my experiences being dismissed as such. I keep saying that I don't know the answers but I am entitled to put forward a point of view gained from current experience.

Let's look at the underlying assumption that a longer ambulance journey to A&E is necessarily a bad thing.
Ambulances are staffed by paramedics, not "mere"(sorry!) ambulance drivers and consequently triage, assessment and early treatment including ECG, CPR, if necessary, administration of oxygen or pain relief can be carried out either at the patient's home (or wherever they are called to) or in the ambulance , or both.
A first response paramedic may also often despatched in advance by car, not ambulance and one of their "calls" can be whether an ambulance or even air ambulance is necessary.
It is increasingly common for patients to be transported by air ambulance to a centre of excellence where specialist emergency treatment is available, rather than a local hospital A&E department which does not necessarily have specialist facilities.
So this emotive question referred to by OP "Has a hospital closed near you? You're being stomped (sic?) on" is perfectly valid but also misleading.
Yes, a longer journey to A&E is bad for the individual who takes themself there, but the provision of Out of hours/Urgent Care /Walk in centres can address the issue of lesser injuries. And before I am shot down by those who do not have those facilities, it does not invalidate the point.
Having had considerable experience at the receiving end over the last 8 years, I agree that personal experience is not a qualification for running the NHS but it is for expressing an opinion.

Its all so open-ended. Constant improvements in treatments and availability of new medications etc leads inevitably to increased demand and thus provision by the increasingly stressed NHS. There will be a constantly increased escalation of demand and thus cost. How can this be addressed?

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/views/blogs/this-is-it-from-now-on-i-choose-life/20031893.blog

Read this, and the comments afterwards.
Sorry it's second hand, or third hand for you.

Actually read the whole of pulsetoday, to find out how many GPs are feeling and why they are leaving in droves.

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/hot-topics/lmcs-conference-2016/gpc-could-ballot-gps-on-willingness-to-take-industrial-action-within-three-months/20031891.article

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/live-blogs/as-it-happened-lmcs-conference-2016/20031890.article

The GPs conference, showing a lot of very unhappy GPs, including one from Leicester.

"Dr Grant Ingrams, from the GPC and a GP near Leicester, said: ’GPC will follow the will of the conference, so we will ask the BMA to ballot and then it will depend upon the outcome of the ballot, as to what step is taken next.

‘At least we are at a position where everyone recognises that there is a crisis, and we are in a position where Simon Stevens is saying it is due to duff policy for the last decade, and everyone agrees the plan which has been put forward won’t deliver. So GPs need to do something. They need to take some form of action to protect their practices, to protect themselves.’ "

People keep talking about experiences with the NHS so here's the experience of my friend from South Africa were there is no NHS. My friend is very poor by our standards but not poor enough to receive medical help. To be poor enough for that you have to be virtually destitute.

She suffers from a variety of painful physical conditions and chronic depression. As she has to pay to see the doctor and for any prescription to be dispensed she has to make choices. Does she spend her money on food (and we're not talking extravagant food) or medical care? Well that's Hobson's Choice isn't it? Get the meds she needs and starve or eat but do without meds.

So how does she cope? Well she lives with the pain but the depression stops her from working. As there are no out of work benefits she has to work so whenever possible she buys underground Citalopram and prays it's the real thing or when she starts checking the train times (her plan is to lie under a train) she pays to see the doctor but has no food.

We take our NHS for granted because very few of us can remember a time when it wasn't there. Do we really want to return to a system where only the well off or those who can afford insurance get the treatment they need?

Do we want an NHS that keeps all the money (our taxes) in the system or gives some of it away to investors?

There is talk of making extra efficiencies. How would this happen and in what form would they take. Hasn't it been tightening it's belt since the eighties? How much tightening can take place before it ceases to be the NHS we know?

The best efficiency of all is to give the NHS more money.
Then they can pay for more nurses and doctors and stop employing locums and bank nurses at exorbitant pay.
Ensure everybody in the country has enough money to buy food and pay for housing; then there will be no illness caused by poverty.

Well that's pie in the sky dj I personally know families who would love that idea, they can carry on forever living off the state with no effort needed on their part. And it would STILL not necessarily be spent on food and housing.

Alea, did you look at the number of A&Es there will be left if Stevens has his way?
Less than one per county.

This is Northumbria and North Tyneside's new hospital, the only A&E left in the area.
"When unveiling his national plan in November 2013, Sir Bruce said it was ‘complete nonsense’ to suggest some A&Es would be downgraded as a result of the drive to develop larger specialist units.

But the opening in June of a new 210-bed facility in Cramlington, ten miles north of Newcastle, will trigger the loss of ‘blue-light’ emergency services at three district general hospitals elsewhere in Northumberland.

Officials insist Hexham, Wansbeck and North Tyneside hospitals will maintain ‘walk-in A&E services’. Yet the three units will only be staffed and equipped to cope with incidents typically dealt with by lower-ranking urgent care centres, according to a leading doctor."

Keogh lied. It's been open less than a year, and patients have already been waiting in corridors for over two hours to be seen. An ambulance driver mentioned having to do a 120 mile round trip to pick up a very sick baby from Berwick.

This will happen everywhere if Stevens gets his way. There is talk at the moment of closing Durham hospital's A&E to only have one in Darlington.
That would mean that if anyone living here had a heart attack or a stroke, they would be driven past the Durham Hospital.
It's only being thought of to save money. Not lives.

What's wrong with wanting no illness caused by poverty?
Do you have to go for the lowest common denominator?
Over a million people use food banks. They are not all scroungers, as you believe them to be.
Here's another idea, then.
How about killing off everybody over 80? That'll save the NHS a lot of money.
If you can bracket the poor together, then why not bracket all those over 80 as scroungers on the NHS?

Stroke victims are taken to Darlington now dj and heart operations and procedures are carried out at James Cook.

Given the current state of nhs finances, and the fact that the current government is not going to increase tax or spending for it, what other actual, in the real world, option is there for hospital management, dj, than closing down various units?

Ideals are all very well, but this is the reality we're stuck with right now.

I do not agree with some earlier posts that personal experience is necessarily a good indicator of how the NHS is doing overall, although it obviously matters to an individual. The Kings Fund on public satisfaction with NHS states "Public satisfaction with the NHS is a multi faceted measure influenced by respondents views on politics, policy and public institutions as well as their experience of NHS performance". There is plenty of evidence that the NHS is under strain and cannot continue without more cash, or else severely cutting services. I resent the intimation by a previous poster that anyone who complains about the NHS is a serial complainer. I know the staff are under strain and morale is low, I have worked in NHS all my life. I believe if there is sufficient pressure put on the government they will increase spending on NHS. They have done several U turns recently on other policy decisions when there is sufficient opposition, particularly amongst their own MPs!

Actually, harrigran, I went to Durham hospital and was transferred to the Freeman when I had my aortic dissection.

I also thought the stroke service had been centred on Durham Hospital after a long consultation.

Bags, the current state of NHS finances is because the government wants to privatise it. We have two options, to fight it, or roll over and let them privatise it.
I know which I prefer to do.
As you said previously, it's NHSE that's being privatised.
You can watch from the sidelines while NHSE goes bust.

There's another option -look at how the NHS could work smarter. Just throwing money at it mindlessly won't necessarily lead to improvement. There are lots of new ways of working, of doing things differently, of looking at how things are done and considering more flexible ways of using staff and buildings.

Jane10

How do you make a hospital more flexible? They're already treating people in the corridors at our local a and e. Is that the sort of flexibility you mean?

dj said I said: "it's NHSE that's being privatised."

Did I? I don't even know what NHSE is!

Also, dj, how are you fighting it? You seem to be just saying how bad it all is all the time.

On Gransnet. How is that going to change anything?

OK. i've looked it up now. You are referring to NHS england. I said I'd read two articles about it and tried to paraphrase what the articles said (for the benefit of people who get fed up with endless links). I did not say it was going to be privatised. I do understand that some people think that is the ultimate aim of the Tory Party.

I get sick to the back teeth of the politics that is spewed out every now and again over the NHS. The NHS has problems now , the NHS had problems under Labour. For Gods sake I wish the bloody political football merry go round will stop one day. The NHS should be a cross party matter to stop the back biting, blame game that will continue until the sun stops shining.

A lot of you will not have failed to note on the 'many' threads that have been on Gransnet my mother died in one of the top 10 worst hospitals when Andy Burnham and Labour were in government. What the hell do you think the Francis Report was about! How easily the shameful Francis Report is shoved under the bloody carpet by some to appease their and only their thoughts and comments should be agreed with.

Gran Tea was perfectly in order to post as he/she felt fit and if all that can be posted about the NHS is negative narrative to suit those who refuse to accept any remote good practice within the NHS then what is the point in Gransnet?

Yes, I do get angry before any poster tells me I am .