NHS

Sixtylooming - I'm open to any discussion about keeping our NHS, particularly specific taxes.
Your point about seeing a doctor on the day is well made but - my GP centre is now struggling to recruit. It's a teaching practice and has always had an excellent reputation with good GP's who live locally send their children to the same schools as their patients etc. We are within half an hour of the city yet on open countryside. What's not to like. We are currently having great difficulty recruiting. Young medics no longer want to be GP's, a direct link to the ridiculous notion they will also be business managers. Our GP's work 12 hour plus days. Money isn't everything and given their good salaries who can criticise them for working less than full time in all these circumstances.
I can see a doctor on the day I phone if it's necessary, if it isn't an emergency and I want to see my regular GP I wait 3 weeks.
I have very good treatment from three specialist consultants. I am not complaining about them, or about our GP practice but - I fear the future for vulnerable people, for my grandchildren and my own adult children.

How will the unemployed/poor/ elderly afford a private medical health service?

I am not advocating a private system....far from it. I work in the NHS and uphold its values and personally think it does a fantastic job especially if urgent care is required. However...there are now so many health problems in society the books don't balance! Take Type 2 diabetes....it is bankrupting the NHS almost on it's own. The point I am making is that increased tax is the fairest way of helping fund the gap. This means the poorer and less advantaged would not necessarily pay more. Working in the NHS there is a huge amount of wasted appointments that people just don't turn up for (although often that does indeed allow a list or clinic to catch up!), and many more wasted prescriptions etc to mention a few. We all have a responsibility to use the NHS carefully and not liberally. Private health care is absolutely not better than NHS...But having an option to alleviate some of the strain will free up those vital services for those that need them. I absolutely up hold the NHS, but the the funding is not a bottomless pit, we have to be prepared to pay for the service, and taxes to me seem the fairest way!

Please leave type 2 diabetics out of it . WeAre not all fat slobs eating a bad diet many could have done nothing to avoid developing it . You could just as well blame cancer sufferers . I have experience of both .

Brilliant. They've got the money to challenge Hunt.

www.crowdjustice.com/case/jr4nhs-round2/

You can still donate if you want to.
There has been a big upsurge of support over the last two days. I wonder why!

pbs.twimg.com/media/DSnsbDeW4AAhZiE.jpg:large

The man who posted this tweeted that it was time to set up his own ambulance trust with the lovely fleet of fourteen parked outside the front door.
He is the chief executive of the Wigan and Leigh NHS trust.

Apparently there were 200 people waiting for an ambulance at St Helier hospital in Surrey.
All those government ministers in the county, including Hunt, and they can't sort out their own NHS services. Not much chance for the rest of us.
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Something has GOT to be done about this now.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/05/essex-woman-dies-after-waiting-nearly-four-hours-for-ambulance

Neither Hunt nor May should be allowed to get away with cutting the service any more.
I read another article about medics going to treat people in ambulances queued up outside the hospitals, but this woman didn't even get into the ambulance.

There's an interesting article in the FT today about how one hospital has been using a more collaborative approach to healthcare. It looks like this is going to be rolled out to a larger area.

"For more than a year nurses, family doctors, social workers and mental health staff in Surrey and parts of neighbouring counties have worked together to treat patients before they deteriorate to the point of needing a hospital admission.

It appears to be working, according to Andrew Morris, who heads the local health system — challenging the idea that a cash infusion is the only solution to what ails the NHS.

As his counterparts elsewhere struggled with spiralling hospital admissions, Sir Andrew says: “This is the first year when our activity has not grown. We usually get an increase of 8-12 per cent every year in emergency admissions and this year we haven’t seen that increase as a result of these [changes].”

He points to the local Frimley Park Hospital, which is currently admitting about 125 people a day. A new ambulatory care service — in which senior doctors based in the emergency department treat less seriously ill patients so they do not have to be kept in overnight — has “turned around [another] 35 to 40 people a day that before we had it we would have admitted”, he says."

The article highlights several areas where current policy and incentives are not appropriate - things like targets for individual hospitals and financial incentives to treat more patients. Studies in one area found 4 percent of local people were, between them, consuming up to 50 percent of the health and social care budget, so they now employ coaches, to help these people stay healthier.

Here's a link, but unfortunately the FT is behind a paywall.
www.ft.com/content/a13600ce-f17e-11e7-ac08-07c3086a2625

Interesting article in the Guardian.
'Theresa May, on a visit to Frimley Park hospital in Surrey, apologised for delays to operations and hospital admissions, saying she recognised it was difficult for somebody who had had their operation postponed, and hoped procedures could be rescheduled “as soon as possible”.

The prime minister said: “I know it’s difficult, I know it’s frustrating, I know it’s disappointing for people, and I apologise.”

Her visit came after it emerged that tens of thousands of planned operations could be delayed for at least a month as the NHS deals with the most urgent cases.

Hospitals in England also set another unwanted record last week with A&E units forced to divert patients elsewhere because they could not cope a total of 39 times – the highest number this winter.'

I wonder why she was in Frimley Park Hospital, rather than one of these?

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/02/ae-doctor-sorry-for-third-world-conditions-as-nhs-winter-crisis-bites

Fewer people for her to meet?

Anyway, what's that got to do with a woman waiting four hours for an ambulance after telling them she had chest pains, and dying before they got there?

Interesting article here from the Mirror. No paywall.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/shocking-images-people-lying-floor-11804756

Why did May not go there and apologise?

If the NHS was to operate differently Jen, there would be no winter crisis every year and her ambulance would have arrived sooner. It may not have saved her, but there would be no doubt that she'd received help in an appropriate time.
I don't think it's right that 4% of people in one area use up half the health budget - the other 96% will not get a decent service with their half. You do need to draw the line somewhere and help people in other ways.

I do not want to see the Nat. Health privatised, however I must say that the privatised clinics I have attended have been much more efficiently run. So there is scope to run our dear Nat. Health more efficiently. I also believe that anything that can be bought over the counter should NOT be on prescription. The prescription system is ridiculously inefficient. And why are we funding ops to put right operations performed overseas? And of course Hunt should be sacked. His lies are as bad as T. May's.

If everybody paid their taxes, there wouldn't have been a need to cut the health service.
I presume you also don't agree that the top 1% of the population should own as much as the bottom 55%.

People like Richard Murphy, self-confessed tax avoider.

By the way ,primrose, you are not really saying that everyone should have equal amounts of healthcare, are you?
My husband probably had more than his share, having been type one diabetic since he was 11. Then he fell off a ladder and broke his back, then got cerebellar ataxia, then a brain tumour. Imagine how much that cost. Lucky he died when he was 65, and didn't use up any more resources.

If you look on Richard Murphy's blog, you can see his address. Somehow I don't think he's in the top 1%
What's that got to do with the NHS, anyway?

Read Hunts book “Direct Democracy” and then listen to his double speak about the NHS.

Quote

we should denationalise the NHS

Listen to the channel 4 interview of an NHS doctor then understand what this government is doing to our NHS.

Don’t be fooled by Hunts irritatingly soft voice and doe eyes as he oh so regrets what is happening.
Wolf in sheeps clothing and a mealy mouthed bastard is what he is.

doe eyes whitewave? Much more scary than that! It made my blood boil to hear TM and JH's apologies for treatment delays. I'm pretty sure that if they were in the same position as me, ie waiting for ?cancer referral for 6wks (not 2) and hoping that appt scheduled for 15th Jan isn't cancelled, they would have been seen a damn site quicker.

I looked at your crowdfunding link dj and found it very interesting. The central point of ACOs seems to be to integrate care between social services, community services and health - can't argue with that as a sensible idea. The crux of the problem seems to be that potentially, as the law stands, these ACOs could be taken over by private profit-seeking organisations - not acceptable in my book.

If they could integrate services and ditch the mish mash of private/public provision that we currently have, then they would be a good thing. All that needs to happen is for the law to make it clear that they cannot be run by profit-seeking organisations.

There is already a huge amount of private activity in the health service - organising care in the community for my Dad and now for my OH involves contact with several different companies who provide different aspects of the care. It is very confusing indeed.

Just been speaking to someone who works in the A&E of local hospital. She’s been working all over the New Year, and said it is everything that you here and see and worse.

Every hospital on the South Coast had waiting ambulances and people lined up in every available space. She said that she is fearful of what is going to happen.

lazigirl so sorry to hear of the delay in your appointment. Not long to wait now.

Completely agree, Luckygirl.
You'll find others in the same position. It must be a nightmare now.
I am pleased I didn't have to sort out care for my mother in law, who died last year. She had two other sons to do that for her. I just went to visit her in the various homes, four in three years.

That seems to be exactly what the NHS is doing in the FT article Luckygirl. All the services are collaborating and they are ignoring whether they get more money for what they think is the wrong course of action - they're providing a joined-up service because it works. It's made a massive difference and the patients, doctors and managers all agree it works, which must be a result in itself.

I believe they are going to scale this up to include more hospitals in that trust, to check that it's workable with larger numbers. I think it's a very good example of how the NHS could work in future.

As we can't see the FT article, we wouldn't know, would we?
I prefer to take note of what is said in the Guardian about the privatisation of the health services.

Care homes and care at home used to be run by councils. Now it is privatised.
That is not what Luckygirl was talking about.