5 hour wait for ambulance... 94yr old man.

My sister is considering having her hip done privately and has been quoted £14,000. You'd have to park an awful lot and have loads of prescriptions to cover that.

A 12 month prescription prepayment certificate costs £108.10 in England and about 88% of prescriptions are free anyway. It would take 129 years before prescriptions would equal the cost of a hip op.

Would you rather there were no devolution and Wales had absolutely no control over its finances? You'd be at the mercy of Westminster. Here in England, we have no say in how our NHS is financed.

icanhandthemback

I waited all night for an ambulance for my mother after she had a fall and it never came. Eventually, friends from the Fire Service lifted her into bed. The District Nurse checked her over for injuries, got the Surgery to sanction blood tests to check why she fell and eventually after she fell again we did get an ambulance within a reasonable time.

Why did the ambulance not arrive? That's awful - did they tell you that it wouldn't be there, or did it just not turn up.

The fire service tried to lift my partner out of the shower - even took the doors off, but couldn't do it.

You must've been distraught - and your mother - just waiting and waiting...

I suspect a fall would be a Category 3 call out. The mean waiting time is over 3 hours with 10% of calls taking nearly 9 hours. That's the reality across England. Of course, there will be anecdotes of some call outs taking much less than that and it's all a bit of a postcode lottery anyway.

Sorry - mistake - 10% of calls taking over 9 hours.

Pantglas2

Apologies to Casdon ?‍♀️

My point was Callistemon is that Labour in Wales prefer to fund free parking and scripts at the cost of operations!

I’d rather have paid for parking and all DH’s scripts (8 items per month) for the 3 years he was in huge pain awaiting his hip operation.

It doesn’t really matter what size the pot awarded from Westminster (under any government) if it’s then misspent and/ or mismanaged.

Labour in wales have had almost 25 years to improve the health service here and things have worsened IMO as can be seen from my previous post re ambulance timings.

I would agree partly, but think, with proper funding, that waiting times could be speeded up an patients and their relatives could have free parking.
I think it's shocking that sick and injured people and their relatives have to pay to park at a hospital. Medical staff have to pay too; my relative recently got £100 fine when she returned from her night shift at an English hospital, although she had a staff pass which was displayed.

Yes, I do remember when it was reported that Carwyn Jones's father had paid privately for a hip operation and tha was years ago. Waiting lists are longer still now.

Prescriptions are another matter, I'm inclined to agree with you but I'm not sure of how cost-effective charging is.

I'm not getting Welsh Labour off the hook at all - yes, it is worse than over the border and desperately understaffed here.

Dickens, there was a call at 5 in the morning apologising for the delay (we called at 9pm the night before) and a promise to be there within the hour but nobody arrived. By 9.30 in the morning, having waited up all night, I was too tired to make a big fuss so I left it to the District Nurse to sort things out. I was going to put in an official complaint but it was highlighted on the local news that things had been on red alert at the local hospital with ambulances queued up outside the hospital. With Mum's health and Dementia issues blowing up that week, it seemed like too much effort to take it further.

Just before Easter the paramedic at the surgery tried to ring for an ambulance for me and couldn't even get them to answer so she asked my son to take me in. A few weeks later DiL needed an ambulance for a heart problem and it arrived within 30 minutes. Same area, same time of day. I suppose it depends what's going on at the time.

growstuff

Pantglas2

So how come the waiting times over the border in Shropshire (where DH eventually had his op) were 3 months growstuff?

They charged for car parking each time I visited and the scripts he was issued on release I paid for (willingly).

We need to stop thinking one party is perfect and has all the answers - the Welsh nhs under Labour, as a whole, is in a worse state than the English nhs under the Tories, and politically biased people need to acknowledge that.

I haven't a clue. My sister needs a hip op and lives in Norfolk. She's been told the waiting time is 2-4 years.

maybe even longer
how old is she?

Certainly not a good time to be sick or have an accident. Very scary.

growstuff

I suspect a fall would be a Category 3 call out. The mean waiting time is over 3 hours with 10% of calls taking nearly 9 hours. That's the reality across England. Of course, there will be anecdotes of some call outs taking much less than that and it's all a bit of a postcode lottery anyway.

Yes, a fall is usually a category 3 - unless the patient isn't breathing. Which of course makes sense.

But doesn't allow for other conditions - which may not be recognisable by someone attending a person waiting for an ambulance, or the patient themselves, but can be life-threatening.

Someone I know had an ambulance called due to excruciating abdominal pains with vomiting which got steadily worse. The ambulance arrived hours later and too late to get her into hospital to deal with what turned out to be a perforated intestine from a bowel obstruction. She died from Sepsis.

People have died and will continue to die as a result of the delays.

The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch watchdog has called for immediate action by Mr Javid’s department to reduce the risk of patient harm from delayed ambulance handovers. This storm has been brewing for a decade. Austerity has shrunk hospitals so much that they lack the space to accommodate urgent admissions. Care services are too shrivelled to help. The upshot is patients waiting in pain for record lengths of time in A&E after they have waited too long for ambulances to reach them. (The Guardian, June 2022)

Sajid Javid blamed the Pandemic. Clearly, it has had an enormous impact, but the delays are multifactorial. And (according to the same article) - the public aren't buying his explanation.

If you are old and ill, there is every reason to be afraid. And even if you are not old, or ill.

"We need to listen to the messages, we need to learn, but in the end we've got to get on and deliver for the British people, and that's what we're doing." Said Boris Johnson after his battering in the recent by-elections.

According to The Sun "Mr Johnson, who looked knackered, failed to answer a question on whether he'd mulled his resignation today, but told another reporter: "No doubt people will continue to beat me up and say this or that to attack me."

Yup, it's all about him "getting on with the job". The nation is in a parlous state - NHS waiting times, ambulance delays (apart from the cost of living crisis) - are they part of the "job" he's going to be "getting on with"?

He didn't create the crisis, he inherited it - and the Pandemic - but he's done little to nothing to ameliorate it. And I don't believe he will.

JaneJudge

growstuff

Pantglas2

So how come the waiting times over the border in Shropshire (where DH eventually had his op) were 3 months growstuff?

They charged for car parking each time I visited and the scripts he was issued on release I paid for (willingly).

We need to stop thinking one party is perfect and has all the answers - the Welsh nhs under Labour, as a whole, is in a worse state than the English nhs under the Tories, and politically biased people need to acknowledge that.

I haven't a clue. My sister needs a hip op and lives in Norfolk. She's been told the waiting time is 2-4 years.

maybe even longer
how old is she?

60

Dickens I'm not defending it - far from it. I posted the graph to show that it's becoming the norm. It's absolutely disgraceful. Everybody knows that the underlying reason is that A&E is overwhelmed. It's not about waste or inefficient systems or any of the other excuses people trot out on here (and elsewhere). The system needs money to pay for staff. A&E is one of the few parts of the NHS which hasn't been outsourced to private providers, which isn't any wonder because it's expensive to run properly and shareholders aren't interested.

growstuff

Dickens I'm not defending it - far from it. I posted the graph to show that it's becoming the norm. It's absolutely disgraceful. Everybody knows that the underlying reason is that A&E is overwhelmed. It's not about waste or inefficient systems or any of the other excuses people trot out on here (and elsewhere). The system needs money to pay for staff. A&E is one of the few parts of the NHS which hasn't been outsourced to private providers, which isn't any wonder because it's expensive to run properly and shareholders aren't interested.

Oh, I didn't mean my post to be a reflection on you!

I'm just having a somewhat bitter little rant - in general.

And you're right about the outsourcing.

Again from a Guardian article - some years ago (I saved it)...

The private sector has always been there, but as a peripheral presence and not competing with the NHS. The compulsory competition introduced by Andrew Lansley has been a very costly failure. The private sector is expensive, unaccountable, and will walk away when it can’t make a profit. By cherry picking profitable services it destabilises the local NHS, which can’t drop the expensive work or turn away patients with complex problems. And its ethos is questionable, leading, for example, to profits being sent offshore with no tax paid.

... nuff said.

BTW, I don't just read the G - I look at other media, too!

Waited 6 hours earlier this year with DH who had a major head wound following a fall. It's really very stressful.

Daisymae

Waited 6 hours earlier this year with DH who had a major head wound following a fall. It's really very stressful.

I hope your DH was OK?

It really is stressful and frightening - waiting and waiting and not knowing how serious it could be - a head wound is worrying.

I do think First Aid should be taught to everyone nowadays. I did a course voluntarily many years ago, but should do a refresher.

Our tree surgeon nearly died in our kitchen, a branch had fallen and knocked the chain saw across two arteries in his arm. Luckily a first call paramedic was in the area, the ambulance followed what seemed a long time afterwards. A lesson to me to get someone down flat if they are bleeding in that way, the paramedic said you have 30 minutes to bleed out.

In the absence of professional help in emergencies, there are a few simple things helpers can do. Is there a website that advises what to do in case of falls, fracture, bleed, heart attack, stroke, unconsciousness?

I think 111 has a website that explains basic first aid, and when to phone for help.

A lesson to me to get someone down flat if they are bleeding in that way, the paramedic said you have 30 minutes to bleed out
We know someone who would have bled out after an accident identify but for the prompt actions of his friend who was with him. Luckily the air ambulance arrived on the scene promptly.

The Air Ambulance service in this country is entirely funded by charitable donations.
I don't think they even receive any Lottery funding.

Not identify - recently!
Autocorrect is on a roll today.

an elderly neighbour who waited in an ambulance for many hours after a fall at home has now tested positive for covid after being in hospital for 8 days........he is eating well and doesn't appear to be unwell apart from bruising from fall.