You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Dumbfounded....
Fair enough, scum have voted Tory last 15 years so the NHS is on their knees etc etc.
But I'm confused why they called back after about 15 minutes to place me in a queue for another 45 minutes( and counting)
Why not just call me back after an hour ( and counting)?
Is there an actual reason for this or is it just shit software design?
The bloody phone is about to run out of charge. And the patient is exhausted after sitting listening to shit hold musak rather than being asleep.
I'm genuinely intrigued.
So they can meet their KPIs?
I found an old man in the street, soaking wet from falling in a puddle, bleeding from a head injury, freezing cold day. Ambulance quoted minimum two to three hours. It subsequently transpired he had multiple fractures to his face and required a CAT scan. Emergency services couldn’t have been less interested. I had to drive him to the hospital myself. The NHS is already dead.
I found an old man in the street, soaking wet from falling in a puddle......................
Similar story, my neighbour (80 y/o at the time) fell crossing the road. Lay for two hours before an ambulance was able to come for him, despite police radioing in to impress upon them the urgency of the situation. He had a broken hip
Its as if the services have been run down at a time when demand is rising.
Watched an episode of 999 Traffic Interceptor Cops on Motorways the other night - motorcyclist injured after a car turned in front of him. Off duty nurse first on scene, no one dared move him in case of spinal injuries, the cop and the public trying to keep him as warm and dry as possible for a couple of hours an a wet rainy night. Cop drove to an ambulance station to see if they had a spinal board before an ambulance could get there.
My parents are in their 80s and increasingly frail. One bad fall from a downward spiral.
Todays headlines are about dissatisfaction with the NHS. I fear its being edged towards privatisation as a result. That said, I'm not sure how sustainable the NHS funding model is longterm, some European hybrid models may be better options to avoid US style privatisation
A few months ago my teenage daughter had Covid. Unexpectedly (she's had it before) it went to her lungs. After a few days it was obvious she had breathing difficulties and one evening she couldn't stand or walk. This is a girl who can normally swim 3 miles and then go clubbing.
Called 111 and after shortish 30 mins we got through to a very efficient lady who asked all sorts of fairly detailed questions and concluded that she should be seen by a doctor immediately, preferably within the hour. She had some fancy gps text app based on our location that pinged to us and came back with the nearest hospital - she said drive straight there and that we are booked in for an emergency slot. This hospital is 45 mins away and the slot was booked for 50 mins time
My wife jumped in the car with my very ill daughter, drove like mad (closed road didn't help) and rushed in to the A&E. They had all my daughters details emailed through already and said.............
........11-12 hrs wait to see a doctor. My wife said but she's booked in for an emergency slot and needs to see a doctor within an hour apparently. They said we know, we have the email, I wish they wouldn't do that as its a complete waste of time. 11 hrs.
So the NHS have staffed a helpline, got some fancy GPS enabled tech that sends texts to you and back to them with location, has some booking system installed that seems to work....yet all for absolutely nothing - what a waste of time and money. Not to mention causing harm to patients - the last thing my daughter needed was to be dragged into hospital in the freezing night just to sit on a cold bench for 11 hrs.
Completely broken - its a tragedy.
Todays headlines are about dissatisfaction with the NHS. I fear its being edged towards privatisation as a result. That said, I’m not sure how sustainable the NHS funding model is longterm, some European hybrid models may be better options to avoid US style privatisation
AKA one of the few successful Tory policies and they've got you agreeing with them.
FWIW the NHS 'model' is very sustainable, it's cheap (per capita spend) compared to all the other options that actually cover the whole population.
I hope we are all bearing in mind these response times when we go riding.
First hand experience lying on a remote roadside verge bloodied and with a broken collarbone, forget how long it was from initial call to being called back and told initially a much longer eait, and then that no ambulance was coming full stop!
In retrospect and by today's standards I guess I could walk (v.painfully) and talk so just wasn't a priority. Kindly motorist eventually scooped me up and drove me to local A+E where to be fair I was treated as well as I could have hoped
FWIW the NHS ‘model’ is very sustainable, it’s cheap (per capita spend) compared to all the other options that actually cover the whole population.
Exactly. Ultimately it has to be paid for, no amount of private sector 'efficiencies' will change that. USA of course is a great example of the expense involved when it's largely a private sector endeavour.
found an old man in the street, soaking wet from falling in a puddle, bleeding from a head injury, freezing cold day. Ambulance quoted minimum two to three hours. It subsequently transpired he had multiple fractures to his face and required a CAT scan. Emergency services couldn’t have been less interested. I had to drive him to the hospital myself. The NHS is already dead.
When you rang what did you describe his condition as?
Awful the potential they had to wait but it’s not because they are not interested, they stretched to breaking point, high priority calls come in regularly. Glad you did the right thing and took him yourself, shame it has to resort to that.
A slightly more positive nhs story - at the weekend had to take just adult daughter to A&E with another kidney infection - she gets them regularly and the trick is to catch them early otherwise she ends up on the ward for antib's via drip. We were seen and sent on our way with meds within 2hrs.
Similar story, my neighbour (80 y/o at the time) fell crossing the road. Lay for two hours before an ambulance was able to come for him, despite police radioing in to impress upon them the urgency of the situation. He had a broken hip
If there are literally no available ambulances what can they actually do?
A big contributor (not the only one) is that councils have been hardest hit by government cuts. They're not able to effectively run social care services or coordinate between social care providers as a result. That means patients end up stuck in hospital despite not having a medical need to be there still (medically well but not able to live at home on their own). Those patients are then taking up a bed in an elderly care ward, meaning the patient in A&E can't be moved up to the ward, so ambulances can't transfer their patients and get back out on the road.
I live in Scotland and my NHS experience is wholly positive
Typically I will get a GP appointment on the day I ring or the next day
Last year I had a throat problem. I got an appointment that day and was referred to a consultant. Consultation was 10 days later and an endoscopy 10 days after that. A week later a barium examination, some medicine prescribed. Then a second consultation and another endoscopy to double check. Follow up letters and discharge. From start to finish all within 3 months
As I say, I'm in Scotland. The NHS is devolved of course
I found an old man in the street, soaking wet from falling in a puddle, bleeding from a head injury, freezing cold day. Ambulance quoted minimum two to three hours. It subsequently transpired he had multiple fractures to his face and required a CAT scan. Emergency services couldn’t have been less interested. I had to drive him to the hospital myself. The NHS is already dead.
It's not that they not interested, it's that in your case the patient wasn't a category 1.
The ambulance service is stretched enough that you'll fall into 1 of two categories.
1) Cat 1 - heart attacks, strokes, major trauma, etc, you need medical attention right this second or you'll die.
2) Everything else - You might be horribly injured, but you won't get any worse on a taxi ride into hospital. You need to go to hospital, but you might not need a paramedic.
You'll only get an ambulance once all the cat 1's are cleared, which might take hours, if it ever happens. Broken bones are bad, but it's not "8 minutes and you'll be dead" bad.
We get what we collectively deserve.
Lets just remember that the current tory government elected to give use back 2p on the pound on our NI. It could have made a big song and dance about pushing the money as extra spending to the NHS but they didn't. They didn't because their polsters and focus groups indicated that the voting public were more likely to find an NI reduction appealing and a vote winner. Clearly not all the public, but enough of us prioritise the pound in our pocket over a pound to the NHS. Governments like our current mob don't set the agenda; they react to the opinions of the ignorant. We (collectively) are the problem. Oh and not looking after our collective selves so we soak up resources on preventable disease doesn't help either.
The 111 service / contact centre will have been designed around a demand / capacity profile based on whatever analytics they have in place, just as many services are. There will likely be significant changes in demand from one hour to the next and the service will be funded and resourced in a way that is able to absorb a lot of those spikes in demand while minimising the amount of spare capacity available as this is wasteful (i.e. under utilisation). The service may also be triaging / prioritising based on risk / severity. They will have KPIs that reflect the non-urgency of services and call backs are a way of managing D&C whilst meeting those KPIs. I don't know why they called you after 15 mins but this will have been designed in based on patient / user experience data. People like to be assured that someone is going to help them.
The NHS as a whole is obviously massively more complex but fundamentally its a system that needs to meet demand (or try to) to within various KPIs / wait times. An exercise in demand and capacity, making best use of available budget, minimising waste and maximising use of available resources. There is of course a political / policy element to how much capacity can be achieved - direct funding but also things like incentives to train for the medical professions.
Clearly there are very complex reasons why the NHS doesn't provide the best experience for every 'user' every time (not least because not everyone has the same expectation) but what we do know is that demand is ever increasing, for many, many reasons such as population increase but also increasing comorbidity which has a disproportionate impact on demand. There will also be cases where expectation is unreasonable, for example the person with the sprained ankle is not going to be treated as urgent and may find themselves going backwards in the queue if demand from higher priority cases dictate that.
"The NHS is already dead".
Perhaps but it does'nt have to remain that way. We need to look at health in a much wider way.
1 Properly funded social care will ease the bed blocking issue.
2 We need to treat mental health in the same way as we treat physical health ie get rid of any stigma
3 Healthy food should be our staple diet so lets tax sugar and "fast food".
4 Sports facilities and exercise facilities should be available at low cost or free.Funding for sport should not be targeted at helping the elite but at maximum benefit for the masses
This will take a long time to have any impact
There's another option to add to the bottom of gordimhor's list. I'll just preface my suggestion with the fact I'd not like to be the party or politician to suggest such a radical opinion, I think it would go down like a **** butty.
The NHS now does too much medicine and should focus on core/critical provision.
When it was adequately funded, (maybe back in the 80's?) there was a far smaller range of procedures, treatments, medicines etc and yes there were fewer patients, but there were also fewer tax payers funding it all. If the NHS was slimmed down to just provide critical care and a lot of other stuff was outsourced, (yes, that bit private, but the core NHS aggressively defended as free at the point of care) then the service could be awesome.
Point in case the collar bone above. Yep, you get your timely ambulance ride to the hospital to check there's no dangerous unexpected complications, but then once you've got your sling on and some pain relief you're on your way to another provider.
I don't know where you'd draw the line, (collar bone analogy above may be too limited) or how low income people could be provided for, but it's another perspective that's never been discussed AFAIK.
USA of course is a great example of the expense involved when it’s largely a private sector endeavour.
Other countries have different funding systems. The NHS system is not replicated anywhere else in the world. There is a reason why. It's a religion not a service. I'd take France or Germany's systems over ours any day of the week.
When I had COVID, I had the 111 service on my phone for several hours with a doctor monitoring matters. The COVID team came in full hazmat the following morning. That said, I tried recently to book a non-urgent GP appointment for, well you know, a HEALTH issue that was not URGENT. No appointments. For over a month. That's not a National Health Service. I have access to a private GP from work. Not face to face, but they provided a consultation for Mrs TiRed's nasty ear infection at almost no notice this week. When I broke my collar bone, I drove home with the kids, took paracetamol and went to A&E first thing Monday morning, when I knew it would be quieter! Even then they failed to diagnose properly what was an obvious fracture and I went privately.
"48% of people would like taxes to rise to fund the NHS". What they mean is other people's taxes to rise. When voting comes, this never wins votes in the privacy of the voting booth.
@tthew You can definitely argue that there are now cures for/ surgery for things that were incurable òr inoperable a few years ago. These are often expensive. The older population is growing so perhaps more people are needing treatments that only a few needed two or three decades ago. All of this is expensive and the working age population is getting smaller and is strapped for cash anyway.
So there's difficult decisions to be made on pensions and nhs and other things .
How can we increase our population?
I propose rè entering the EU if they ll have us, but we're not ready for that yet
The 111 service / contact centre will have been designed around a demand / capacity profile based on whatever analytics they have in place, just as many services are. There will likely be significant changes in demand from one hour to the next and the service will be funded and resourced in a way that is able to absorb a lot of those spikes in demand while minimising the amount of spare capacity available as this is wasteful (i.e. under utilisation). The service may also be triaging / prioritising based on risk / severity.
All very true but in the case of 111, I don't think it meets the needs in the real world. For example, my son had a MTB crash and we wanted his wrist x-rayed as it was swollen and painful. Previously we would have walked in minor injuries but you can't do that anymore as you need to go through 111.
2 or 3 phone calls, several hours and 2 call backs later we are told to attend A&E instantly. Their decision matrix says as he is a child and could have further injuries from the crash, he needs to be seen in A&E. No amount of explaining or reasoning could get past it so off we go to A&E. Grumpy nurse tells us off as we should not be in A&E but minor injuries, after 10 hours of sitting around A&E feeling like we were wasting NHS resources, 1 xray and his wrist was badly sprained rather than broken.
How can all that be more efficient than just having a triage nurse dealing with people who turn up at minor injuries? That's not the only story like that, I have had a few with elderly relatives too (Not from badly timed gap jumps thankfully ;-))
This is worth watching if you are interested and have a spare 40 minutes. Chris Whitty talking a few weeks ago about how we need to think differently about what the NHS is to us, and how needs to be different now to the model of care proposed in 1950. Really excellent description of the medical, social, demographic and philosophical issue we need to consider.
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/summit/nuffield-trust-summit-2024/video-highlights I think its video highlight 7/8.
The NHS issues are down to one thing. Underfunding ans its partner administrative waste in England
Ot that long ago i got a phone call from my mum in the evening. Dad was unwell and in oherent. I told her to phone NHS24 the Scottish equivalent of 111. Within 10 mins a doctor was dispatched to see him at home arriving in another 20 mins. Within an hour he was in an ambulance and in 90 mins was being treated in ARU.. he had flu but is vulnerable to respiratory disease
It can and does work.
What we are seeing is the deliberate result of tory policy to create a two tier US style system.. judging by posts on hete its working
The NHS does more with less than any other system and is more efficient than other models
Minor injuries you can self present, walk in centres to see a GP you need to book through 111.
Not all sweetness and light in Scotland. Last night a patient requiring a GP house call out of hours took 2 hours to get through on the phone to NHS 24.
On the other hand last time I was at minor injuries in Glasgow on a Friday night (without phoning NHS24) there was no queue and I was seen immediately.
Everything is broken, it's just most people don't realise it until they need whatever public body/institution they require.
Recently, after exhausting every other option, I emailed our GP surgery manager to tell her that after multiple attempts since last autumn, if they could not give me a definite date my old mum could get a steroid injection to alleviate the constant arthritic pain she was in, which was leaving her increasingly bed bound, I was going to stop taking my chemo medication the next day and contact any news agency that was willing to listen.
I got a call back within an hour with a time/date for the injection.
I felt shit about having to do this as I do not apportion blame on my surgery for the state the NHS is in. However, I couldn't go another day/night of being awake all night hearing my 95 year old mother screaming out in pain and me trying to explain to her that no, I couldn't give her an overdose of pain killers. It was destroying me, id had enough.
It's every person for themselves now. I can tell you one thing, I'm not going into old age with dementia or any other badly debilitating condition. If that looks to be on my horizon, I'll be downing a month's worth of meds in one go and checking out.
This is a very shit country to be old and inform in and I've given a lot of thought to this choice. YMMV and I hope it does.