Who hates the NHS

ronib I think most surgeries have adopted some form of this system. My surgery is on the third different version. The latest one is called e-consult. These are some reviews of the service:

uk.trustpilot.com/review/econsult.net

A local surgery has changed the way appointments are made to online triage. There’s now a communication process between doctors and patients for making an appointment. So rather than phone a receptionist for an appointment at 8 am only to be told there are none, an online form is required and some form of medical help is provided. This can be an appointment in the surgery, telephone consultation or home visit. The surgery is open daily 8 until 7 and Saturday 9 - 5. I hope this system comes to a place near you. For anyone without internet/smart phones, a receptionist will help fill in the online form.

I was very shocked about the way an elderly relative was treated (or rather, very seriously neglected) during lockdown and that, unfortunately, has badly dented the trust I once had in the system.

I seem to know an awful lot of quite ordinary people who've given up on the NHS and, if they can, pay for private treatment. Only the other day I encountered an acquaintance who's spent a large chunk of her retirement savings on having bones in her foot fused and a bone spur removed. She was facing a two-year wait to see a consultant and then another year or two before it could be done on the NHS. She said the private consultant who did the operation had a four-month waiting list himself and that while she was there, the private hospital was very busy.

I hate what the NHS has become. I hate that my MIL will be discharged home tomorrow with a care package and a floor bed to spend nights alone at the age of 92, despite being confused and incontinent. I hate that money is wasted on pointless ventures and ‘care’ seems to be a dirty word. I hate that it takes weeks to get an appointment with a GP. I spent 20 years as a woman's health nurse and I would not go back.

Doodledog It sounds as though the pathways for your particular condition(s) aren't working well. Maybe you could contact PALS.

Maybe. But for now I'm too exhausted to think about it.

MOnica That is exactly what I said - you have described local problems within hospitals/GP surgeries. Massive organisational changes wouldn't help.

Incidentally, I don't know what rehabilitation you were expecting for your DH. I had everything. It consisted of educational sessions, which weren't very helpful at all. Your DH could just have read the many booklets available from the BHF. The exercise sessions weren't exactly very strenuous. I'm surprised anybody wouldn't be able to do them because they were designed for very unfit people and patients were required to wear heart monitors at all times. I don't know what alternative could have been offered.

The O/P asks do I hate the NHS.

No. I hat those who have starved it of recourses. But like many here I have struggled greatly because of the result of that starvation of resources, and worry about the future as I cant afford most private medicine..

Norah - disillusioned, wary, no faith or trust left perhaps? To be avoided except in an emergency (just like the police, as I said earlier).

Primrose53 I don’t hate the NHS by any means but they really annoy me sometimes.

Agreed.

Hate is perhaps the wrong word, maybe annoyed beyond beyond.

What is not going to help at all is this, it slipped under the radar for me yesterday that further cuts to public services are likely to be made to fund their own pay rises. Morale will hit rock bottom if that happens.

www.itv.com/news/2023-07-10/chancellor-says-schools-and-hospitals-must-make-savings-to-fund-pay-rises

I have just posted a longish post, that has disappeared.

The long and short of it was that the NHS came close to killing DD during lockdown through the incompetency of the GP service. She was told after, they finally did the blood test that diagnosed her severe anaemia that she was so anaemic she could have a fatal heart aattack at any moment and if she thought that was happening she should immediately go to A&E (she lives alone)

DH had no rehabilitation after heart surgery( all done by phone) because no one would listen when we tried to explain that lung damage meant he couldn't follow the usual exercise plan. It was follow the plan or nothing. Last week our GP sent him to A&E, despite talking to staff, handng over papers which they looked at and checked on a screen, when 3 hours later I asked when we would be seen, they couldn't find him anywhere on the system and didn't know he was there.

I was diagnosed with osteoporosis over a year ago, promised medication in January, I still haven't received it and I have yet even to see a doctor. After I chased them I was offered a face-to -face appointment with a doctor this month, this was cancelled two days later and replaced by another phone appointment in late August.

I am glad everything has gone like clockwork for you. Please can I borrow your watch.

The changes I would like to see is in admin systems in hospitals and how they are run. The horrors that have been revealed in many maternity units, and problems elsewhere, are almost always the result of poor management and communication, within the hospitals involved.

Every one of these events happened with different hospitals.

The King’s Fund is a very good place to start for reports/research as this charity specialises in different aspects of the NHS. It is a known authority.

M0nica

growstuff just reorganised or had a root and branch review of how it operates?

I suspect, MOnica, as I have said before, possibly on this thread, that a root and branch review of such a massive organisation as the NHS would be a very big and very expensive exercise which would provoke howls of 'more money being thrown at the NHS' from the opposition (bound to be tory in 18months time) and the media.

I think it would be an excellent thing to do but I can't see it happening.

Meanwhile, with the NHS being kept short of staff, equipment and money by this government, which is determined to destroy it, can you point to anything non anecdotal to justify your conviction that the NHS doesn't deserve even what funding it gets?

M0nica

growstuff just reorganised or had a root and branch review of how it operates?

The two major re-organisations have had significant impacts on how the NHS operates in England.

What kind of changes would you like to see?

Most of the complaints which have been mentioned on GN seem to be local problems with pathways not working well.

growstuff just reorganised or had a root and branch review of how it operates?

Doodledog It sounds as though the pathways for your particular condition(s) aren't working well. Maybe you could contact PALS.

Over the last six years, I've been treated for diabetes, a heart attack and breast cancer and am now being monitored for osteopenia. They're all relatively common conditions and everything has run like clockwork. I've even been booked in for mammograms for the next five years and a DEXA scan next year. Test results are available online (to me, my GP and all hospital staff) within days - usually 24 hours.

I don’t hate the NHS by any means but they really annoy me sometimes.

Just this week I have received the same letter in two separate envelopes cancelling my appointment. My husband rang the hospital yesterday to ask a question about his appt this Thurs. He was told it is cancelled but we have received no letter. A trip to hospital for us is a 60 mile round trip so we would have been really annoyed if he hadn’t rung them.

It also irritates me how they have to follow NICE guidelines even though some of it is stupid.

M0nica

Maizie Where is the evidence that the NHS is being run efficiently and well. This is the [problem we do not know because no one is looking at it.

Any company that has been running for 75 years would more than once in that period had major upheavals when it looked at its organisation, and how it is run and emasured its efficiency and effectiveness. When has the NHS done this?

Twice in the last 13 years.

Doodledog My recent experience hasn't been great. The staff I have seen have all been caring and skilled, but there has been little communication between departments (specifically between the GP and hospital, and between different consultants)..I realise that I am lucky to be seen at all as others are on very long waiting lists

Indeed.

Forcing me to private knee surgery avoiding a 2yr wait.

Iam64

My extensive experience of the NHS in recent years doesn’t lead me to believe we aren’t getting value for money, or surrounded by inefficiency

My recent experience hasn't been great. The staff I have seen have all been caring and skilled, but there has been little communication between departments (specifically between the GP and hospital, and between different consultants), and systems such as getting bloods and other tests ready before clinic appointments, and having to have different appointments on different days to get blood taken and sent to (presumably) the same lab for analysis and then the results to different people have been inefficient. More than once I have had an appointment with a consultant who has had to call me back after seeing the results of tests that were run too recently to be ready in time. I also get letters, texts and emails repeating the same information, which also appears on the NHS app and is followed up by telephone reminders.

I realise that I am lucky to be seen at all as others are on very long waiting lists, and that the numerous tests I've had have all been free when I've needed them, but I can't pretend that the system is efficient. I can get lifts to appointments and don't need to take time off work to go, but for many of those who work full-time it would be costly in transport and missed working days.

Frequently

Maizie Where is the evidence that the NHS is being run efficiently and well. This is the [problem we do not know because no one is looking at it.

Any company that has been running for 75 years would more than once in that period had major upheavals when it looked at its organisation, and how it is run and emasured its efficiency and effectiveness. When has the NHS done this?

And stop sending us those nice pie charts?

You're right, Callistemon. We don't need those silly pie charts, we need a Sankey Diagram.

Money circulates, it doesn't stop in its portion of 'pie'. Or disappear down a black hole.

gimms.org.uk/2022/11/26/spending-chains-sankey-diagrams/

(If the full text doesn't open on this page click on 'Read more' )

M0nica

I think the NHS should first get its act in order and give us some evidence that the money is being used effectively and well.

Constantly pouring more and more money into a black hole that demands more and more money, using a very basic form of emotional blackmail to get it, yet fails to show that the money is being well managed and we are getting good value for our money, is almost a guarantee of inefficiency.

MOnica, you keep reverting to this assertion.

Do you have any clear, incontrovertible, researched based, evidence (no anecdotes please) that 'our' money isn't being used effectively in the NHS?

Which bit of 'our money' is disappearing into a black hole, never to be seen again? Good God, even some of the £millions Michelle Mone scammed for useless PPE during the crisis phase of the covid pandemic was seen again in the form of a lovely sailing yacht...

Doodledog

I don't care what it's called, really. The point is that most of us pay in at the rate that is set by the government of the day, yet when they don't deliver the service they have taken our money to fund, they say that we can't afford it. It is the government who should ensure that we do pay enough, however they go about that. An increase in income tax, a 'poll tax' system where everyone between 18 and state retirement age pays in whether they earn or not, a death tax, a wealth tax on unearned income, ring-fencing the sugar tax and taxes on alcohol and tobacco - all those things and others should be on the table for discussion.

It's rather like road tax, it all goes into a pot and very little of it goes into repairing our dreadful roads.

Yes, I know none of our tax goes into paying for services ...........
In which case, why not just call it a loan repayment?
And stop sending us those nice pie charts?