NHS ? ..... What NHS ?.

[Pete Grey]

I don’t know about you but everyone we speak to seems to have been let down by our doctors and hospitals, from having to wait 2 or 3 weeks for a doctors appointment or wrong tablets, tablets unobtainable to the lack of proper care if you do end up in hospital, then sent home with little or no aftercare.

So we need to take care not to injure ourselves, as we get older (i’m knocking 80) it’s easy to fall and it takes longer to get over them.
We must keep as healthy as we can with a good diet.
Make sure we have a good first aid kit, hopefully we will have all had some training.
And we must have a range of OTC medicines/treatments for as many different illnesses as we can.

If you do need emergency treatment you may be lucky and come across a doctor with the specialist knowledge and the patience to treat you as a human being or you might have to fight for everything you can get.

Good luck to you all.

[bigpaul]

the NHS is creaking at the seams and is on its last legs, it is short of many Doctors and Nurses.
our local health centre has no regular doctors, sometimes they can scare up a locum to work one day a week but normally there is none, one has to travel 13 miles each way to the head practise but with no public transport not everyone has a car.
the nearest emergency hospital is 25 miles away and that takes 1 hour in a car on our rural roads.
we used to have a helicopter that is funded by a charity to take the worst cases to hospital but I have not seen that since before the pandemic.
many people cannot get an NHS dentist and cannot afford to go private.

[harryhotspur]

So what is the answer? should we scrap it and go down the private healthcare route where people have to pay a fortune to a company only to find that our treatment ends because we have run out of cover?
Or
Should we properly fund the NHS.
For me it's the latter, we need a full overhaul of the NHS, to me we have far too many administrators, I think we could cut hospital management and divert the money into providing more Doctors and Nurses, we should also look at outsourcing, we have private companies operating CT Clinics, we have private ambulance companies transporting patients to hospital, Our Blood Transfusion service was outsourced years ago, that's just 3, all of these private companies have paid CEO's, they have shareholders, the savings by bringing these back under the NHS control would be enormous, in my opinion if the NHS is to remain it needs to be ran the way a private business would be run but fully under the control of a competent Government, cut out the penpushers, and bring back Matrons. and everyone needs to pay for it.

[bigpaul]

too much money is being spent on "Diversity" officials and not on health care.

[Pete Grey]

Right from the very start it the NHS was unsustainable.

After the war the health of the nation was in such a bad state, the idea was that after the initial surge of funding as health improved the NHS would not need so much cash to keep it going.

However as a result of people living longer they need more costly care, also modern medical techniques are extremely expensive, if you have checked the prices of private health care you will see.

Extra funding for the NHS would only encourage more waste and more red tape. Don’t throw good money after bad.

Seriously I think eventually the NHS will have to decide whether to go for quantity OR quality, hospitals giving more basic life saving emergency treatment to the majority rather than the expensive minority, including the old, I say that as an 80 year old.

GP’s should be made to see more patients, at our local surgery recently the doctor worked just four hours, 10:30 - 2:30, and would not see anyone after that.

Hospital accident and emergency is a joke, people turning up with cut fingers or a cough the GP or a walk-in centre should deal with, this blocks things up for people with serious injuries.

If you do have a serious injury when you do get admitted you do get good treatment but when you’re discharged you will probably not get all the meds you need.

[Pete Grey]

While there are some very good health professionals about
I’m still hearing horror stories about the NHS, we know it’s
going to take YEARS to get some real improvement.

Be sure to extra take care with everything you do to keep safe
when working or doing DIY, don’t put yourself in danger.
Try to keep fit, loose a few pounds, eat healthier.

Build up your First Aid kit, try and get some training if you can,
and keep a range of OTC medications to cover common illnesses
and conditions, give yourself and family a better chance.

[Skean Dhude]

Missed this thread somehow. I worked in the NHS as a contractor.

The NHS still has a lot of good people but like all government bodies it is badly mismanaged. It is more than sufficiently funded but they waste a lot. A big lot and they no longer provide the service they are paid to do.

It needs everyone not at the coal face to be given a P45 and it's remit taken back to the 1950s. They should make all non emergency work outsourced and they should not fund anything that is not life threateneing This includes the Doctors and the Dentists who need to be put on new contracts where the patients have control.

[earthman]

My wife spent 20 plus years in the NHS, it were pretty clear to her that the whole thing were going down hill over the years, the plan to sell it off, make it private etc were obvious. Back in 2019 when Boris the clown came on TV and told us about covid, I did wonder if it were just a plan to close down the NHS for good, I imagined that he'd come on the TV a few months into it, sorry folks, we've done all we can but we can't do any more, the NHS is no longer.

Little did I know, the real plan were far deeper and even more evil than that, this so called great reset agenda.

[harryhotspur]

I'm waiting for a big operation on my ankle, 18 months ago an MRI scan discovered the problem, since then I've seen the surgeon twice, I have had 3 appointments to check my BP, Heart and lung function, I have had 2 pre-surgery appointments and an appointment with the anaethstetist, today
I had a telephone call to ask if I needed any advice, i feel that it is just going over the same ground multiple times.

[Skean Dhude]

Yet your dog can pop to the vet. Get X-rayed, scanned and checked over and be having an op the next day. The processes are there it is just in the NHS the management overhead, bureaucracy and entitlement stifle any movement.

Cut off the head and burn it. Start again with the 1950s processes without all the management and make sure that you employ competent staff and not just diversity hires.