General Discussion

What I have learned over the last few weeks is that if you are admitted to hospital as an emergency then you get treated rapidly and the care is excellent. However, if you have a chronic condition then you will probably die before you get an appointment with a consultant! Hubby just been told he will get an appointment to see a consultant in November, even though they know the severity of his condition and that he needs specialised injections. He has already waited seven months just to get onto the list to see the consultant. They know he needs injections but can't see him before November and then it will probably be another four months to get the injections. Let's hope that huge amount of money we have wasted on the EU goes to improving our ailing health service as it really is badly needed. 

 A friend has been waiting for months for an op that she really needs.

Finally, losing patience, she decided to go private: it'll be the same surgeon, at the same hospital (Wonford), but will cost £10-11K, which she can just about afford.

Now, she's still waiting.  'Oh yes', they said, 'there's so many people going private these days you still have to go on the waiting list'.

Starve the NHS of money, lower the service it can provide, and them wot can will go private.

Privatisation by stealth?

Just to point out the obvious - if we want better public services, which are funded by taxpayers' money, then either taxes have to be raised, and/or all those corporations finding ways not to pay tax should be prevented from doing so, and/or we don't go for Osbornian austerity measures etc etc etc.

@Daverc, the consultant my hubby needs to see wasn't available yesterday afternoon as he was doing private work at mount stuart. his secretary did offer to get me the prices for my husbands injections should we wish to go privately and said we had the choice of having it done at torbay or mount stuart! she did point out that we would still have to wait though, the whole of two to three weeks, not four to eight months! so, the same consultant would do the work at torbay for a fee in two to three weeks or we can wait several months on the nhs. where did it all go wrong? 

If we raise taxes the money would still be wasted as it is wasted now on government advisers, consultants, abandoned IT systems costing millions which are never implemented but no one is ever held to account for the abject failure and the list goes on.............

so...other than our leaving the EU and spending some of the money saved from that on the NHS do you have any thoughts on how the NHS can be funded appropriately?

and on a not unrelated issue. Does anyone know from which budget things like crutches and orthopaedic foot stools are funded? 

The rot set into the NHS decades ago with the ever inflating management with their only goal to save as much money as possible and keep as few beds as possible with patients in them. The reason for this is that they get paid bonuses for spending less.

The people who should be working to get more money for the NHS and making sure the staff and patients are supported 100% are the ones destroying it because of their own greed and thirst for control and power.

Also, as has been commented on above, the government's own goal is to privatise the NHS completely. In line with every other public resource we once owned.

@Margaret Swift - i wish you and your husband all the best in obtaining the care he needs asap.

Thanks BEE9, appreciate your good wishes. And, agree with your post.

I have repeated my mantra for the last 35 years, until health and education are removed from political control they will never improve. 

One of the reasons the Consultant has less time for NHS patients is because they are allowed to do private care for so many days a week.  NHS hospitals like private funded care because it helps with their bills and the Consultants like it because they get more money in their pockets.  If all Consultants had to work full time for the NHS then we would see a difference in care.  But their contracts allow them to pick and choose.

And to answer Lynne's question - the NHS will NEVER be funded "appropriately".  No matter how much money you pour in, they will continue to spend it and overspend it.  The whole system is well and truly broken.  The contracts that the last Labour Govt allowed the GPs to negotiate put far greater strain on hospitals to pick up the slack.  There is no great incentive to be efficient anywhere in the system.  None of it is joined up, all departments are competing with each other rather than trying to co-operate to have co-ordinated well run care for their patients.  You do get the occasional shining star, but in all my experience of NHS care both in Devon and elsewhere, for myself but also with family and friends, I/we have never been made to feel anything other than a bother and if you try to be patient (pardon the pun) and calmly wait your turn then you get mucked about.  A very good friend diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer last year (not in Devon) was told she urgently needed a particular bit of treatment.  But they had FORGOTTEN to schedule it on the right day, despite her getting a letter and phone call asking her to come in for it.  The only option they could suggest to her was for her to walk out of the ward, go round to A&E and demand to be seen for the SAME TREATMENT as an emergency admission.  She would then be taken back to the same ward for the exact treatment they were refusing to give her because it didn't match their schedule.  It was only because her very switched on husband went straight out to complain and contact the Press that they changed their mind and decided they could just do it after all. 

Like I said, the whole system is a god awful mess.  But starved of money???  Really???  There is plenty of money, they are just spending it badly and as the general population doesn't truly value the NHS and takes it for granted so it makes unreasonable demands, such as millions of appointments that are missed every year, ambulances called out for non-emergencies, drunks over-running A&E night after night with self inflicted minor injuries that clog up the system for everyone else while they sleep off their hangover, items loaned (like crutches) not returned which means they have to be bought all over again etc etc etc

For those who genuinely use the NHS when we truly need it, those who abuse the system just make it harder to get the treatment we need.

@DJ, one of the best posts i have read for a long time. the system is not joined up and it is in a god awful mess. 

The reason I asked about crutches and foot stools is because I have some here. They are in the garage (I keep forgetting that they are there. This thread has reminded me)   I see similar items for sale at boot fairs.

Please could someone explain (hazard a guess?) as to why it is hospitals provide these things but seemingly have no provision to take them back.

I ask because I did phone the local hospital some months back to see where they should be returned (I hoped the hospital). But no. I was told they had to go back to somewhere in Exeter.

I don't go to Exeter that often and invariably when I do it is by public transport. So how am I to return those items?

And if I have this 'return' problem presumably others have as well.  

@Lynne, a few years ago we tried to return various items of rehab equipment my mum needed following a few falls due to postural hypertension. we tried barton surgery, dawlish hospital and torbay nhs trust. eventually we were told that it is not cost effective to collect these items and to give them to a charity shop! which we did. so...........not only do we have a throw away society, we also have a throw away nhs service!