MacHeath at Newgate News shares his family's experiences with socialized medicine in Britain.
"6. The receptionist who gave a patient an appointment (requiring an 80-mile round-trip by taxi) on the consultant’s day off."Over the past few years, three close relatives of mine have been seriously ill. In each case, their chances of survival were seriously impaired by a catalogue of mismanagement and inefficiency. In particular, the delays in diagnosis and treatment, if other patients have had the same experiences, could be significant in the UK’s shameful cancer survival statistics.
I was once told by a consultant that the number of ‘no-shows’ equalled his waiting list and cost the NHS many thousands every year. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever fully researched why patients miss appointments; they could start by asking my family, who have, despite their assiduous efforts to attend every appointment, experienced all of the following:
1. A consultant’s appointment letter sent to an empty house – the ‘client’ being a long-term in-patient in hospital at the time.
2. Several urgent appointment notifications received some days after the appointment date because ‘the hospital post-room operates one day a week to save money.
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8 comments:
Hello again, Nickie,
Gordon Brown talks a lot about how much money he has "invested" in the NHS but always neglects to mention where it is spent. He has misused funds to extensively bloat the whole system with his Public Sector cronies, i.e. vast numbers of interfering managers who have taken control away from the doctors who should be running the NHS, and he has stifled the other frontline services in the process.
The Conservatives could quite easily and will, I believe, rectify this imbalance when they get back into power next year, saving billions and allowing the people who matter to have control of their own hospitals and clinics again and tearing up Brown's list of "targets" which has done so much damage to patient care in the UK.
Spidie, I recall my years in the UK. I remember waiting in my local surgery from 9:30AM to 3:00PM to have someone look at a rash that had covered my left arm. I was finally told to soak it in cold water and rest. In 3 days it had gone septic and I spent 6 hours in our local ER.
The NHS is a blight on Britain.
Oh the thought terrifies me.
I hear the stories of health care systems around the globe, then I look at the path ours is treading in the US and I wonder where we will be in ten years...five years even.
Health care workers that I work with are very concerned of what our lives, our jobs and the care of our patients will be like.
With the retirement of the baby boomer nurses to begin in the next few years, there will be an incredible deficit of nurses anyway. Dramatic changes in our health care system could kill any incentive to draw new youth into the field. Who will be there to care for us should we need it?
Becky, it scares us all. We old folks will experience it for a while. But young people like yourself will be saddled by this monstrosity forever.
Frances, just as the Left enjoys race conflict and class conflict, look forward to open hostility between administrators, physicians, aides, nurses and other staff. This will require, of course, the unions and government to more carefully oversee all facets of "the public's" health care.
Where will Canada send their preemies when our system becomes like theirs.
Venezuala!
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