nhs is a joke

cookiemonster25

oh and just for the record your GP is NOT an NHS employee they are independant contractors who sell their services to the NHS, they are proffit making buisnnesses in their own right, so when bad mouthing the NHS dont include them:D

calleyw

cookiemonster25 wrote:

oh and just for the record your GP is NOT an NHS employee they are independant contractors who sell their services to the NHS, they are proffit making buisnnesses in their own right, so when bad mouthing the NHS dont include them:D

Well from the start I was under the impression that the OP had an issue with a single surgery. So fail to see why the entire health service was being classed as a joke.

We only get the service we deserve. If we don't want to pay for it then we don't get a good service.


Yours


Calley

cookiemonster25

could not agree more calley, i'm pro nhs not against it
there is some penny pinching amongst GPs ( as the money is essentialy "theirs") however my gp is fab, calls in if hes passing and i have an appointment the next day etc one in a million
my point was for people who are unhappy with the service from their gp to realise that they are not truly NHS (although they do deal with their patients) and not to lump a none profit making organisation together with a proffit making buisness

calleyw

cookiemonster25 wrote:

could not agree more calley, i'm pro nhs not against it
there is some penny pinching amongst GPs ( as the money is essentialy "theirs") however my gp is fab, calls in if hes passing and i have an appointment the next day etc one in a million
my point was for people who are unhappy with the service from their gp to realise that they are not truly NHS (although they do deal with their patients) and not to lump a none profit making organisation together with a proffit making buisness

I am pro-nhs when I hear horror stories like those from the states where a visit to A&E or having a baby can wipe you out financially if you have no insurance. I thank my lucky stars for the NHS.

My surgery is good. You can get a appointment with the triage nurse same day rather than a dr.

My local hospital is rather different. Like only have x-rays on certain days. umm that is really handy if I break my arm on any other day then a friday :rotfl:

Yours


Calley

cookiemonster25

friday it is then:rotfl: :rotfl:

WHA

eddie wrote:

With regards to the prescription costs, perhaps your anger would be better directed at the huge numbers of people who fraudulently claim free prescriptions every year.

Or perhaps the fact that the NHS grossly overpays for its medical supplies - presumably because their buyers just aren't up to the job of negotiating with suppliers (or maybe because of back-handers, who knows?)

Zippy123

I recently got a quote for private medical cover for my family, it was £449 per month (two adults and two children, non smokers).

Whilst the NHS is not perfect, it is cheap and very good value for money.

Yes there are problems with it, usually because the money does not go far enough and I know it uses tons of it.

But do we really want to live in a county where only the top 20 or so percent can afford to receive decent medical care?

Much of the extra money the NHS receives pays staff decent wages (no more nurses on £8k pa) and funds new treatments that get more and more expensive by the year.

We all demand more and more and it has to be paid for, but no one wants to foot the true bill.

Anniek1969

My brother works as an ambulance technician and has done for over 20 years and has seen it change considerably. Too much emphasis is put on saving money and meeting targets, far too many administration staff who have no medical knowledge trying to tell medical staff what they're doing wrong and pushing them to meet targets. He says that when they close a ward it gets looked at as how much money they save on food etc and not how many beds they've lost. He says that many NHS staff are completely frustrated at how it's running and at the end of the day it's the staff who get moaned and shouted at by fed-up patients.

Don't really know how they can change things but I do know that the staff do their best and are as frustrated as the patients about the long waiting lists and lack of beds etc.


My GP is great, I can get an appointment within a day or two and she always finds time to ask how the kids are and you never feel that she's trying to rush you out the door so she can see the next patient. I think that judging the whole NHS on the experience of one surgery is silly but I can see how frustrating it must have been for the OP to wait so long for a prescription but sadly we seem to have a shortage of GP's so they have more patients on their books and have to devide their time between surgerys. I know that being a GP is a job I would definately not want to do no matter how much money they make.

Poppy9

I think the NHS suffers from too many budget managers who are not accountants. Why should medically trained persons be expected to perform the role of an accountant? Would you expect an accountant to perform surgery?

I admit I'm an accountant in a Local Council. I have seen the effect of delegating budgets down to the low levels so that fieldworkers are expected to budget managers. The majority are not interested in money, they don't want to do it. They don't attempt to manage their budgets they just spend, spend, spend until told to stop which depending on their rate of spending could be 6 months into the financial year. Else they are so afraid of over spending they don't spend enough!! Like it or not there is only a limited amount of money to provide all services and it has to be well managed. If you let them just spend regardless then someone else has to suffer, if they are afraid to spend then again people suffer. There is also the mentality amongst non financial staff who feel they have to look after their own area only to spend money they don't need to spend because they are afraid of declaring an underspend for fear the budget will be taken from them forever. From what I hear of NHS overspends i.e. £21m there is no control. The area we look after, which is only a small part of the LA spends £120m. We expect to be on budget to within £1/2m.

Far better a small group of financially trained staff who have developed good working practices with fieldworkers to manage the money. I know from my work that my budget managers rather me manage the money, give them sound financial advice, going that extra mile for them than if they run into financial problems than just expecting them to tell me what they have spent every month and why it's over or under. I can see what they are spending by looking at a computer screen. I can the areas where there is under/overspends. I can't tell them how to do their job but I can free them up to do it.

Js_Other_Half

cookiemonster25 wrote:

this makes me chuckle, you berate the NHS for you having to wait several days for an inhaler( more than once as you point out.....) the reality is you did not plan that you would need a new inhaler and you are correct"life happens" however you dont take the same attitude for having to wait 48 hours for a prescription...well life happens!!!the reality is it was yor fault you ran out of inhaler not your GP's ( an as you point out it was not a one off)
one of the reasons that we have to wait 48 hrs for prescriptions is about patient safety, addictive drugs etc have been dished out in the past all too easily by stressed GP's who have impatient patients (pardon the pun) breathing down their necks, this gives them some time to review notes etc

I was not aware that commenting was now seen as 'berating' on this site. If there was a better way of monitoring how much medication was left in an inhaler, perhaps this issue wouldn't arise. I have to alter how much medication I have depending on my peak flow results - hence the difficulty in keeping track.

I will not be expressing any further opinions on this thread.