frontline health service cuts

ronny_todgers

Having waited 6 hours for a neonatal transfer ambulance to be available to move our baby from Chelsea to Great Ormond street - I can be pretty confident that less ambulances is not really the way forward...

lynzpower

Ronny I hope your little one is ok x

ronny_todgers

All good now thank goodness - just an eye opener for me about how all the ambulances buzzing around are dealing with one crisis or another. I've been in three ambulances in my life and in each case it was for very proper reasons. While you get idiots phoning 999 for bogus reasons the number of times an ambulance gets dispatched to these sort of cases is extremely low. Getting rid of what is is a fifth of their staff is not going to be without massive repercussions.

Really2

ninky wrote: »

yes. let's cut back on them too.

Well I would prefer streamlined call handling to paramedic cuts, but maybe thats me not looking at it as a political statement.

Frontline is anyone who has contact with the public. But are these cuts because of reduced spending or is it because they ran over budget? ( I don't know)

But if it was all to do with reduced spending why are we not seeing the same at each ambulance service?

Errata

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Doesn't the ambulance service use volunteers for the 'taxi' service to hospitals? Someone I know seems to make a small living doing this. He is entitled to claim for petrol but has an LPG car, so can manage to live on the difference. He takes mainly cancer patients and others who have regular appointments to various hospitals in Oxford, Cheltenham, etc.

It does indeed. The drivers use their own cars and the expenses they claim have to cover not only fuel but also insurance, wear and tear etc.
The drivers are not paid for their time, so the cost saving to the NHS is significant.
All the volunteer drivers that took me to hospital every day for 5 weeks did it because they themselves had been treated for cancer and were in remission and well, or they had a close family member who had been treated for cancer.

StevieJ

If anyone is found to have used an ambulance for getting a haircut or the like (according to Wookie, I don't believe it myself ), they should serve a short term in prison for potentially putting another persons life at risk. Just my opinion.

ninky_2

StevieJ wrote: »

If anyone is found to have used an ambulance for getting a haircut or the like (according to Wookie, I don't believe it myself ), they should serve a short term in prison for potentially putting another persons life at risk. Just my opinion.

i'm willing to believe that someone with dementia or otherwise seriously mentally ill / confused MIGHT have done this. of course in such a situation that person probably does actually need help.

StevieJ

ninky wrote: »

i'm willing to believe that someone with dementia or otherwise seriously mentally ill / confused MIGHT have done this. of course in such a situation that person probably does actually need help.

I agree, there is often more to those Daily Mail type stories.

blueboy43

Wookster wrote: »

One of my uncles works as a consultant in a busy A & E department in London.

He says that the ambulance service gets dozens of calls to take people to the hospital because they need a haircut or because they need to get to nearby shops.

Such spurious call outs need to be charged out at a reasonable rate to discourage people from using the service frivolously.

Next week on Jackanory, the story of a Romanian asylum seeker living in Buckingham Palace eating caviar at the taxpayers expense.

ninky_2

Really2 wrote: »

Well I would prefer streamlined call handling to paramedic cuts, but maybe thats me not looking at it as a political statement.

well let's a pretty flawed way of looking at things. the call centre staff are crucial to the way the ambulance system operates. often they have to give advice on first aid, assess a situation in seconds, prioritise one need over the other and also be savvy enough to spot possibly hoax callers.

imagine calling 999 and not being answered or not being put through to someone in the right service swiftly.

cutting back on call centre staffing (or 'steamlining' as you call it) is not a better option than losing paramedics.