How to get treatment?

seven-day-weekend

Red-Squirrel wrote: »

Open your eyes! The whole NHS is suffering, even Stephen Hawking says so and I bet he’s cleverer than you or me!

The NHS has never been terribly efficient and now with far more pressure on it with numbers of people it was never designed to deal with, it needs to work differently.

fred246

The only person I've heard of that has had laryngoscopy for acid reflux is Joan Rivers. She went private too.

seven-day-weekend

fred246 wrote: »

The only person I've heard of that has had laryngoscopy for acid reflux is Joan Rivers. She went private too.

It was to see if the months of choking have damaged his larynx (because the reflux goes into the larynx, that's what causes the choking).Glad to say they have not.

This is the type of gastric reflux my husband has: https://www.chesterfieldroyal.nhs.uk/dl/10908_1719903424.pdf/as/LPR

POPPYOSCAR

lessonlearned wrote: »

But....to get back to SDW and the way Beneden work. I don’t think they are the only plan that works that way. Several of the benevolent funds seems to operate in the same way. They are entirely different from PHI because you cannot elect to see a consultant privately, you do have to go the NHS route first and then they pick up the slack if the wait times are deemed unacceptable.

I think the reason for this is that initially most of these benevolent funds were linked to places of employment.......and they stepped in so that people could have their treatments and then get back to work, rather than languishing “on the sick”. It was as much for the employers benefit as it was for their workforce.

Ultimately all any of us can do is the best we can for our loved ones. I think increasingly that is going to be a mix and match approach, combining both NHS and private treatments. Not ideal of course but given the current state of play, I think that’s the most likely scenario. It has already happened with dentistry, and with treatments like Physio, podiatry, mole removal, varicose veins etc. Increasingly people cannot get these treatments on the NHS so they self fund.

Yes, those that cannot self fund are going to suffer, we are seeing that already. But, until we have a radical shakedown then realistically I can’t see any improvements on the horizon. I think it’s just going to get even worse. More and more of us will be dipping into our savings to fund treatments for chronic non urgent conditions which, whilst they might not be life threatening, may have a serious effect on our quality of life.

The NHS in it’s current format, is a bottomless pit, and no matter how much money we throw at it, it will never be enough. It was never designed and certainly never funded to cope with either the numbers of patients or the comlexity of modern medicine and sophisticated treatments.

I do agree with SDW there are lots of economies to be made. She is quite right about Translation services for a start. SDW has lived in Spain so will back me up on this, if you need a translator for doctors, local government or the police then you pay for the service. In this country we provide it free. We cannot afford this any more. It’s a waste of precious resources.

There’s plenty of room for cutbacks, without rationing treatments or drugs but perhaps we should also look at some of the treatments provided and ask if the NHS should be funding them.

One area where there is a huge amount of waste is in providing disability equipment. When my husband had to eventually go into care I had the devil of a job trying to return some of his aids, in the end I gave some items to a charity shop. Same with the aids and equipment for my parents.

A friend has quite a large collection of NHS walking sticks and crutches which fortunately he no longer needs. He has tried to return them, no one wants to know. A shocking waste of money.

Gettingthere is quite right.......most of us can see the inefficiencies and waste but no one seems willing to tackle it.

I agree.

My husband tried to return a pair of crutches. Wsa told they do not take them back due to 'health and safety'.

Madness.

My husband was given a choice of 5 hospitals to make an appointment with for surgery.

Only one had any available appointments which were three months away.

He has just had a letter putting the appointment back by three months making a six month wait.

And yet the care my brother is receiving in Intensive care is amazing.

It is no wonder people are going privately for routine matters.

fred246

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

My husband tried to return a pair of crutches. Wsa told they do not take them back due to 'health and safety'.

A pair of crutches is £15 on Amazon. A walking stick £6. People don't want to be given crutches and told "someone has used these for 6 months but we've cleaned them up". It costs more to recycle them than it does to give everyone a new shiny pair that they are happy with.
It's amazing that people are happy to pay a consultant £200 for a consultation. A quick back of fag packet calculation indicates the NHS pays a consultant £500 a day. So a consultant with 15 min consultations is paid £15 per patient. A cataract surgeon would be paid about £40 per cataract. The NHS is much more cost effective but there is always a bill to be paid. If the government don't pay for the right number of patients the waiting lists go up. The final bill has to be matched to the demand from the population.

seven-day-weekend

We consider the £200 money well spent. Undivided attention from the consultant and peace of mind.

As for paying for the procedure, it would never have got done under the NHS. Remember he had a letter saying (quote) 'we can't identify any appointments'?

fred246

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

Only one had any available appointments which were three months away. He has just had a letter putting the appointment back by three months making a six month wait. And yet the care my brother is receiving in Intensive care is amazing. It is no wonder people are going privately for routine matters.

This is what the government are doing without really telling the population. I think every civilised society has to have an emergency service which the government will fund. If you want an elective procedure like cataracts, hip & knee replacements you will wait a long time and they will seriously mess you about regarding the timing. They will keep postponing it so you can't book holidays or organise your life. People with money will be glad to pay.

Enterprise_1701C

Red-Squirrel wrote: »

Open your eyes! The whole NHS is suffering, even Stephen Hawking says so and I bet he’s cleverer than you or me!

They could sort some of that out by sorting out their buying policies, they pay ridiculous sums for things that should be cheap, suppliers basically try to fleece them. They need to go over all the goods and services they provide and properly cost them, they need to cost check everything they buy for prescriptions, I had heard that one drug just lately had gone up by 600 odd per cent, that is obviously taking advantage of the lack of the ability of buyers to source things properly.

They basically need a small office with a few people in it to be dedicated to cutting these costs down, it could probably be done in a year and save the nhs a substantial amount. Instead they just continue buying from the same source whatever the price and do not argue.

seven-day-weekend

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

They could sort some of that out by sorting out their buying policies, they pay ridiculous sums for things that should be cheap, suppliers basically try to fleece them. They need to go over all the goods and services they provide and properly cost them, they need to cost check everything they buy for prescriptions, I had heard that one drug just lately had gone up by 600 odd per cent, that is obviously taking advantage of the lack of the ability of buyers to source things properly.

They basically need a small office with a few people in it to be dedicated to cutting these costs down, it could probably be done in a year and save the nhs a substantial amount. Instead they just continue buying from the same source whatever the price and do not argue.

I have been saying this for a long time. They would be much better off buying their paracetamol from Tesco.

seven-day-weekend

Well my husband is now as bad as ever. I have just had to make him an emergency appointment with the Dr. Whether it is the new meds not being as efficient I don't know, but I do know he can't wait until his scheduled appointment on Monday.

He is due to have his endoscopy on Tuesday.