Just been readig an article about A&E waiting times being missed in Scotland. In that article there is some Tory gibbering on about Drunk Tank/ Recovery Busses for pissed folk. What are you thoughts on such things?

I am of the opinion that if you are pissed and uninjured then you’re on you’re own. If you get mugged, sleep in a phonebox, wake up upside down in a hedge covered in kebab sauce then it’s your own fault and you shouldn’t expect the NHS/ Gov’t to nanny you. It’s the kind of thing you probably learn from and don’t do again.

Is the provision of too much of a safety net a huge part of the problem? We didn’t have it when I was a lad and guess what not many of us died. 😉

How would you fix the NHS?

How would you fix the NHS?

That implies it’s broken, is it?

Either tell folk that they’ll die younger, saving loads of money by not caring for the elderly, or get the populace to accept higher taxation so we can rid the health service of arbitrary budget limits.

How would you fix the NHS?

I would stop insisting that it’s broken for a start.

I’d issue every legal citizen here an NHS card to ‘pay’ for the service with, if on the other hand the service provided was self afflicted by drunken action, it could incur a bill, as would pointless time wasting stuff that should be dealt with by doctors in surgeries.

A card system would also cut out health tourism, so you pay for it and it’s only free for card carrying citizens.

It’ll be a wonderful scheme for the left, ID cards by the back door.

I’d suggest by having a National Health Service, properly nationally owned and run, with none of the false localism of trusts. Bring GPs in too, stop them being self employed/contract holding partnerships. Make management properly accountable from the bottom to the top, and publish and enforce agreed standards and protocols of care to end postcode lotteries.

Nobody said it was broken but:

For A&E, GP, walk-in Centres etc.

I’d combine the lot where possible and anyone that reports to A&E would be triaged and sent the right route or given an appointment to come back later etc.

Minor injuries and ailments are strangling A&E

Muddle by or pay more tax. It is far too complex to meaningfully change without exorbitant cost.

How would you fix the NHS?

stop saying this sort of stuff?

the strange thing is, if you ask most folk of thier personal experience of the NHS; it normally goes along the lines of “It was great, seen quickly by the right people, did the right things to me, and the aftercare was good and every one was generally lovely, and best of all, it didn’t cost me a thing!”

It’s only when you get politicians trying to score points off each other at elections that this sort of stuff comes up.

And really the scottish NHS miss their A&E targets by a couple of (made up) percentage points, but still manages to see nearly all the patients within a (made up) target time anyway, including all the drunks, and coughs and whingers..? and yet somehow this is all terrible? because of Romanian tourist pregnancies or something…

mogrim – Member

How would you fix the NHS?

That implies it’s broken, is it?[/quote]

lemonysam – Member

How would you fix the NHS?

I would stop insisting that it’s broken for a start.[/quote]

And stop politicians destroying in from the inside to enable the of selling off the profitable bits too their their mates highest bidder.

“mogrim – Member

How would you fix the NHS?

That implies it’s broken, is it?

lemonysam – Member

How would you fix the NHS?

I would stop insisting that it’s broken for a start.

And stop politicians destroying in from the inside to enable the of selling off the profitable bits too their their mates highest bidder.”

+ lots

I’d agree, it’s not ‘broken’ and it’s one of those things that if it takes a shit load of money to run each year, then so be it. It’s a small price to pay for such a marvellous service.

That’s not to say there are lots of areas that couldn’t improve, but under the 5 year government process we have, it’s difficult to see how long term improvements will ever happen.

There’s some things we do need to do- that all health systems need to do really… Serious conversations about right-to-die, about diminishing returns of cost vs benefit, and about quality of life and the presumption of treatment.

But more importantly yes, stop saying it’s broken, because it’s still bloomin fantastic. Everything could be improved, if you dismiss everything that’s not perfect as “broken” then you’re left with nothing at all. And so many of the current problems are caused by people’s idea of what “fixing” it looks like.

wanmankylung – Member

I am of the opinion that if you are pissed and uninjured then you’re on you’re own. If you get mugged, sleep in a phonebox, wake up upside down in a hedge covered in kebab sauce then it’s your own fault and you shouldn’t expect the NHS/ Gov’t to nanny you.

Speaking as a mugger, I welcome this change.

if you ask most folk of thier personal experience of the NHS; it normally goes along the lines of “It was great, seen quickly by the right people, did the right things to me, and the aftercare was good and every one was generally lovely, and best of all, it didn’t cost me a thing!”

Not in my experience, this is changing, 10 years ago I’d agree, but out of my friends there is a lot of unhappiness after misdiagnosis, botched surgery and generally being passed around from department to department with no one wanting to take responsibility or communicate. (A&E and care for kids seems exempt from this).

As for it doesn’t cost thing, of course it does, everyone who pays tax coughs up.

Speaking as a mugger, I welcome this change.

Glad to be of service. You earn a living wage, they learn a valuable life lesson.

It’s not broken imo.

BUT, as with teaching, policing, fire brigade, armed forces etc it needs for the politicians to **** right off out of it.

It’ll be a wonderful scheme for the left, ID cards by the back door.

This is not a left wing thing. The conservative hardly big on personal freedom, they are only rightwing when it comes to economic models.

It’s not broken. Like everything it can be improved.

Biggest improvement would be to stop political meddling and constant change associated with that. It’ll never happen of course but…

How would you fix the NHS?

Given that the question seems to be a daily mail headline, that’s probably where the answer lies. The wrong one but probably the one you want to read. As I don’t read the daily mail, being adult and educated, I’m sorry but am unable to help you on this occasion.

dragon – Member

Not in my experience, this is changing, 10 years ago I’d agree, but out of my friends there is a lot of unhappiness after misdiagnosis

In every health service, there’s misdiagnosis and people are unhappy about it, I understand medicine is a bit hard. And also lots of people unhappy because the doctors can’t just wave a magic wand and make them better. When my mum broke her arm, there was a guy in the ward insisting that 10 weeks was too long for his leg to heal and he wanted it faster, and that he paid his taxes. Happiness with “service” isn’t always a great metric because guess what, sometimes you’re going to be unhappy, even when people are doing amazing things for you, because being ill sucks balls.

Channel 4’s NHS documentary series on at the moment is very interesting.

The case of the liver transplant inhibitor drug which costs £340,000 per year per patient. I was approved but it shows the choices that have to be made, that money pays for a lot of other treatments.

there was a quote last night from a doctor which said the NHS was never designed to do what it is having to do today. The NHS was meant to be there at the start of your life and at the end and in the middle if you had a life threatening issue. It was not and is not setup to deal with all the issues which we now bring it during our lives.

In my view the NHS is definitely not working as I would wish. It is broken. Its good for birth and life threatening conditions, the rest not so much. It’s my view we need private health insurance with proper continuity of coverage for those that can afford it which is most of us.

If you get mugged, sleep in a phonebox, wake up upside down in a hedge covered in kebab sauce then it’s your own fault and you shouldn’t expect the NHS/ Gov’t to nanny you. It’s the kind of thing you probably learn from and don’t do again.

You’re just a quick step away from “If you ride your bike down steep, rocky hills and injure yourself you should learn from it and not do it again.”

Doctor on Breakfast TV recently said that 60% of people seen by A&E on a typical Friday were drunk, or injured due alcohol related incidents….

I’m with wanmankylung.. if the police collect you when pissed, they should throw you in a hedge or prop you up against a building or a phone box…. the end.

But thats not really going to happen…

So I would go with depoliticising the NHS so it isn’t a political football or scoring card batted to and fro based on this weeks good idea spouted by someone who has never lead a business for real, who thinks its a good idea to try as it will help their career.

One way would be to get people to recognise there is an issue.

At the moment, it seems to be either stick your head in the sand, or as has been seen above, be accused of being a Daily Mail sub-editor if you dare to pose the question.

Here is the programme I was referring toNHS: £2 billion a week and counting

@rickmeister, I think the counter argument is that the tax and duty raised on alcohol more than pays for the impact on the NHS

Define drunk. 2 pints? 3? Sobriety test for peoplw with head wounds? What if someone’s had a drink and been hit by a car or beaten up?
What about drug addicts? Do we cut off assistance for them? It is self inflicted too and they’d likely not have paid much tax towards the NHS (whilst addicted). Smokers? What about mountain bikers? after all, their injuries are self inflicted. Perhaps they need to be taught a lesson?

…and that’s just a choice that society’s made already, you can’t sell drink and make a fortune from the industry and taxes etc then complain that people get pissed. You take the benefits and you pay the costs, like with anything else.

Having said that- being in an A&E on a friday night, there’s always people there who aren’t exactly medical cases, they need help but they don’t need to be filling up a&es. But then, creating a national network of chillout tents wouldn’t be cheap either.

The reality of private insurance seems to be that everywhere you see it, it’s more expensive. If we can’t afford the NHS, how can we afford a more expensive alternative?

I think that drunk tanks in town centres are a good idea – if they’re cheaper to run than ambulances ferrying people back and forth to the ED. Whether we like it or not we live in a binge drinking culture and lots of us on this very forum have gone through stages during our lives where most weekends were spent doing it. Yeah, we’re all still here so we were the lucky ones that got away with it. I realise you have to bear some responsibility for your own actions but leaving drunk or comatose young women and men to roam around to learn some lessons seems like a bad idea to me. Give them somewhere warm and dry to sober up and not take up a bed in an ED – and allow the ambulances to do something a bit more valuable. If we want to tackle the binge drinking culture then so be it, but let’s separate it from the ED at weekends.

Just been readig an article about A&E waiting times being missed in Scotland.

The target was 95% seen within 4 hours, Scotland achieved 87%, England achieved 88%.

Of all the challenges facing the NHS today, eg, budget limitations, staff shortages, hospital closures – including A&E closures, blaming drunks if “targets” aren’t achieved is imaginative, and a new one to me.

I believe that record levels of admissions to A&E, particularly in the west of Scotland during this winter, coupled with a significant increase in flu cases, might have contributed to missed targets.

Unless of course Scots have been out on the piss in record numbers this winter?

I’m sure the new Manchester model will be shown to work. With additional levels of management and financial infighting to keep things on track.

There are a lot of folk in hospital beds who aren’t sick enough to be there but need some kind of social care package in place before they’re discharged. A better funded and better integrated social care system would be a good money saver.

I think the big issue with 4 hour waiting times is the ‘blanket nature of it’.

Major head injury – should be seen immediately
Broken arm – within an hour
Slight cough/flu like symptoms – could wait 8 hours

You get the idea.
Having the blanket 4 hour rule kind of ‘dissolves’ the major and minor ailments together.

The figures are all fudged anyway.
Also, in any A+E department I’ve worked in, there was NEVER any way of coding if alcohol was involved! I don’t know where they get the figures from!

DrP

The biggest problem right now in the NHS is marketisation.

Not sure you guys realise just how much of your NI is going to end up in the pockets of Serco, Virgin, Capita, KPMG etc.

P.S. If we resumed training enough Nurses here in the UK ( instead of asset stripping badly needed nurses from the 3rd world ) that would help as well
As would a VAT reduction on Medical Supplies, which are hardly, a luxury item

There are a lot of folk in hospital beds who aren’t sick enough to be there but need some kind of social care package in place before they’re discharged. A better funded and better integrated social care system would be a good money saver.

Yup stevious

Social care cuts blamed for surge in A&E services

Mind you all this was predicted back in 2010 when this shower of tossers first came to power, so it’s hardly a huge surprise.

the NHS was never designed to do what it is having to do today. The NHS was meant to be there at the start of your life and at the end and in the middle if you had a life threatening issue. It was not and is not setup to deal with all the issues which we now bring it during our lives.

certainly when the NHS was designed people “generally” got episodes of acute illness that would “generally” require an in-patient stay and recovery at a hospital. “Generally” now we have people which chronic conditions not best suited to in patient care. The NHS is slowly becoming a more primary- community centred care provider, but like any large institutions there are vested internal and external interests and it takes a while to achieve. But saying it shouldn’t or can’t deal with chronic conditions is to abandon a good percentage of the unhealthy population (who’s conditions are not always their fault)

It still remains one of the most cost-efficient and beneficial healthcare providers in the world, and stands well in comparison to most other models where spend and population size are comparable

In my view the NHS is definitely not working as I would wish. It is broken. Its good for birth and life threatening conditions, the rest not so much. It’s my view we need private health insurance with proper continuity of coverage for those that can afford it which is most of us.

Right winger in NHS is broken and we need the private sector to solve it shocker.

One of the biggest problems for the health service in general is the number of GPs leaving and the number of GP vacancies there are.

A big part in this is this Government replacing PCTs with Clinical commissioning groups which are run by GP’s. That’s a huge admin burden, coupled with the ageing population, means GP’s work load has become too much. So people who can’t get appointments are either ending up with the out of hours services, which once again was not designed for this, or A&E.

I’m sure someone will say that GP’s get paid loads etc, etc, but its the perception of the job that is killing it. Many Doctors are choosing to stay in the specialisations within the hospitals.

We actually need more GP’s than ever before due to the ageing population, the west country needs a projected 25% more GP’s than there currently are.

I don’t think the issue is the front door of hospitals but the back door.

The bit which I see is broken is social care. Most hospitals have large numbers of medical fit people which would be better cared for at home or in other facilities. We need a better culture/way of looking after these people.

edit too slow – stevious got there first

I think the issue is that people do not take enough responsibility for their own family. Many people are waiting in hospital because their family who live nearby couldnt possibly keep any eye on them when they go up and down the stairs or take them a hot meal once a day. Therefore they need to wait to go into a care home…. Yip that happens thousands of times a month up and down the country.

wanmankylung

Good luck with reversing the breakup of the nuclear family