Mr Moofo wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:27 pm
gremlin wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:16 pm
What i do know is that Mrs. G has gone deaf in her left ear. After scrabbling for GP appointments and referrals, she has an appointment at the local hospital's audiology dept. for January 2024. Fuck it, we'll pay for private.
Show me anybody, other than those who receive emergency care, who can say they are happy with the service that they are paying for. The NHS is sinking and it's dragging the country down with it.
I haven't had a hearing test in 4 years - and finally managed to drag on out of Audiology yesterday. Whoopee - I'm getting deafer!
Despite them telling me there was no chance of getting an appointment, the department wasn't overly busy . Erm - I was the only person there being seen.
Still, got in 1/2 late, and was dealt with by a lovely lady. <y 45 minute appointment then took 1.5 hrs - so sorry for the nest person
In that 1/2 hr it was interesting to observe what was going on in reception and the corridors - lots of chat, lots of coffee and tea, a fair amount of larking about - but certainly nobody rushing around - and the pace that everything was done at was impressive. I can see why people don't want to go to the private sector
Gremo - 100% agree with you last statement. The squander culture of the admin wing of the NHS is driving this country down with its inept approach, its bureaucracy and its firm belief that its customers should worship them.
@gremlin - Re hearing - send the better looking one of the Gremlin partnership to Specsavers - you can get a free hearing test there. The only issue will be they will try and hard sell hearing aids there and then. Resist and demand NHS ones and you won't have to part with 2k. Unless she has very specific hearing problems
I think it's probably worth recognising that where you can, you cut your cloth. So if the department didn't appear busy, it might have been because of how things have been deliberately scheduled to accommodate workflow (read: available resource).
Want a view of areas that show raw demand where you don't have the luxury of turning the tap off?: A&E, Ambulance services, mental health services (all, but especially crisis), cancer....etc etc.
To make a political point: It is the Tory government that has reduced mental health bed base exponentially since the 1980s. We're now sending people to police cells, A+E and hotels because of capacity. We used to send them to other parts of the country when we were full, but now they're full. The Lansley reforms and the Health and Social care act of 2012 were an attempt to commercialise care (and drive competition in the market for the provision of care) but it's been a disaster. We've effectively created single points and entry with short-ish triage but very, very long waiting tails. Actually now we don't have short-ish triage; for the last 20 years, you could argue that our blue light/crisis services were effective...it was just the rehab stuff that was fucked. Now, it's all fucked.
It might be easy to conflate the need for investment with greedy pay rises, but the reality is you need to invest in transformation and change costs money (and the limited clinical resource you do have are typically not change specialists).
Full transparency:
- One of my kids waited 5 years for an neurodiversity assessment- he's now diagnosed with ADHD and his school work has picked up as he responds to treatment.
- my mother waited 2 days in an ambulance and 4 days on a trolley in an A&E corridor for treatment for hyperkalemia.
- my wife has had a double retina detachment and was sent, blind, from one hospital to another (one in Surrey to one in London), only to be turned away by eye hospital staff through administration incompetence.
- I've had surgery recently where having waited for 3 years, when under the knife- they nearly took out the wrong thing.
The is pressure everywhere. It's collapsing. Tonight i'm on-call and I have 30 people waiting in acute hospitals for mental health beds. That's waiting, acutely mentally disturbed, in corridors and cafe's etc.
I'd support free at the point of need for crisis care, with a graded model of funding proportionate to treatment need and income. Be under no illusion, but current system is drowning. The government will play the workforce holding the NHS to ransom over pay, but the truer truth is no government wants to take the NHS out back and shoot it- nor can we continue to fund it.
Your hearing, as a non-urgent need will be amongst the easier stuff to charge against ( I say that as someone else with atrocious hearing!). Oh, and if your poor hearing was self-inflicted...etc,
That's especially annoying outside in the wind up here as it frequently causes my tinnitus to worsen.
