Have a heart

The man is a legend! Good effort my old son!

[Biker Biggles]

Real trouble with the NHS is that it spends far too much money pandering to too many "lowest common denominators"when it should be concentrating on the important things.By that I mean blokes like this who need an op quickly in order to stay alive,but have to sit on a waiting list where they may well die.There are many other similar cases.While he is waiting the hossie will be merrily treating countless lower priority cases who are in no danger of imminent demise.This is made very much worse by our target obsessed government who make hospitals treat anyone who has waited too long however trivial their condition,but allows a six to nine month delay for this man.It's a real mess,with your treatment being something of a lottery depending on which conditions are flavour of the month at your hospital and which ones are in vogue with the Department of Health.
Fortunately for us,if we crash our bikes and smash ourselves up we should find ourselves in one of the flavour of the month sections,but that could all change with healthcare fashion.

The NHS is no longer about health, it's about politics.


.

[Biker Biggles]

Yes Politics.It always was very political,but it's more so than ever now.This government has spent a great deal of money on the NHS and is desperate to be able to scream about the results,but much of the money has gone into vast projects that have failed dismally.We now have lots of shiny new walk in centres and advice lines (NHS Direct),computer systems to arrange everything and vast numbers of managers and supervisers to oversee the staff,but someone has to actually do the donkey work,and a fair few of them have recently been made redundant.We could of course invest more money in a leafleting campaign to tell everyone how well it's all going.

[northwind]

Yep, I'd agree with that... The NHS have basically been told it's not acceptable to delay someone's treatment because someone else needs it more, so a less urgent case can get precedent over a non-emergency, but still urgent case simply because of the time they've been waiting. It's pretty illogical. You can't judge the success of an organisation by waiting times, especially since the goalposts are always shifting

By this I mean, new treatments come along and change things. Along comes a new treatment that means you can operate on someone with heart disease and keep them alive, whereas before they'd have just died. Obviously, this is great, but that fills a bed and takes up surgeon's time and of course, money- so despite keeping someone alive who would have died, it actually makes the NHS look bad!

I'm a good example... 5 years ago, they'd have given me a hip replacement and left me needing a new hip once a decade for the rest of my life, not to mention with limited movement... but I'd have been out of hospital faster, after a simpler, faster surgery, with less skilled surgeons. I'd also have needed less physio- since I could make a near perfect recovery, it takes a lot of physio to finish the job, whereas with a half-hip replacement it's never going to be right anyway, so it's easier to get it as far as you can!

So, I'm obviously better off, and quite pleased about it, but it's cost the NHS more time, more training, lots more money... Of course, it'll pay off, since if I lived to 70 I'd need probably another 4 replacements, but that's not taken into account by the waiting list and budgetary systems. So as far as the figures show, the NHS did a bad job with me

In this case the end justified the means.

I could go on and on about my battles with the NHS, but I'll probably end up leaving the country for treatment elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Razor

I could go on and on about my battles with the NHS, but I'll probably end up leaving the country for treatment elsewhere.

Blimey, I thought it was just clothes you wanted to swap .


.

No it's my own personal restoration project. I need to streamline the chassis, remove some unneeded parts and add on some curvaceous bits.

— TBH I admire your guts (as they'll be the only bits left ). Well each to there own, best of luck with it.


.

[Biker Biggles]

Don't tell Northwind----He might suggest a GSXR front end.


TAXI