How have the mighty fallen? OT.

And you have been given examples of people who have been satisfied with the care and consideration they have had.

But you refused to accept that.

I have had no reason to do anything about 'it', I am perfectly happy with the service I get from my local NHS services.

I must have missed it in trying to make some sense of your posts, and it may be that the post was so long I didn't reach that point.

This is to be my last responce to any more of your popsts!

As I say - "targets" often have undesirable side effects that were not envisaged. They are focussed on to the detriment of things not in the target.

That doesn't negate my statement about there not being an elastic market.

No you're avoiding the point - you say its untenable social engineering to try and avoid "sink" schools or hospitals - but when I point out that no one would be very happy to have to go to one - you change the question - hmmm - doesn't sound like you've thought this through.

It'd be an unusual parent who thought their child didn't deserve to go to the "best" school - this has already been tried in this country and didn't work. There were Technical schools opened in the 50s - and they were never on a parity with the grammar schools - and getting a place there was perceived as a failure. The demise of the grammar schhols has more to do with the middle classes being unhappy that 80% of their kids didn't get to grammar school than any left wing plot.

There is when it has a detrimental affect on the services that are being provided.

Thats it for this discussion anyway. Bye.

It's a matter of expectation. For something for which I pay a great deal, I expect a very good service. That doesn't happen as far as I am concerned, and it seems from the perspective of people I know. It may well be that all have high expectations.

Equally, I understand that as a nation, the British generally accept any old crap that they are handed. People don't complain about poor services, about poor goods in shops, especially food shops, and so on.

Something that is "free" shouldn't be complained about and one should be prepared "to put up with it" Sorry, but I absolutely refuse to accept that premise and attitide.

Until their horizons are raised and they begin to realise that they are being ripped off and that far better can be had for the same or little more money then change will be slow.

Clearly you don't have very high expectations.

For those of us with higher expectations, would you be happy if we were able to remove our funding from this and shop elsewhere?

That's why it's important that they are properly defined by those able to do so (i.e. not management consultants) and changed in the event of unforeseen effects.

On the contrary. I've thought it through at great length

Therein lies the problem. Perception. It isn't an issue of parity, it's an issue of suitability.

In many other countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden,.... ) there are types of school for the more academic and others for the more technical. There are not the same hangups.

I don't think so. It was about an enforced attempt at "equality" based on the perception that grammar schools are elitist, which was never the case.

But not when it drives higher standards and removes incompetence.

And, would you believe that having said that, complete with spelling errors, in another group I responded to one of his idiotic posts!

Alan

Another ploy to use if you are accompanying an elderly relative is to get them in a wheelchair and take them to the clinic and say this is Mrs and I'm the ambulance driver.

Straight to the front of the queue.

So I'm told ...

DG

That's normal, for such an invasive proceadure you get that "once".

You won't get another 1 hour session.

Why did they send you to Harrogate? It's 15 miles away. Rather a long way to crawl if you have a bad foot. :-(

Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that, believe it or not, "Leeds" has closed it's list for foot surgery. No doubt this is some subterfuge to do with waiting lists and targets. Our secretary who has been waiting to see a consultant for 6 months in connection with a hammer toe was told this week that it will probably be another 12 months before she can have her condition treated.

Leeds has a population of 715,404 and the biggest teaching hospital in Europe (and another hospital almost as big) . It is not acceptable to me that they cannot treat a hammer toe. YMMV.

Surprisingly my chiropodist tells me that the nearest specialist foot surgeon is at Pontefract General.

Wow ! Nice round figure that, what drug is it BTW. However, to put it into context that would pay for less than 50 minutes of a Radiologists time. I have the bills to prove it.

You surely are not trying to imply you had a major Gynae Op on the NHS on request and at your convenience.

Our (other) secretary had been on the waiting list for an hysterectomy for nearly 6 months when they offered her an appointment on the 22nd of December which she declined*. So they said she would go straight back to the bottom of the list.

I can't say it would be honest to describe either of these these 2 operations as carried out "On request" or "At the patients convenience".

Is it? We pay for ours.

Hope you aren't one of those who goes to the NHS for mild analgesics. Ibuprofen, Paracetamol, Aspirin etc.

If a person can't work because of arthritis or hernia or somesuch and the NHS is talking aeons for treatment they'll get a pain in their pocket all right. If they get paid off for excessive time off sick, then the pain will persist a very long time after their treatment is completed.

There's also another different kind of pain in respect of the treatments you and other people could benefit from but have not been offered. Driving back from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary this week I heard on the car radio of yet another drug that can't be supplied on the NHS in England because NICE have not approved it. It was said that 50,000 people could lose their lives because "NICE" was not scheduled to begin evaluating it until half way through 2007.

That's NICE.

There is also the issue of very high level of infection. If you personally don't get it then you experience no pain, that is correct.

Also the issue of the delays during which patients conditions get worse, for which there is no real explanation other than to provide the doctors private patients needing private consultations (to jump the queue) and private operations.

Puzzling in the circumstances, but that's allright you can have some of ours.

Father in law aged 84 died of MRSA infection in a filthy dirty ward in Chancellor's wing at St. James's.

He was fitted with a prosthetic femur after a fall. The operation wound failed to heal because it had became infected with MRSA. They placed him in a ward where his bed could not be seen from the nurses workstation (in fact none of the 30+ beds in the wards could). The wing was newly built in 1972 and had been designed that way !!!

He fell out of bed to the floor 18 times in 2 1/2 hours one Sunday afternoon because the nurses couldn't see his bed from behind their desk. They apparently didn't have any alternative to simply allowing him to fall to the floor time after time after time whilst they sat at their desk around the corner. Do you call that "Nursing" ?

Later, they knew he was infected with MRSA but his side ward door was propped open and they kept the ward mop and bucket in the room with him, and kept on coming in for it.

The ward which was on the first floor ran along one side of a quadrangle which composed the flat roof of the floor below. The public had no access to this area but it was decorated with loads of used disposable urinal bottles, and used disposable hypodermic syringes. Most liikely explanation is that in the hours of darkness nursing staff threw them out of the opening top lights instead of disposing of them properly. The dirty bastards.

Nephew aged 17 got appendicitis but despite reporting for treatment as soon as the symptoms (pain) appeared his treatment (operation) was delayed 18 hours by which time the appendix had ruptured and peritonitis had set in. The result was at 17 he had a close call with death, his abdominal wall had to be excoriated and he ended up with an absolutely humunguous scar, and suffering clinical depression because of his experience and was on anti depressants for over 6 months.

Is this enough or do you want a report on the disgracefully filthy Pinderfields Hospital Wakefield. They had to change the law to abandon Crown Immunity after Pinderfields Hospital killed 20 -odd patients with food poisoning.

ISTM You are flat earthing Mary.

DG

Why not go private.?

We do, even my 20 Yo. student daughter is covered. Her elder siblings are also covered at minimal cost through their respective employment, they paid about 17 quid /month (+tax)the last time we discussed it.

The treatment was simply there when we needed it, (BTW what's this business about waiting lists and queueing? all the patients have to be dealt with eventually. So why not make a big effort and work overtime evenings and weekends to get the work done (that's what used to happen when I worked in the mills) get up to date and then keep up with it.

ISTM the hospital administrators should have spent a work experience period actually working in a Mill or Tailoring shop.

There was no delay at all when my wife presented (at BUPA) with acute symptoms of a chronically infected gall bladder. The ultrasound revealed it needed to be removed as soon as possible, which it was 36 hours later (by the local professor of abdomenal surgery or somesuch) for whom my wife developed an admiration that bordered on religious. Can't say that for my inlaws experience, though judging from my NI contributions over the years bupa was by far cheaper.

The examples I quoted are all from the inlaws side of the family. Public sector employees, who previously had seen no reason for private health insurance, and by now being too old and with active pre-existing conditions are inelgeable.

BTW it was our bank that insisted we take out private health insurance.

It has not been economically advantageous to us, the treatments we have had could have been obtained for less cost by simply by paying for them, but that's what insurance (and nowadays banking) is all about.

DG

A son was in the Burns Unit at Pinderfields and had the very best treatment possible. We regard it with great affection, it saved his life.

...

There was no delay when a neighbour presented at the local A&E with the same thing a few weeks ago.

The neighbour's was removed within four hours.

You have the choice.

Mary

How do you know that?

Is that your consolation for the relatives of the patients who died of food poisoning.

I can't speak about the burns unit, but the surgical ward that B.I.L went on (see previous post) was filthy and decrepit, observations I am qualified to make.

Mary you are not dealing from the same deck of cards.

She had a different condition. Empyema of the gall bladder. Which is a clinical emergency.

This is the end stage of gall bladder disease which occurs if inflammation of the gall bladder has not been treated in a timely manner. It results in the gangrenous gall bladder becoming grossly distended due to it filling up with pus because it cannot drain away (So-called "Penile Gallbladder") .

When my Mother in Law had her gall bladder removed she had to wait 8 weeks for the OP at the LGI, and this could have happened at any time.

NB.. My nephew didn't get anything like the 4 hours treatment at Jimmy's despite having acute appendicitis, the result was peritonitis.

Unfortunately my wife had to wait more than 5 days just to get to see her NHS GP to be referred to BUPA for an ultrasound. BUPA called us back within the hour and made an appointment for the next morning. It took 3 days for her GP to read the letter (which BUPA had taken the trouble to send by fax) and then refer her for the operation. Lots of plausible-plausible excuses from the Health Centre.

AFAIAC the BUPA waiting time for the BUPA op started at the time her GP referred her for it. Monday to Wednesday with antibiotic cover was perfectly acceptable, 8 weeks as per the LGI would not have been.

:-(

• NO YOU DON'T HAVE A CHOICE *

The NHS gets their get money whether there is a bed and/or treatment etc. for you when you need it or not.

DG

Has Mary told you that her husband was treated in a private hospital on the NHS?

I deduced it from what she has posted in the past. it has been increasingly common in Yorkshire over recent years.

I can understand the patients are happy with it, no criticism of the patients intended whatsoever, they have already been let down. But it only happens when the NHS has not been able to provide the treatment they are supposed to provide within the allowed timescale (AFAIAA currently 8 months) . IE the NHS has failed.

Oddly, given the quality of it's facilities, the NHS pubishes quite spectacular prices for hospital nights and operations which leave run of the mill private hospitals high and dry (It ls inconceivable that anyone has accurately costed an operation and a private room in an NHS hospital). Unfortunately for them the accountants come along see these figures picked out of the air and say it's cheaper to send patients to BUPA or Nuffield. "Horsed at their own Gambit", as we used to say in the chess club.

However the cost of that private operation comes out of NHS funds and means that the Trust has that much money less to spend on buildings, staff and medicines in future. The result is the ward closures, redundances and postcode lottery precribing we are seeing now. Of course this means that next year the NHS will be in an even worse position to fulfil it's obligations to it's patients, and even more money will leave the NHS and end up in the pockets of private providers, many of whom perform spectacularly badly and are on 25

-year "Asbestos" contracts.

BTW if you are in Scotland they get 25% more funding than English Hospitals. Compare Ninewells (Dundee), or Aberdeen R.I. (Foresterhill) with a crumbling WW2 dump like Pinderfields.

Anyway we are celebrating here tonight. We just got paid* for a machine weighing half a ton we delivered to an NHS hospital on

• When I say "paid" I exagerrate a little. In fact today is the day we got the finance dept to confirm that they had entered our invoice on their computer. They couldn't tell us / didn't know which payment run it would go out on. They say they do a payment run ever week. 2 weeks ago a different individual said they do 2 per week. So we will just have to phone the bank every day 'till it turns up. Our payroll is run on the 15th of September therefore it is a matter of some urgency for us.

They called us to request our bank details, which they also had done

So, having supplied the goods, after waiting 10 months for a payment that has not turned up we find ourselves to be in much the same position as a patient who has paid his NI contibutions for 38 years but finds the health authority can't come up with the treatment when he needs it.

If Mary continues to post along the lines it's all "lovely", and the treatment "couldn't possibly have been better", USW, USW. USW.

She can expect me to challenge it.

DG

Well we pay for BUPA anyway so I don't take any advantage of that.

Please don't think things are any better up here in the NHS because they are not:(

Aye

In message , Ophelia writes

Snip

Well, you had a bad experience a few years ago and I sympathise with you but we read of equally bad experiences within the private sector.