Time to demolish the NHS?

I know, this blog is all about the world of cars, so where does the NHS fit in? It doesn’t, but occasionally you have to write about things that are more important than cars.

My Dad’s 80. He’s fit, active, social and busy. He’s great company and has a zest for life. He’s a keen photographer, loves his computer and the internet, even if I do get at least one call a week that starts “This bloody computer..” and ends with me saying “…I’ll pop round later and sort it out”! In the last couple of months, in addition to his morning mile walk to get his papers, he’s demolished a shed, built a patio, driven up north, been on holiday with us (eating, drinking and swimming every day) and been his generally busy self. But he has lost weight, and the doctors couldn’t work out why. So a variety of tests culminated in a CT scan and a request to visit the hospital this week to be told “You have a massive, invasive colon tumour and there’s nothing we can do”.

That’s pretty devastating news to hear, and as a friend commented “I think I’d have been too numb to do anything but go home and top myself”. But I had gone with Dad to see the doctor, and I’ve been brought up (thanks, Mum and Dad) to question what doesn’t seem right or what I don’t understand. And this didn’t seem right, and I didn’t understand it, so I questioned it. How, I asked, can your diagnosis and prognosis be right when, apart from the weight loss, Dad has no symptoms whatsoever? How can this fit, active man be at death’s door? The doctor, after hearing how Dad lives his life and how active he is, finally concurred that he couldn’t equate the man to the diagnosis, so he agreed to have Dad in to stick cameras in every available orifice ‘to have a look’.

I took Dad for his ‘top and tail’ look on Friday. And I can’t praise the nursing staff enough. The nurse who attended to Dad in the preamble to the procedure couldn’t have done more. Frankly, she was doing so much she couldn’t have done any more if she’d stuck a broom up her arse and polished the floors! She made him comfortable, talked him through the procedure, took his information, did tests and acted like the angel she was (and she was called Angela - how appropriate). She was doing a ten hours shift, had been up since five and was studying for a degree in the evenings. Wow. And I bet she was being paid peanuts.

The only irritation in the preamble was a knob with a clipboard doing a survey about the nurses IT use. And I’ll bet the NHS was paying him more than the nurse. For what? To get in the way of a nurse stretched to the limit by an NHS that has so many ‘administrators’ it could run a middle size country, instead of paying for enough medical staff to do the job properly. And that little scenario is typical of all that’s wrong with the NHS. It is now massively funded, but the medical staff are under so much pressure to hit targets and save money they end up cutting corners. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had first-hand experience of this.

Three years ago my Dad had a stroke. Mum and I went with him (I followed the ambulance). The A&E staff saw him, diagnosed a stroke and tried to send him home with Aspirin! It was only when I insisted that 12 hours before he was bright, articulate and lively, and not the incoherent, partially paralysed man they were looking at, did they admit him. And it didn’t end there. He was left to fend for himself on an under-staffed, dirty ward with no inclination to find out exactly what had happened and what needed to be done. It took the severe bashing of the consultant by me (verbal, I hasten to add) for any action. But act they did, and Dad finally recovered.

It shouldn’t be like this. The NHS is well funded but massively mismanaged. Their internal procedure costings are such that they now find it cheaper to outsource things like scans to the private sector, because it costs less. Doesn’t that just prove how badly run it is? If the private sector can offer a service of the highest order at less cost than the NHS, perhaps it’s time to get rid of the NHS. Perhaps it’s beyond redemption.

Dad had been misdiagnosed. Yes, he does have a tumour, but it is much smaller than they thought and is contained. It is operable. That is an infinitely better scenario than the one he was presented with a few days before. But was he misdiagnosed because the staff are under pressure to keep costs down, and not do further tests before delivering a devastating diagnosis? If that is the case the NHS is a complete failure. It needs tearing down and rebuilding as a medical focused institution, not one hell-bent on spending billions on administration, expenses and failed IT upgrades.

Rant over. Back to cars next time.