Why Does The NHS Hospital System Have To Play Patient Shuffle?
Posted by Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 16 comments
I’m streaming “Hospital” a UK Docuseries that follows the daily routine of a part St. Mary’s Hospital in London. It’s a highly specialized facility and the only one capable of providing life saving thoracic surgery and treatment! St. Mary’s would be considered a “level 1 trauma center “ in the US and have the whole hospital freed up for trauma and specialized needs but every morning you have to witness the jaw dropping agony that comes from doctors playing patient shuffle to free up beds in the ITU (ICU) just so a gentleman with cancer can get the operation that his surgeon is begging for and he’s been sent home twice before because of the lack of beds!
As a social worker and and someone who spent 7 weeks in the ICU during Covid with an unrelated condition,I would hate to think that I was being rushed out to free up a bed!
SnoopyLupus@reddit
So what’s your question?
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
Like the surgeon said. The waste of resources.He was there and his was a team there including specialized nurses and an anesthesiologist who waited all day for the one patient and his esophageal surgery which required 6 hours of surgery time and an all important ICU bed! That patient had been sent home twice before and was sent home again. He did have his surgery the next day but there was not just the monetary cost there was the human cost! The doctors were discussing whether or not a poor woman on her way down from Norfolk with a torn Aorta would survive! The odds were slim and the doctors were weighing the odds of who got the bed? The poor man with cancer who had been through chemo and radiation or the lady with the aneurysm? I know these difficult decisions have to be made but they should be made on rare occasions and not on a daily basis!
EvePsycheBlubeardwfe@reddit
Dear god, I hope you never have to interact with a medical professional in real life. If the insane hours and stress doesn’t drive them over the edge, your comments certainly would.
Silly-Canary-916@reddit
Those decisions have to be made constantly in the NHS. It is not a finite resource and we will never have enough space as we need more and more every day. People are living longer, medical treatment is getting more and more skilled so we can treat and save more people than ever. It is the job of highly trained medical professionals to assess the needs and condition of patients.
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
I’m completely aware of that fact and I’m not trying to make your situation out to be any worse than that of the US because I know we fall short! It’s just the Social Worker in me and the Accountant (yeah that was my 3rd career) in me that knows that the money wasted on keeping a whole specialized team waiting over six hours for bed availability is not good fiscal policy and the IT geek in me ( that was my 2nd career) knows that there’s gotta be a better bed check out method and patient catalog than doctors using their cell phones!
SnoopyLupus@reddit
Is this AI?
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
No im a real live person. I live in a small town in SC in the USA And you can stream the show Hospital on Amazon Prime !
Silly-Canary-916@reddit
You cannot make comparisons between UK and USA health care. Both are too intrinsically different so many reasons on both sides.
GlitchingGecko@reddit
Because we haven't had adequate funding for the NHS for about 15 years, and have a severe shortage of hospitals and beds.
We also have a big shortage of care homes for elderly people, or people who need extra help for a time (like physical rehab for stroke victims, etc). They're not allowed to be discharged until the hospital finds a place for them, so if they can't find somewhere for them to go, they'll stay in a hospital bed; even if it's not medically necessary.
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
That’s another thing that struck me. I’m just trying to understand. I used to run a 12 bed group home for women who had developmental delays. I also went to a local hospital/ rehab center after one of my hospital stays because I wasn’t sick enough to stay in the hospital but I still needed skilled nursing care. They’re a lot more cost effective than having a team of specialists standing around waiting on an operation that might or might not happen based on bed availability!
Silly-Canary-916@reddit
Do you have any knowledge of how UK health and social care work?
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
I have a basic understanding. I’ve read a great deal beginning with the war years and moving on through to now. I’ve looked at it from a social worker’s perspective and from an economic perspective as am also an accountant. I knew that the Opening of The London Olympics was a fine example of propaganda! I didn’t know who they were trying to convince more the world or the people who rely on the NHS?
Automatic-Carpet-577@reddit (OP)
I was also a social worker in a large metro area just for reference.
Background_Fox@reddit
A lot of hospitals were not designed to cope with the numbers of patients that they now have to serve, hence the ward bouncing. It's been like that for a long time, not helped by the fact a lot of older hospitals are in the middle of towns/cities and therefore expansions are difficult even if the money is there.
15 ish years ago when I had my son at the local city hospital apparently the whole thing was supposed to max out at 800 patients for maternity and yet given how the area had grown it was business as usual to have well over a thousand during normal times.
A new system needs to be developed to cope with the population increase but it'll certainly need an inject of money and probably a new way of doing things
Inoffensive_Comments@reddit
Assuming this isn’t a disingenuous question, the NHS has suffered from years of underfunding from the UK central government. Some would say deliberately.
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
Top-level comments to the OP must contain genuine efforts to answer the question. No jokes, judgements, etc.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.