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The “promised” money for mental health care from Jeremy Hunt, is after years, by parties of all colours, of underfunding and closure of beds and services. In one major northern city when the large instittion was closed there were three new hospitals built with a total of 20 wards for in-patient care, fifteen years later these were reduced to a…[Read more]

With all the above you have to think, why?
I have worked on and off for about 40 years, so I have seen a lot of changes. The NHS has always been managed short term, every shade of party thinks they can do it better and most have tried.
When it worked about its best, we had managed to reduce hospital stays and increase waiting times we were as a…[Read more]

This is an issue with demographics.
We must must must have an adult discussion as a nation about the increased cost of people living longer.
We need to be grown up and accept that the old will have to be prepared to pay for more and better management of the help needed in old age.
I was saddened that the idea of the elderly paying on death part of…[Read more]

Lots of mismanagement within the NHS (although by no means universally). But the main problem is the galloping increase in life expectancy, accompanying tremendous increases in cost-per-head while we prop people up into their eighties and nineties and beyond, and a complete unwillingness to fund it. That’s not just politicians, by the way; only a…[Read more]

And mental health services are facing similar problems
https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/mental-health-services-cut-by-8-per-cent/#.WlIpgqanyf0
This article is 2 yrs old and things are getting worse.

40% of NHS Walk-in centres have closed since 2010.
We have seen a loss of 14,000 NHS beds, to date.
How many A&E departments are being closed or downgraded?
The number of District Nurses in England has been cut by 28%.

Why repeatedly cut funding for social care, particularly for vulnerable elderly people when it has been recognised that the…[Read more]

I don’t know the answer but I do know that the current system is awful. Only this week our local doctors surgery has changed its system. If you want a same day appointment you have to go on a list and then travel 10 miles in the worst traffic imaginable to see someone. who may only be a nurse. Our local surgery has plenty of nurses who used to d…

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(No defence of the government, just my tuppence)
There needs to be a better system in place to stop people presenting at a&e with minor ailments. If only those who genuinely needed a&e were there it might be a different story.

That being said, that means the whole system needs overhauled, being able to get a same day Gp appointment, seemless…

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It’s not just about the end user though is it? In business if you ran an organisation so wastefully, you would go bust. The NHS continues to be propped up despite disastrous management.

Just two examples from either end of the spectrum:

1) A local senior NHS manager who was provided with a car as part of her package, all costs including…[Read more]

If it is the same Trusts always struggling, maybe they are the ones with a greater population catchment. Our Trust is always struggling ,has been in special measures, but a lot of people in quite a “poor” area.
Also about 3 weeks for a docs appointment locally so people rock up at A &E.

I don’t know the answer but I do know that the current system is awful. Only this week our local doctors surgery has changed its system. If you want a same day appointment you have to go on a list and then travel 10 miles in the worst traffic imaginable to see someone. who may only be a nurse. Our local surgery has plenty of nurses who used to d…[Read more]

The NHS can never meet demand as the public’s wants are infinite and supply will always be finite. Every time it treats a patient and stops them dying, it leaves them alive to get some other ailment.

Throwing money at it does not make it better, an example being my GP and his colleagues cut their hours when the last Labour government gave them…[Read more]

I spoke to an A&E consultant who said that people were presenting because they couldn’t get a GP appointment.
As he said…if you have ongoing back pain for weeks, we’re not going to be able to fix it in one night.

My local trust are also trying to treat older people as far as possible at home, in care homes or in ambulance…it is another huge…[Read more]

No one wants to confront the fact we can not afford to treat everything, at any cost. Basic economics.

…. and that is the simple truth. The problem arises though when society has to decide who lives and who doesn’t. The drug producing companies, through their sales are continuing with research and in to ever greater depths …….. The DG has RA an…[Read more]

There was a very interesting article on the radio in the week asking why? is it thats its always the same few trust that are in crisis and the ones we hear about. If you went round many trust last week people were getting treated quickly but I guess that doesnt make the news,some were going in and out in under half an hour. As somebody pointed out…[Read more]

You have misquoted him. John Major’s quote was not about the current government, it was about a theoretical future government after Brexit.
If you insist on getting political, do you want to make any comment on the fact that the Labour run Welsh and SNP run Scots NHS are in a worse state than the English?

Its a simple equation, nothing to do with politics. There are more people, living with conditions that would have died 40 years ago and less people to look after them.
In 1979 I was a student nurse, my dad was 55 and died from heart disease, he had two heart attacks and basic treatment. Now he would have been treated with sophisticated drugs, have…[Read more]

(No defence of the government, just my tuppence)
There needs to be a better system in place to stop people presenting at a&e with minor ailments. If only those who genuinely needed a&e were there it might be a different story.

That being said, that means the whole system needs overhauled, being able to get a same day Gp appointment, seemless…[Read more]

I don’t vote, it only serves to encourage them, but by inclination I would be tory. That said, no, I cannot defend the frightful mess that we are in, and what I find even more worrying is that a change of government won’t bring about any meaningful change.

My impending old age (I’m now 71) frightens the life out of me, when I think about it.