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Incompetent NHS administration

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Urbandreamer
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Incompetent NHS administration

#174745

Postby Urbandreamer » October 18th, 2018, 6:04 pm

Argh!

I have been recieving NHS communication recently.
They invited me to a Bowel scan, and pre-booked an inconvienient appointment for me (while asking me to contact them).
I decided that it made sense and contacted them to ARRANGE an appointment (I'm sure that the original was to get me to respond).
I recieved a confirmation shortly followed by a letter "further to our recent letter, you have not responded..).
Of course I ignored it, they had clearly made a mistake.
Then I recieved a letter informing me that I had been discharged as I didn't contact them and on the envelope that missed appointments cost the NHS £160.

What I thinks, they are blaming me for not booking this screening when I did! Oh well I wasn't looking forward to it.

Then I got to thinking. Have they canceled?

I phoned the number on the letter (further to) and was asked to pick the department that I wanted to contact. Nothing in the letter about department or purpose, just a consultants name. I wrack my brain and think that it could be the appointment that I was expecting in Feb to check if the leasion in my eye remains benign. When I get through, yes it is and no they can't admit me back without a Dr's refering me and it's my fault because I thought that I it was about the bowel screening as clearly I knew that it was about my eyes as otherwise I wouldn't have contacted them!

ARGH!

All I can say is that obviously it would also be my fault if I wasted NHS time and missed the bowel screening based upon the latest letter informing me that they had discharged me!

WHY can't they communicate (say) what they are communicating about.

Sorry, I needed to vent.

I'll call into the Dr's on the way to the screening tomorrow and see if the receptionist can get the Dr to refer me without an appointment or if I "need" to waste more NHS time (and my tax payer money) because whoever wrote that letter assumes that a consultants name indicates a department or medical condition.

Lootman
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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174748

Postby Lootman » October 18th, 2018, 6:11 pm

I've been sent a ton of correspondence about this, including various "poop kits" through the post. I tried discussing it with them but that just seemed to lead to more letters saying the same thing, so I decided to completely ignore them. Most of this stuff now goes straight into the bin.

Oh, and I had a colonoscopy done privately which is far more accurate than the poop test, and the entire process was very efficient and uneventful. In and out in a couple of hours.

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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174756

Postby EssDeeAitch » October 18th, 2018, 6:32 pm

Lootman has hit on something. No one wants a private NHS (well, I don't) but wouldn't it be nice if it was more like a private service? I have numerous friends working in the NHS and they all lament in the lack of efficiency and worse, the lack of ambition by management.

Urbandreamer
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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174761

Postby Urbandreamer » October 18th, 2018, 7:09 pm

Thanks for the replies.

What anoyed me most was that their incompetence almost cost the NHS* £160 (their statement not mine), could of course have cost me my life and according to them was my fault!

I believe that I have had the leasion in the eye since a young man, but the optician was concerned when he first saw it and I've not had a medical opinion that I need no further checks.

My grandfather died of colon cancer so I feel encouraged to take that test, which probably won't find anything to worry about. Thankfully the documentation says they know of no genetic link with that cancer.

*Well us tax payers.

Lootman
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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174764

Postby Lootman » October 18th, 2018, 7:23 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:My grandfather died of colon cancer so I feel encouraged to take that test, which probably won't find anything to worry about.

My uncle too, and it was very unpleasant. That's why I make the effort to do the checkups.

The poop test is a bit rough and ready. It looks for blood in the poop, although that can be a false positive, and can also fail to detect a polyps.

There is an interim invasive test called a sigmoidoscopy, which just looks inside the first section of the colon. You don't need a full "clean out" for that - just an enema. That can indicate the need for a full colonoscopy, or not.

The worst part of the colonoscopy is the prep the night before, which literally cleans you out, and you won't want to be too far from a toilet for a few hours. The procedure itself is not a big deal at all, at least with IV valium, and there is no pain or bleeding afterwards, or should not be.

I've had 4 of them because polyps were found, although I was clean the last time. This is just not something I ever mess with, like my vision. So whilst the NHS is OK for a lot of things, I go private for the stuff that really concerns me.

Urbandreamer
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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174768

Postby Urbandreamer » October 18th, 2018, 7:43 pm

Lootman wrote:There is an interim invasive test called a sigmoidoscopy, which just looks inside the first section of the colon. You don't need a full "clean out" for that - just an enema. That can indicate the need for a full colonoscopy, or not.
....
This is just not something I ever mess with, like my vision. So whilst the NHS is OK for a lot of things, I go private for the stuff that really concerns me.


That's the test I'm going for. With respect of eyes, as I understand it eye and teath inspections detect so many other issues that it's seriously important not to skip them. In my case it is however simply a case of checking that a lump (birth mark/wart) on the retina remains the same size.

It should be possible, but isn't, to do so yourself. After all it should be cheap and easy to make a digital camera to photograph the retina. Sure there will be limits like having to remain in a dark room for 10 min before using it (in the absence of beladona to dialate the iris) but it should be cheap and easy. Possibly the market is simply too limited, though why the NHS has not taken photos of my retina since the initial visit escapes me. Surely such might help diagnose other things like macula degeneration etc.

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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174773

Postby Lootman » October 18th, 2018, 7:57 pm

Urbandreamer wrote: why the NHS has not taken photos of my retina since the initial visit escapes me. Surely such might help diagnose other things like macula degeneration etc.

Absolutely, I see my eye doctor (a private ophthalmologist and not a high street optometrist) twice a year and photographs of the retina are always taken. I'd be upset if they were not for the reasons you cite. And they are not expensive - from memory I think I get charged an extra 30 quid or so.

Also images of the optic nerve if you are at any risk from glaucoma. And eye pressure tests, ditto.

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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174829

Postby Clitheroekid » October 19th, 2018, 12:29 am

My own recent experience of the NHS is that the people who deal with you directly - the doctors and nurses and auxiliary workers - are mostly great, but that the system that employs them is absolutely appalling.

This is inexcusable in view of the hundreds of thousands of highly paid managers that exist - at our expense - in the NHS. It really does seem to be a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

The main problems that I encountered arose from the ludicrously bad communication between the various people and departments that are involved. There seemed to be no overview of my case, and on many occasions I'd turn up for an appointment when it was quite evident they had little or no idea why I was there.

I also found there was very poor follow-up. I would go for a scan or a blood test and then hear nothing at all. When I finally rang to enquire with quavering voice what was going on they'd effectively say that if I hadn't heard from them the test must have been OK! Do they not realise that patients are often worried sick awaiting the results of such tests?

The NHS management seem to imagine that patients are completely au fait with NHS procedures, and that they should somehow magically divine what, why and when the next stage of their treatment is going to happen. In fact, people outside the NHS don't have a clue about such matters, and drift aimlessly, like lost sheep, from one medic to another.

It seems to me that every patient who's undergoing a specific procedure - even something as simple as a colonoscopy - should have assigned to him one individual who's his case manager, and who has an overview of what everyone involved is doing and why and when they're doing it. This should be someone that you could just contact at any stage of the process and who could immediately tell you where you were up to, what was due to happen next and when you could expect it.

Although it may sound an expensive option I'm sure it would pay for itself many times over in helping to eradicate the huge amount of time and effort that must be wasted as a result of the present fiasco.

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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174872

Postby didds » October 19th, 2018, 8:56 am

... not helped by the doctors and nurses and other therapists and clinicians under so much box ticking pressure that they lie on referral forms to move patients along the system but most importantly to a part of the system that is not "their problem", and make it somebody else's problem.

Need to move somebody along from an acute ward to a community bed, that is waiting for a bungalow repair? Send them to community for stairs practise. Bingo!

Got somebody that hasn't walked for two years , has severe metal health issues? Send them along to a community bed requesting rehabilitation for walking.

Got somebody in a ward approaching the cut off time SLA for that bed? Move them to another ward to restart the clock.

NHS staff are wasting their own resources because of the ridiculous situations other staff are putting them under - albeit because the initial staff are under pressure to "not have them here" rather than solve the root problem.

didds

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Re: Incompetent NHS administration

#174900

Postby absolutezero » October 19th, 2018, 9:51 am

"Our NHS" (TM) (peace be upon it) is the envy of the world, don't you know?
So much so that no other country on the planet has every tried to copy it....

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Colonoscopy

#175308

Postby bungeejumper » October 21st, 2018, 10:11 am

Lootman wrote:The poop test is a bit rough and ready. It looks for blood in the poop, although that can be a false positive, and can also fail to detect a polyps.

...The worst part of the colonoscopy is the prep the night before, which literally cleans you out, and you won't want to be too far from a toilet for a few hours. The procedure itself is not a big deal at all, at least with IV valium, and there is no pain or bleeding afterwards, or should not be.

I've had 4 of them because polyps were found, although I was clean the last time. This is just not something I ever mess with, like my vision. So whilst the NHS is OK for a lot of things, I go private for the stuff that really concerns me.

Hallelujah to all that, Lootman. Last February the poop test resulted in my being "invited" for a colonoscopy at the local NHS hospital. Damn and double damn! And there I was, hoping to make it from cradle to grave without anybody messing with my Y-Front zones. :cry: But it was not to be. And a good thing too.

The short version of the story is that, having survived the notorious Movi-Prep clean-up for the initial inspection, I was zombified (with a combination of synthetic opiates and pethidine - blimey, what were they expecting to find up there, a baby?) and went in for a twenty minute examination that turned into two hours. The even shorter version is that they found eight polyps, one of them actively cancerous (and another two baddies-in-waiting), plus five benign polyps, one of which was the size of half a tennis ball. The surgeon apologised afterwards for the long op - he said it was the biggest polyp he'd seen in several years. No need to apologise, mate, just thanks a million. :)

And I'd had no noticeable warnings that there was anything wrong. Which is my point really. Four months and three more colonoscopies later, I'm all MRI'd and ultra-sound scanned (and have been double-checked by the foremost expert in southern Britain), and I'm confirmed all clear. Blood tests for cancer antibodies will continue for some years, but they're all agreed that they've nailed this one. If that's not an insensitive way of putting it? (Actually they use a wire lasso which cauterises as it goes. All 100% painless, in my experience.)

And all of this on the NHS, whose teams were unfailingly efficient, friendly, professional and even a bit jokey. (When you're looking up people's backsides all day, it's important to have a strong collegial bond to keep you going.) In fact the only time things went wrong was when I outsourced a couple of scans to the local BUPA hospital, which bungled the appointments, mistook me for another patient, and didn't present its findings to my NHS doctor for two horrible anxious weeks. You never can tell...

But if there's one take-away from all this, it's that you'd have to be some kind of a fool to ignore the importance of these poop test early-warning check-up kits. Once a cancer gets started in a polyp (and it can take eight or ten years to get that far), the important thing is to get it removed as fast as possible. With early detection, the total success rate is huge; but if it gets to an advanced stage the prospects really aren't so good at all. Number four cancer killer in the UK. It mystifies me why people would "rather not know".

Thanks for listening.

BJ


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