NHS Meltdown: Grandmother Forced to Pull Her Own Teeth

Have any of you seen the commercial in which the patient is being instructed by the doctor on how to perform his own surgery? Well, that is more than afforded a grandmother over in the UK who couldn't get a dentist to pull her teeth. From the story:

A grandmother performed her own tooth extractions in despair after being turned away by 12 dentists. Elizabeth Green, 76, was in agony with two front teeth and after a fruitless search for an NHS practitioner, resorted to DIY. Her case is the latest of many to highlight the dwindling availability of NHS dental treatment.

There are lessons here for the USA as we strive to find a way to expand coverage, without sinking our own boat. One lesson is that any nationalized system will have to be sparse. If we try to cover everything, we will, in the end, cover very little. Moreover, it seems clear to me that a robust private sector component will be crucial to reforming our health care system. Indeed, to me the privatized prescription benefits under Medicare are a good model.

NHS Meltdown: Birthing Mothers Turned Away From Hospitals

The news at the NHS goes from crisis to crisis. Now, women in labor are being turned away from hospitals. From the story:

Almost half of NHS hospitals were forced to turn women in labour away last year because they were full, according to new figures that reveal the "shocking" state of NHS maternity services. Patient groups said the capacity crisis was putting many mothers and babies at increased risk, by increasing anxiety and forcing them to travel further at a crucial time.

If that happened here--particularly, if Bush were still President--can you imagine the screaming? But this isn't a right wing plot. It is socialized medicine.

NHS Meltdown: Hospital Acquired Infection Deaths Skyrocket

What passes for health care these days in the UK keeps going from bad to worse. The latest bad news is a surge in deaths caused by hospital acquired infection. From The Guardian story:

A 72% increase in deaths linked to the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile was disclosed yesterday by the Office for National Statistics.

It said the infection, which causes severe diarrhoea among patients whose resistance has been weakened by antibiotics, was mentioned on 6,480 death certificates in England and Wales in 2006, compared with 3,757 in 2005. More than half registered C difficile as the underlying cause of death and the rest mentioned it as a contributory factor.

The response of the NHS is typically weak:

David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, yesterday held a "cleanliness summit", saying he would publish hospitals' individual MRSA infection rates.

You think the USA's people see health care as an election issue? Just imagine being a British voter!

NHS Meltdown: Patients Left in Ambulances for Hours

Can you imagine? Say, you are hit by a car and are rushed to the hospital by ambulance. It arrives at the entrance, and instead of being taken into the ER for immediate treatment--you are left waiting for hours so that the hospital can say you were treated within four hours of arriving at the hospital! From the story:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls...

Labour brought in the four-hour A&E target to end the scandal of patients waiting for days in casualty or being kept on trolleys in corridors. But a shortage of out-of-hours GP care, after thousands of doctors opted out of treating patients outside working hours under lucrative new contracts, means more and more are going to casualty units, putting them under greater pressure.

Dr Jonathan Fielden of the British Medical Association said: "The vast majority of patients coming into hospital by ambulance are in critical need of care in hospital and therefore delay can worsen their outcome."...Conservative health spokesman Mike Penning said: "Not admitting people to hospital but stacking patients in car parks beggars belief in the 21st century."

This is a death spiral.

NHS Meltdown: Dentistry in Disarray

The NHS continues to implode. Now dentists are leaving the service, perhaps leading to a collapse of socialized dentistry. From the story:

Contract changes that have seen more than 1,000 dentists leave the health service threaten to bring about the end of NHS dentistry, MPs will be warned next week. The introduction of financial penalties for missing targets has already seen twice as many dentists leave the NHS as the Government estimated.

Thousands more are questioning their future in the NHS because of the uncertainty surrounding their earnings, the British Dental Association (BDA) said. Already the changes have left an estimated one million extra patients without access to a dentist. Almost one in three children do not receive any form of dental care...

Dentists also complain that they have less time to advise patients on how to prevent future dental problems because of the "treadmill" conditions they are forced to work under. The future of NHS dentistry is "at risk", the BDA says in written evidence to the committee, because "dentists are facing financial penalties derived from untested targets". The BDA also accuses the government of "chronically underfunding" dental services. Spending on dentistry in the NHS is now just 2.8 per cent of the overall budget, less than in 2002.

Did you see the part where it states that that one in three children have no dental care? In a prosperous country like the UK? British teeth deserve better.

NHS Meltdown Disgrace--Again!

Every day it gets worse. Now, stroke victims are not being treated properly. From the story:

Thousands of stroke victims die every year because they are not given life-saving drugs swiftly enough. Almost a third of stroke patients die within one month, a figure that could be cut if clot-fighting drugs were given earlier, say researchers. Studies show treatment within three hours greatly improves the chances of survival for more than six months. In 2006, only 30 NHS trusts across Britain administered the drugs within three hours

How hard can it be to provide clot fighting drugs???? And forgive me if I think this is because stroke victims tend to be elderly. Can you imagine if something like this happened in the USA? The screaming would never stop.

NHS Meltdown: A Baby Dies

This is worse than awful: A 54 day old baby was sexually abused and beaten to death by her father. Yet during her brief life 30 different health care workers cared for her, and somehow didn't notice a thing. Plus, her mother is schizophrenic, which should have triggered a referral to social services--but didn't. From the story:

A report has revealed that Jessica, whose mother was schizophrenic, spent nearly half her life in hospital. She was seen by 30 health workers and had also been seen at home on 10 separate occasions. Yet no one noticed what was happening, so the emergency child protection procedures that could have led to her being removed from her family were not triggered...

He had abused and sexually assaulted Jessica, who was born five weeks prematurely with a heart defect, from "the moment she left hospital"...At one stage he forced three fingers down his daughter's throat and on other occasions held her arms and legs and twisted her as if he were wringing a cloth...

He said Jessica was last seen at the hospital a few days before she died, when she was admitted because she was twitching. Dr O'Malley said the doctor who saw her suspected she was being abused but did not include an "extensive account" of those suspicions in his notes because he felt his examinations of her ruled it out.

I read the UK papers every day and they are filled continually with stories of medical malfeasance and misfeasance, of filthy hospitals, personnel shortages, failed efforts at improvement, not to mention rationing and futile care impositions. The NHS is in chaos. Surely the time has come for the UK to try a different route.

NHS Meltdown: A Continuing Tragedy

I cannot believe the disaster that is befalling the health care system in the UK. Now, it turns out that patients are leaving hospitals malnourished! From the story:

Some 140,000 people are discharged from hospital while underweight every year, and most are never diagnosed or treated, nutritionists warned.

Campaigners have consistently called for better food and more time for nurses to help patients eat. NHS guidelines state that all patients should be assessed when admitted to hospital and referred to a dietician if required. But this is not happening regularly enough, said Mike Lean, professor of human nutrition at Glasgow University and Prof Martin Wiseman, of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Southampton University.

Campaigners and hospital watchdogs have consistently called for better food and more time for nurses to help patients eat. Prof Lean said he was surprised that more medical negligence cases had not been brought by patients who were discharged while suffering from malnutrition.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said: "There are still many patients arriving at hospital malnourished and ill and doctors deal with the illness and then send them home and no one noticed or recorded the fact they were pathetically malnourished.

Perhaps the law has given the NHS more than they can chew, so to speak. But clearly, hospitals are not getting the job done.

NHS Meltdown: "Record Number Go Abroad for Health"

The UK's NHS is in a meltdown. I didn't blog it due to traveling, but did you see the story that people are pulling their own teeth because they can't get good dental care through the NHS? And now, apparently record numbers of Brits are traveling abroad for health care because they can't get it at home. From the Telegraph story:

Thousands of "health tourists" are going as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations – such is their despair over the quality of health services.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration with NHS waiting lists are fuelling the increasing trend.

More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year--a figure that is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade. Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

We need to reform our system, to be sure. But not in that direction. We need a private sector health care system supplemented by a federal safety net. In this regard, although I haven't read it closely yet, that seems to be the approach taken by Hillary Clinton.