[QUOTE=ralph124c]
I thought England had a better healthcare system than this? Bizarre!
[/QUOTE]
My parents, between them, required treatment for:
In total they spent months in hospitals and had several major surgeries. This cost precisely nothing.
I thought Straight Dope posters were supposed to fight ignorance. :smack:
[QUOTE=glee]
My parents, between them, required treatment for:
In total they spent months in hospitals and had several major surgeries. This cost precisely nothing.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, it cost thousands and thousands of pounds. It just wasn’t paid for directly by your parents.
Don’t get me wrong; i’m a firm believer in a single-payer health system. But health care is expensive, and someone always ends up footing the bill, even if it’s not immediately obvious who that is.
[QUOTE=mhendo]
Are you sure Ted Kennedy isn’t somehow to blame?
[/QUOTE]
Oh, no, silly–it’s obvious who is to blame: Bill and his blowjob. That always seem to lie at the heart of any of this kind of nonsense…
I’d rather spread those thousands of pounds out over millions of people than have people go bankrupt from medical bills like they do here in the good ole USA.
[QUOTE=JustAnotherGeek]
Chez,
Good on you for helping out. May the karma you earned come back ten-fold.
As for nurse #1, yes, there are “hospitals” that no longer have emergency departments, but I have never once heard of a nurse actually trying to turn away an injured person like that. I can understand that there could have been better care at another facility, but not letting you use a phone is just pure dickishness.
I hope her bosses take some kind of action against her. Please let us know what comes of this (if you get a reply).
-Geek
EMT-Paramedic
[/QUOTE]
Ex-EMT checks in
We had a couple of facilities here that do not accept walk ins and are not licenced, insured or equipped to operate an ER. IIRC they could actually be fined for checking someone in without an MD referral. These are not hospitals in the sense we generally think of them. They might look like one superficially but they are not for any legal purpose wrt emergencies. One of them here is basically a big short stay surgical center, they have staff on 24/7 but that is just to care for the people who are there overnight or recovering from late afternoon procedures. If you staggered in off the street without a life threatening problem the most they would probably do is call a cab for you.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
than have people go bankrupt from medical bills like they do here in the good ole USA.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, we’ve taken care of that.
The Bankruptcy ‘Reform’ bill passed a couple of years ago protects banks, insurance companies, and big hospitals from this by no longer allowing people to file bankruptcy due to medical bills.
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara]
<snip> I am then told not to get aggressive with the nursing staff because it will not do me any good, and anyway visitors are not allowed to use hospital telephones.<snip>
[/QUOTE]
This is my favourite part. There’s a clinic in my neighourhood that I won’t go to because the staff are incredibly, actively unprofessional, and they have a big sign front and centre that states that “ABUSE OF STAFF WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.” Gee, wonder why you needed to put that sign up. Maybe because your staff were pissing people off all the time?
Anyway, good for you for doing the right thing. As a nurse in a hospital, even if it wasn’t one set up for emergencies, the correct answer when confronted with an injured, out-of-it, little old lady is not “Not my problem. Next!”
It seems to me that you should at least be able to expect this non-emergency hospital to do what any grocery store or petrol station would do: check on the lady, bring her inside, make her as comfortable as possible and call an ambulance for her.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
This is my favourite part. There’s a clinic in my neighourhood that I won’t go to because the staff are incredibly, actively unprofessional, and they have a big sign front and centre that states that “ABUSE OF STAFF WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.” Gee, wonder why you needed to put that sign up. Maybe because your staff were pissing people off all the time?
[/QUOTE]
Clinics often serve a less than warm and fuzzy clientele. Hyperbole aside, IME this type of sign is very common.
Reread my post carefully. Lacking proper licensure = big deal. If this person was in a life threatening situation they are required by their licence to act, however medical facility operations are not always the most intuitive and or customer friendly things.
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara]
I guess I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the hospital when I entered its portals because I was unfamiliar with the territory. I know that not all hospitals have an A&E facility but to me, at that time, it was an oasis of care where I would be able to find some help. I didn’t expect to discover a desert of indifference.
I consider the nurse should have asked the man with the arm if he was OK for a few minutes and gone outside to check out the situation. Then, if she thought the old lady fit to move, which it so happened was the case, she should have enlisted my assistance to get the old lady inside and given her the once-over using basic nursing skills. Having taken a view on her condition, using whatever resources were available, she should then have called an ambulance or not as the case demanded.
In any event I concur that her refusal to allow me use of a telephone was certainly deplorable.
Whenever I have been a patient of the National Health Service, which is more often than I would have liked, I can confirm jjimm’s opinion following his recent experience. The dedication to the job and the professionalism displayed by those concerned has been nothing short of exemplary.
I’m not expecting much joy from my complaint but I’ll relay the substance of any reply as and when the matter is concluded.
Finally, and this to Otto, the scenario of myself calling an ambulance from a hospital is one that I would certainly have relished, and extracted full surrealistic value from, even given the fraught circumstances in which the request would have been made. If I had thought of that at the time I might well have mugged someone for their cellphone just for the sheer pleasure of the conversation that would doubtless have ensued.
I totally appreciate the thanks and the kudos but, as I said before, I did nothing any of you would not have done yourselves.
[/QUOTE]
I just wanted to say that this may be the single most perfectly crafted post I’ve ever seen on the Dope. Concise, sparse, informative, clearly well thought out without being anally over-analyzed. Chez Guevara, you should write English styled hard boiled fiction!
[QUOTE=mhendo]
Actually, it cost thousands and thousands of pounds. It just wasn’t paid for directly by your parents.
Don’t get me wrong; i’m a firm believer in a single-payer health system. But health care is expensive, and someone always ends up footing the bill, even if it’s not immediately obvious who that is.
[/QUOTE]
I think you missed the point entirely. :eek:
Thanks to the UK National Health Service, my elderly parents didn’t have to find a lot of money when they were seriously ill.
**Of course we all know how it is funded ** :smack: - you can see the deductions on any payslip. Since my parents both worked for decades, they **did indeed pay part of the cost ** - do you not know that? 
But obviously ralph124c has no idea what is going on, which is why I posted the details.
A few days ago, an elderly lady went missing in the next town while driving to see her friend down the street. She was spotted asking for directions in two places far apart, one a couple of miles from my house, but no one on the spot realized just how lost she was. Flyers went up all over town. Her body was discovered about 36 hours ago, near her car. She wasn’t dressed for cold weather and had simply driven around for a couple of days until she couldn’t any more.
So, Chez Guevara, it’s nice to hear a story with a happy ending, despite the horrible nurse.
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara]
I consider the nurse should have asked the man with the arm if he was OK for a few minutes
[/QUOTE]
Actually, I was expecting this part of the story to go:
You, to Arm Guy: “It’s not just me, is it?”
Arm Guy: “Nope. Right rotten bitch, she is.”
You, to Nurse: “So I make it two to one.”
I just to add that, although you might minimize it, Chez, you did a very good deed.
In younger days I was involved in search and rescue and it very often involved chasing after victims with Alzheimer’s disease. This took an enormous amount of time, resources, and often ended with very bad outcomes for the person we were looking for to the frustration of everyone involved.
In retrospect what you did seems obvious, but a large number of people could easily just rationalize doing nothing because they weren’t sure of what they saw, weren’t sure of what to do, or figured that someone else would resolve the problem.
[QUOTE=MizGrand]
Oh GOD people, come on!!!
[/QUOTE]
What exactly do you mean by this, MizGrand?
[QUOTE=drachillix]
We had a couple of facilities here that do not accept walk ins and are not licenced, insured or equipped to operate an ER. IIRC they could actually be fined for checking someone in without an MD referral. These are not hospitals in the sense we generally think of them. They might look like one superficially but they are not for any legal purpose wrt emergencies. One of them here is basically a big short stay surgical center, they have staff on 24/7 but that is just to care for the people who are there overnight or recovering from late afternoon procedures. If you staggered in off the street without a life threatening problem the most they would probably do is call a cab for you.
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis mine)
I understand all of the above. Even the underlined portion. If the facility in question operates under the rules you outline above, though, the underlined portion still kicks in. Not letting Chez use a phone? Absolutely frickin’ uncalled for. Especially when someone mentions decreased motor skills and lowered state of consciousness. Especially given that Nurse #2 was able to take the lady in.
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara]
This includes nurses, although if it is one of their number in particular I might well be inclined to tell her I am busy and that I have no telephone, even if I do have a telephone, and that I will go home and call an ambulance to take her to the nearest city 25 miles distant, and would she please wait there until said vehicle arrives, or maybe just go fuck herself, whichever course of action she deems to be most appropriate for the circumstances at hand.
[/QUOTE]
I think you’d actually find it more satisyfing to come across the nurse lying in the street… and then just run her over.
[QUOTE=dangermom]
A few days ago, an elderly lady went missing in the next town while driving to see her friend down the street. She was spotted asking for directions in two places far apart, one a couple of miles from my house, but no one on the spot realized just how lost she was. Flyers went up all over town. Her body was discovered about 36 hours ago, near her car. She wasn’t dressed for cold weather and had simply driven around for a couple of days until she couldn’t any more.
[/QUOTE]
That is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
[QUOTE=Ms. Pumpkin]
That is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
[/QUOTE]
It is really sad. It’s not that people didn’t care or wouldn’t help her, it’s that the people who saw her didn’t realize she needed help. I’m sure they feel terrible. A lot of people were on the lookout for her, but by the time we saw the flyers I think it might have already been too late.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Oh, we’ve taken care of that.
The Bankruptcy ‘Reform’ bill passed a couple of years ago protects banks, insurance companies, and big hospitals from this by no longer allowing people to file bankruptcy due to medical bills.
[/QUOTE]
That’s right! I had forgotten. Those lousy cheats, trying to beat the system…this law’ll show them. (we truly have an effed system of government sometimes, no?)
And here is THE reason I worked the past 6 years: to provide health insurance for my family. Oh, the money was darned handy, no denying that, but it was the inexpensive family coverage (eye, and dental and orthodontic, as well as health care much cheaper through my hospital job than through my husband’s workplace) that kept me staff there–6 years of hell. Pure hell. But I digress…