UK dopers, what's the NHS like?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’ll echo what’s been said about the NHS failing in the middle. If you’ve got something major that needs treating RIGHT NOW or something minor like a cold that can wait, then they’re wonderful. Otherwise you can end up waiting a long time in considerable pain.

About 12 years ago, all four of my wisdom teeth started to impact. This left me in constant pain. I went to see the dentist who referred me on, at which stage I had the option of waiting six months to a year for treatment on the NHS or going private. Not surprisingly, I went private.

42

I am not sure where irishgirl gets her prescriptions, but mine cost £6.50 [US$11.40] per item rather than her £8. As noted by the Prescription Pricing Authority, if you regularly need to get several items, you may be able to save a few bob with a Prescription Pre-payment Certificate.

My doctor sends me every 3 or 4 months for a blood test at Hammersmith Hospital. This involves going to the phlebotomy unit and taking a ticket as if you were at the delicatessen counter at Tesco’s. There are usually 3 phlebotomists working at any given time and my number has come up in between 3 and 35 minutes depending on the time of day. This service is totally free.

43

NHS dentistry is a horse of a different colour. Indeed the NHS dentistry service has pretty well ceased to exist over large parts of the country with the majority of dentists refusing to participate in it (the legal position is that they are independent contractors who do NHS work if they want to). They claim that it doesn’t pay them enough.

44

I’ve a friend who’s a dentist so I’ve heard chapter and verse. But in my case, I should have explained that I had to go to hospital and have them all out under general anaesthetic - a job for a regular surgeon.

45

Originally dentistry and optometry was included under the NHS but it was dropped in 1951 i believe. TPTB of the time recognised that, while they wanted all-encompassing universal healthcare, if they were going to pay for the important things like reducing TB then they’d have to drop non-lifethreatening things like teeth and eyes. Which made sense.

I think for a lot of people today this can be pretty annoying as sometimes NHS subsidised dentists are hard to find. I guess i’m just lucky as when i was looking for a dentist shortly after moving to London i found one taking NHS patients, who works Saturdays and who practices about 30 seconds from my front door. :smiley:

46

That’s odd - was that because of a situation particular to you? Here wisdom tooth extractions, even full bony impactions, are generally done at the oral surgeon’s (or even the regular dentist’s) office, under local or IV sedation; only if there were risk of complications would it be done in the hospital. (My sister used to work in an oral and maxillofacial surgery practice, and just about the only time the surgeons would go to the hospital was to deal with a severe trauma case.)

47

Everyone has good and bad stories about the NHS. Not a single one of Fierra’s relatives and friends in the UK has anything positive to say about it. She certainly doesn’t.

When she had carbon monoxide poisoning, she had to wait 16 hours in the ER before a doctor saw her for triage. Until then, she sat in a chair and tried to stay conscious.

With her kidney surgery she needed, she was told there was going to be a wait measured in years. To simply discuss the result of a kidney scan test, she was scheduled to wait months. When she came over here and was put on my insurance (as an aside, yes, my company does cover “same sex partners”, which I found to my great surprise), she got in for her surgery within two months, and the only reason it took that long was because they tried another procedure first (reputedly not available in the UK) to try to fix it without invasive surgery. The surgeon here said that with the wait she had in the UK, she would likely have lost the kidney completely (she was down to 40% function). Instead, she has nearly 100% function now.

In the UK, she was told the only procedure covered by NHS was a full-incision one, with a 6-inch cut and a 1-2 week recovery time. In the US, she had laproscopic, and was out in 2 days.

Ironically, a few weeks after she was home and recovering well from her surgery, her office in the UK sent her a letter to let her know they were ready to discuss her test results with her, finally. :rolleyes:

I’m sure plenty can give good examples of how NHS works for them. IME and Fierra’s, all is not sunshine and puppy dogs. There are advantages to NHS, and, obviously, disadvantages. Without insurance, Fierra’s surgery would have cost about $35,000. At the time, I could have written a check for that and not really been terribly put out; I’ll hazard 99.9% of the people I know would not be able to do the same, and would be somewhat screwed, resorting to loans, second mortgages, or worse.

48

Sorry, £6:50 is right. It’s been so long since I needed one- my Irish prescriptions are free because I’m from the North, and the only drugs I get on a regular basis from the NHS are free anyway.

I think the last time I paid for anything was a Hep A/Typhoid injection and 9 weeks worth of chloroqine/proguanil and that was 18months ago. I think it came to about £15 in total, so in my head I went: 2 drugs=2 prescriptions=about £8 each. Then I remembered that the malaria prophylaxis was OTC. D’oh!

That Hep A/Typhoid booster vaccine would have cost £50 (75euro) if I’d got it in the South… it’s called making socialised healthcare and EU treaties work for you, baby!