... is the fact the hospital I went to today had today had a full Room Service menu and a wine list in my own room. Now THAT is what I call a decent healthcare system!!

And what on earth is it that wrong with you, then, or do you just want to add self to the list?

As it turns out, I am very healthy, but if you can get a full MOT for free, I think it's worth doing!

Jolly good! Enjoy!

Glad to know you're in tip-top order Mr B !

This is me enjoying the facilities:

edited

Well done Mr Bouffant. Stuff like this makes me wobble just thinking about it.

Where's the artery which goes down the back and under?

I wasn't too impressed with private when my daughter finished up in a private sector hospital for one of her grommet operations.

She was in a nice room with 4 beds but there was no sign of nurses. On an NHS ward the nurses station is usually somewhere in view of the patients not along a corridor and round the corner.
I think that because of the payment issue they seem to discharge much sooner, sometimes before someone is really able to cope at home.

Private dentists *shudders*

and me - Today we took a small child to the doctors with toothache and he said we should have taken her to the dentist - except that there isn't an NHS one here - so we took her to a private dentist and paid £78 to get her looked at and x-rayed only to be told it wasn't her tooth and we should go to the doctors.

(It was a a one-sided virus gland thing - like Mumps only more like Mump )

the dentist i go to is technically private, but still does children free. Maybe there's one like this near you? £78 seems a lot for a check-up

I can only say that I have received the very best of (NHS) care, on the two occassions I have required it, once for an op and once for falling off a horse.

It's the fancy new x-ray machine they need to pay for.

Perhaps the "children for free" thing is what dentists do to fill their books? They asked if she'd be wanting six monthly appointments... erm, no thanks, we have several children and the cost would equate to a short holiday with trimmings.

On an NHS ward the nurses station is usually somewhere in view of the patients not along a corridor and round the corner.

oh - that would be the nurse's station with the tv on all night and which kept me awake then !

So you value a holiday more than your children's teeth? Preventative dentistry is important. People are starting to forget that though, as those having children now usually have better teeth than their parents did - because of preventative dentistry. Because they have better teeth, and generally haven't had as much toothache, as many abscesses, and so on, they don't value preventative treatment as highly, so aren't as inclined to make sure their children get it. Ultimately, children have their teeth for the rest of their life (hopefully) and only have a holiday for a week.

I agree, though, that the state of NHS dentistry in England is appalling. At least with children a good many practices will still take on child NHS patients, but for adults it's pretty much impossible. I only recently got a NHS dentist again - by moving to Scotland - after six years without. I rang up the nearest practice, and got straight in - no problem - and had a choice of half a dozen with vacancies. Furthermore, check-ups are free (for adults or children), one only pays for work that needs to be done.



In my experience with relatives' care under the NHS, they were only too keen to discharge confused elderly relatives who had no-one at home to look after them. They're not being malicious - there's a bed shortage - but to suggest that private hospitals discharge inappropriately early when compared to NHS hospitals is a little inaccurate.

Not that full room service and a wine list aren't very nice but I really don't see what they have to do with health care in hospital or elsewhere.

Besides, can you imagine the furore about wasted money if you DID have these things in an NHS hosptial?


Part of the reason why so few dentists are prepared to work on the NHS, and part of the reason why NHS dentistry is often so poor, is that in many cases the standards of treatment that the NHS is prepared to pay for have been superceded by newer and better treatments that render the NHS standards obsolete to such an extent that they would now constitute negligence in the USA, for example. A lot of dentists would cheerfully do NHS work, if the NHS was prepared to pay for the treatments at the standards they are prepared to do. Yes, they like the money. Who doesn't like to get paid for what they do? That doesn't mean that the money is all it's about.

You are right of course, but it gives an insight into healthcare being provided in terms of what is convenient for the consumer (i.e. the patient) as opposed to the NHS where it is provided in terms of what is convenient for the system (and possibly the staff).

In the NHS a dentist gets paid the same amount for doing 20 fillings on a patient as he does for 2 fillings!!! Of course dentists get fed up with this. It also discourages them to take on the patients most needing to be seen... those with poor dental health!

That is the case in England and Wales, but not in Scotland: England charges a flat fee of £40something for however many normal fillings need doing, or £199 if a crown is needed; Scotland still uses the old system of paying by the piece up to a maximum of £384 for a course of treatment. Hence, no NHS dental crisis in Scotland....

I agree with Robodoc's point about dentists having to do what would be seen as negligent in other countries. For instance, if a tooth needs a root filling and a crown, the way the payment for treatment is structured in England means that the dentist will say to the patient either they can do it privately for some high fee, or they can extract the tooth for a few quid on the NHS. It's not really the fault of the dentist, they have to make ends meet after all and the maximum fee of £199 really isn't that much to spend on a complex treatment. Again, not a problem in Scotland - the patient pays 80% of the cost of the treatment (up to £384 max), the NHS pays 20%. So if the 'right' thing to do costs a fair bit, the NHS will pay the extra above the £384 the patient pays - in England, they simply won't. The caveat of the NHS not funding bridges or implants still applies, but at least anything up to that is covered.

Not quite true... we do root treatments on NHS 'cos we have to (I'm talking in England) due to our contract!! Obviously a simple extraction takes less time and so the dentist might be forgiven for "suggesting" that extraction is a good route... but in the practices I am responsible for we do do RCT on the NHS and we make NO money from the treatment... which in my humble opinion is just plain wrong.

The other thing is the patient pays the flat fee of £43 whatever... and the dental practice gets 3 UDA's (units od dental activity) but the value of each UDA was negotiated pre-new contract in April 2006 and varies!!!! So one practice may get more money (or value of UDA) than one down the road. Now that just isn't right!!!!!!

I know simple root treatments are available, however I was specifically referring to complex treatments involving a root filling topped with a crown - often entailing a supportive metal post being inserted into the tooth as scaffolding to hold the whole thing together. Getting this on the NHS is hard. Given you make no money on a simple root filling, I doubt you'd be making any money on this either; if not an outright loss, once all the lab work and the several appointments necessary are factored in.

My mother, who is 87 and lives alone, has recently been into an NHS hospital for a fairly major operation. She stayed in hospital for four weeks afterwards, until they could find a place in a nursing home for her; she then spent two weeks in the nursing home (which seemed more like a hotel to me), where physiotherapy was organised for her, before being discharged.

I have nothing but praise for the hospital (Barnsley General) and the nursing home. I'd been worried that Mum might be discharged too early, but in fact they would have been willing for her to stay longer in the nursing home; she felt she should go home before she got too used to having everything done for her (i.e. laundry, meals prepared - she washed and dressed hrself). I really don't think a private hospital could have been any better.

After my 9 day stay in Addenbrooke's please don't get me started on the subject of the food! I can't eat potatoes ( IBS) and there's something wierd with dairy too so for the the sake of convieneience avoid dairy products (other than butter) whenever I eat out or stay anywhere. Over my bed there was a sign marked "diet potatoes and dairy products" The way it was written you'd have thought they'd be considering feeding me nothing but cheese and potato pie! Every time the food came up I kept having to forcefully tell them "I can't eat that" Their sole idea of carbohydrates was potatoes - very occasionally I'd be lucky and get pasta that hadn't been smothered in something dairy, or rice. I feel like they've probably had to plant a new paddy field somewhere due to the amount of white rice I consumed during my stay. They could at least have offered me couscous too, its not even as if it is difficult to prepare,

Given the meds I was on a wine list would not have been a good idea.

Now due to otherthings that went wrong I have the job of writing letters of complaint to both patientline and PALS (the office hospital complaint body.

I have had no such problems on the times where I used the local private hospital.