My Solution to the NHS (by sarah)
Having spent alot of time stuck in hospitals or on waiting lists I then fall off of or never got the letter that told me I had an appointment I thought I would write down how I'd run things if I had complete power!
I would allow privatee patients - but this would not entitle you to jump queues or get better medicine - all it would mean is that you'd get a private room with TV wifi etc... you would still get the same food as that should be regulated to your specific condition. (I did lots of thinking about this whilst in hospital! Especially when they forgot to fed me).
I would also use the private rooms for over spill if there were bed shortages and the pivate patients would get a refund and have to lump it.
I would try and stop the 'us and them' attitude between the doctors and nurses by making drs train as nurses first. (I know this is major over hall of our current education of medical professionals) I would also make them work on ambulances as ambulance stuff before they could qualify etc... and probably make them do 'reminder' stints after qualification.
I would make sure that any management type people have a medical back ground so that (hopefully) they will know what is essential and what is not - again being a nurse first would help with this - they would realise that pillows and blankets are actually needed.
For washing people ect.. I would encourage the spanish system of having the family do it (if they are able to/willing) and only use hospital stuff for that when needed.
I would get food preperation people to come and over hull all the wards and operating theatres so they are easily cleaned - beleive me butches have better hygien than our hospitals. In fact our hospitals or at least the ones I've been in are badly designed in this respect with lots of nooks and crannys for the germs to lerk.
I would implement the design me and hubby came up with for effiencient and hard wearing and modular (so when a bit breaks you just replace that bit.) medical monitors for oxygen, heart rate etc... This would reduce the wires and things and I would make sure there were enough of them! I would also make sure the nurses had a basic understanding of the electronics so that they know when something is broken before the accidently use it on pregnant women and panic when they can't hear the baby (fortunatly I had been in the ward long enough to have worked out which one of the baby monitor things worked and which didnt but if I had been just admitted to the ward with a problem it would have scared me as it was the poor student nurse was in a right state).
Have nutritionist and dieticians incharge of the food so diabetics didn't end up with sugar sweetened friut juice etc (happened to my dad). This would reduce the convelesance time along with proper physiotherapy and excersises regimes for people stuck in hospital etc..
As far as GPs are concerned I would have home visits back and I would have 'check ups' ie you go and see your doctor just for a chat and to mention all those little things like the festy toe nail you wouldnt normal get around for making an appointment for (and you therefore end up causulty cos its gone green and you have a nasty fever - Alaric). I would add in a big smattering of preventative medicine here including talking therapies as well as recipies for garlic consumption for blood thinning etc... - this should in the long run decrease the number of patients in a really bad state before they go to the drs and therefore would save moeny in the long run (not something that is going to interest a government who might only be in term for the next four yrs etc...).
The other thing that I think would be essential is to get rid of medical patents this way as long as there is no longer drug company monopolys and the best treatments will be used rather than the current state of affairs - of course this would mean that alot of drug trials etc... would have to be payed for by the tax payer etc... as the companies that do the research etc... are doing it purely for profiets
The last thing I would do is give hospitals the ability to choose their own contracts for repairs etc... and have harsh penalties for companies that try to screw them over - lots of money is currently wasted on building maintance that is unnessaccery.
I would have an appointment reminder system that emailed patients/phoned them a week/day before depending on prefernce. I know there are security issues here with patient records but I am confident that they are not insermountable. I also have issues with how they are digatizing the medical records but thats another story... All I can think is that I currently have over half the records from the pregnancy missing and as the hospital technically doesn't exist anymore I doubt they will ever be recovered so the only copy of alot of stuff is what me and Alaric made copies of and its not like it was minor stuff :/
Well thats all of the top of my head and there are probably lots of problems I havent accounted for etc...
Sat 26th Jan 2008 11:55 am 
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By Aunty Liz, Sun 27th Jan 2008 @ 3:16 am
Sarah - Just a thought: Top of the list : Make absolutely sure that the 'Doctors' are in fact 'fully qualified' to do what they claim they can!!
By Charlee, Sun 27th Jan 2008 @ 12:23 pm
I agree with a lot of that, but, selfishly disagree with the private bit. I was faced recently with the dilemma of either a) paying, out of my own pocket as my insurance had reached it's limit, for a capsule endoscopy and ultrasound, or waiting 6 months for them on the NHS. Given that I could've had Endometriosis, which left untreated can become a) and emergency or b) cause infertility, I took out a loan and had the tests. The endoscopy finally diagnosed my Crohns (which as it's early stage might go into remission and save further surgery costs) and the Ultrasound put my mind at ease that the cyst I had had basically gone and I didn't need to worry. That ability to "jump the queues" saved me a lot of worry and potentially has saved the NHS further costs. But I suppose overall I'd like for no-one to have to wait that long for tests or treatments, the waiting system is a joke.
By sarah, Sun 27th Jan 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Yeah the idea with what I propose would be that problems would be picked up earlier and really treatment being delayed costs more and I think if private patients couldnt jump queues then maybe there would be insentive to shorten them etc...
By Flo, Wed 30th Jan 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Sarah, there is a straightforward way to achieve what you are thinking about whitout having to change the world too much! Make all the hospitals private/run by trusts/charities, and give people who can't afford medical insurance vouchers so they can go to these hospitals and get decent treatments without having to wait either. Everyone else would not need to pay NI contributions and instead could put that money towards insurance. This way you get hospitals managed on a local basis so the people in charge are actually in control of what happens in the hospital, which company is providing the food, the cleaning, flowers, building work etc etc and they can adapt far more to patient's needs (eg cleaning by their familises or not) because they are not dependent on a central budget, or stupid government targets and guidelines. They could also then arrange appointments by phone or even, shock horror, in person! And everyone should be able to have a voluntary check-up every 5 years (blood tests etc, teeth and eyes, lungs, electrocardiogram, breast cancer) which would of course help detect loads of problems early on when they might still be treatable.