SINCE some regular readers have been kind enough to ask, I can reveal I’ve just enjoyed my usual pre-Christmas battle for survival in the hands of the NHS.
It’s becoming a festive tradition.
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“Enjoy” may be pushing it a bit, but I can confirm that for all its abundant flaws and failures, the sharp end of our national health system can be absolutely world class.
Last Christmas it was a heart attack that almost carried me off. This year hospital-acquired sepsis.
I blame nobody for an infection which is now widespread in both private and state hospitals.
I won’t bore you with details. Suffice to say sepsis is fast-moving and potentially lethal.
After three days of 24-hour care in an A&E ward, I was told I was fortunate not to have left it another day.
It wasn’t all perfect. I arrived at a top London hospital with an appointment to see a specialist and was left in a side ward for hours before she came and found me.
But my experience was a world away from the nightmare suffered by the vast majority who wait months or years in terror for tests and treatment.
The reason? I’ve drawn first prize in the postcode lottery.
I live in central London, minutes by Tube or ambulance from some of the best hospitals in the land.
If I hit the phone at 8am, I can usually see a GP the same day.
If the A&E specialist was right, my same-day appointment a fortnight ago saved my life.
If the rest of the NHS was this good we would all be happy voters. It is not.
Dropping off the twig
Many patients are treated like livestock in an abattoir.
Millions must now wait a month to see their GP — or visit a crowded A&E instead.
Families who fork out billions to fund this juggernaut find care is NOT free from cradle to grave. It is rationed.
Just up the road in Cheltenham, a friend’s routine prostate test showed his PSA was dangerously high. He needed an MRI scan.
It would take two years on the NHS, a possible life sentence.
He went private and paid £750 to be scanned immediately — one less on the official waiting list.
Why should patients have to pay more on top of the £182billion they already fork out in taxes.
I too have gone private. I could have used my scheme sooner but as a lottery winner, felt safe in NHS hands.
What has changed is the need for further care — and the monstrous NHS queue for treatment.
The official waiting list has just fallen, to a chorus of management glee.
But this has nothing to do with faster care. Patients are simply dropping off the twig before reaching the finishing line.
The number of “waits” for procedures and treatments has fallen by 60,000, from 7.77million to 7.71 million — still up three million since Covid.
Top cancer specialist Karol Sikora warns there is nothing to celebrate.
“These are either patients voting with their feet by going private or tragically dying from the condition for which they were seeking help,” he says.
“This is not ‘excellent’ progress. It’s an appalling state of affairs.
“NHS leadership should be hauled in front of MPs on a weekly basis until it significantly improves.”
This is not government failure. It is an NHS management disaster.
It was Prof Sikora who lifted the lid on lockdown and its catastrophic consequences for millions of NHS patients suffering life-threatening non-Covid illnesses.
Problem for millions
Yet the ongoing Covid show trial is more concerned with vindicating scientists who forced us into lockdown to “Save the NHS” than the countless avoidable deaths that will haunt us for decades.
At its best, Sikora agrees, NHS front-line care is world class.
“The clinical teams have the training, skills and dedication. Whether it is cancer care or open-heart surgery, it can be totally world beating,” he says.
The problem for millions of long-suffering patients is that they live at the wrong address . . . which seems to be just about everywhere in Britain except where I’m so lucky to be.
