2 other points; casualty department is an old fashioned term, we now use ‘Accident and Emergency’ or ‘Emergency Department’, and please stop inferring that the NHS is free, it is not now, nor has it ever been, free. It is paid for by the population as a whole by a National Insurance scheme that everyone pays as part of their deductions from their wages/salary, it is only free in the sense that you do not get presented with a bill when you attend for treatment.

Is it true? Yes I imagine it did happen at least one place at one time. It it common, not at all. If it was it would be headline news every single day. Its just a silly anecdotal story.

The truth. Its been about 20 years since I’ve been in A&E, at the time 3-4 hour waits were common. I went in again recently and my feet barely touched the ground. Reception, triage, doctor, xray, doctor, cast, and out the door. Discussing this with others who are more frequent flyers (they have kids) confirmed my impression that things have improved a lot recently.

As for the rest of the NHS, well I have private insurance, it comes free with the job. Some years back it was very useful for bypassing long queues to see specialists , these days I don’t even bother to use it, too many forms and phonecalls. I just let the NHS kick in, and its just fine.

I don’t support the current UK government , but its hard to knock what they have done with the NHS over the last 12 years.

Happy and Blessed New Year to you all.

happy new year.

Please don’t use the Daily Mail as a source of UK news, it a joke newspaper.

Read the story and use your own brain, the *opposition* party says that the government has failed on the NHS, Oh Really!, did you expect them to come out and say what a wonderful job the government has done???

Check this one out for fun. Appellate court in Ohio basically wiped out the statute of limitations on med-mal claims by allowing a “John Doe” suit to be brought and in their ruling state that “the statute of limitations begins to run once the plaintiff acquires additional information of the defendant’s wrongful conduct.” They allow a suit where, during depositions in a suit against one physician, that physician implicates another long after the statute of limitations has run out. So now, in Ohio, the statue begins whenever a plaintiff decides to investigate if a claim should be filed, not when the injury occurs.

See: http://oh.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%5COH%5C2009%5C20090210_0000755.OH.htm/qx

I was called by my county medical society committee which evaluates medical complaints early in my career when I moonlighted in a local ER. I saw a pt. who had just been given an antibiotic by his PCP the day before for a cough and pleuritic chest pain. He complained of continued posterior chest pain. I heard no rales, no friction rub, no dullness to percussion. As he had just been to his doctor and had less than 24 hours of antibiotic, I did not repeat the CXR nor did I change the antibiotic. This was back in the days Ceclor was still brand name!!!

He was hospitalized in a nearby town (where he was from by the way) about 3 days later and required a chest tube for presumably empyema.

The committee suggested I waive my bill and that the ER waive their bill so that the pt. wouldn’t sue.

So ever since I gave out antibiotics like candy, whether needed or not. Only recently have I finally yielded to the logic of the situation and stopped giving out antibiotics, and I am waiting to be sued for not giving an antibiotic despite a clear chest exam and negative CXR for a fever of 1 hour duration.