Private A&Es - do they exist?

[Somewhatfoolish]

Do private A&Es exist? If so do they exist in the North East region?

And if so what about private ambulances (to me that term means an undertaker van )

Am not asking for myself but my grandmother. Atm it seems clear from her express wishes if she had a serious problem she'd probably just down one or two of the bottles of oramorph she's been stockpiling rather than put up with the NHS - but surely there's a private solution? I can't find one immediately though... am I looking for it wrong?

[gangzoom]

No. Infact I suspect apart from central London there is no private hospital in the UK that will/can do any acute care - ie Manage heart attacks, strokes.

Edited by gangzoom on Thursday 12th January 05:41

[McGee_22]

Nope, when things go wrong in Private Hospitals they call 999, more frequently than you would want to think.

[gangzoom]

McGee_22 said:

Nope, when things go wrong in Private Hospitals they call 999, more frequently than you would want to think.

Given the current Ambulance response protocol, if you are in a place of safety (hospital), and access to some care (you are in a hospital), I suspect you will be waiting a long time for transfer!

[sawman]

There are no private a&e hospitals in the north east.

There are some excellent nhs hospitals, with a&e departments and one facility that is just for emergency care, there are also several private hospitals, but they do not provide emergency care.

[McGee_22]

gangzoom said:

McGee_22 said:

Nope, when things go wrong in Private Hospitals they call 999, more frequently than you would want to think.

Given the current Ambulance response protocol, if you are in a place of safety (hospital), and access to some care (you are in a hospital), I suspect you will be waiting a long time for transfer!

I did 12 years with Yorkshire Ambulance Service and even over 10 years ago when I finished the problems of 95% of 999 calls not being actual emergencies and patients being log-jammed at A&E's was present - I can't imagine how bad it is now. We used to get calls to come clear after 15 minutes or so - waits of hours are now commonplace for crews when there is nowhere to put patients.

Hospital bed mismanagement is where the issue is - get patients fixed and home again. Even 10 years ago Hospital Managers were getting promoted on the back of cost-savings they'd 'made' by shutting Wards only for actual Health Professionals to say, 'WTAF - where are the beds for the patients?'

In our Ambulance Service a junior 'professional' manager came in and decided to make 'savings' by selling the sites of the Ambulance Stations and then leasing them back - it was such a 'brilliant' idea he was almost instantly promoted quite high up because of it.

Within just a few years the lease fees outpaced the previous site maintenance fees and the Service started losing money hand over fist. I believe they were evicted from one site too - for a block of flats to be built...

[pavarotti1980]

McGee_22 said:

I did 12 years with Yorkshire Ambulance Service and even over 10 years ago when I finished the problems of 95% of 999 calls not being actual emergencies and patients being log-jammed at A&E's was present - I can't imagine how bad it is now. We used to get calls to come clear after 15 minutes or so - waits of hours are now commonplace for crews when there is nowhere to put patients.

Hospital bed mismanagement is where the issue is - get patients fixed and home again. Even 10 years ago Hospital Managers were getting promoted on the back of cost-savings they'd 'made' by shutting Wards only for actual Health Professionals to say, 'WTAF - where are the beds for the patients?'

In our Ambulance Service a junior 'professional' manager came in and decided to make 'savings' by selling the sites of the Ambulance Stations and then leasing them back - it was such a 'brilliant' idea he was almost instantly promoted quite high up because of it.

Within just a few years the lease fees outpaced the previous site maintenance fees and the Service started losing money hand over fist. I believe they were evicted from one site too - for a block of flats to be built...

The current problems are nothing to do with hospital bed mismanagement. When you have 20%+ of your bed capacity taken up with patients medically fit for discharge but nowhere to go due to chronic gaps in adult social care it creates a little bit of a bottleneck at admissions units and A&E. Thats not an NHS issue but a local authority problem as the relevant commissioner which the NHS suffers with and has little ability to do anything about without investing in intermediate care to remove the medically fit cohort from acute beds

Also Junior Managers would not have the ability to sell off sites either. This would be a corporate board level decision. When did all of this happen?

Somewhatfoolish said:

Do private A&Es exist? If so do they exist in the North East region?

And if so what about private ambulances (to me that term means an undertaker van )

Am not asking for myself but my grandmother. Atm it seems clear from her express wishes if she had a serious problem she'd probably just down one or two of the bottles of oramorph she's been stockpiling rather than put up with the NHS - but surely there's a private solution? I can't find one immediately though... am I looking for it wrong?

No private A&Es in the North East. Simple reason is there is no profit in emergency medicine as it is unpredictable and costly.

Edited by pavarotti1980 on Thursday 12th January 12:47

[Countdown]

gangzoom said:

McGee_22 said:

Nope, when things go wrong in Private Hospitals they call 999, more frequently than you would want to think.

Given the current Ambulance response protocol, if you are in a place of safety (hospital), and access to some care (you are in a hospital), I suspect you will be waiting a long time for transfer!

i think it's more about shifting any liability.

Re: the OP - I'd be surprised. A&Es have a very high operating overhead. ie they cost a fortune to run so unless you could "block sell" a load of appointments you wouldn't make any money out of it. Also once somebody has been through A&E they would usually need to be admitted onto a ward so you would need the full backup that a hospital provides.

[LimmerickLad]

pavarotti1980 said:

The current problems are nothing to do with hospital bed mismanagement. When you have 20%+ of your bed capacity taken up with patients medically fit for discharge but nowhere to go due to chronic gaps in adult social care it creates a little bit of a bottleneck at admissions units and A&E. Thats not an NHS issue but a local authority problem as the relevant commissioner which the NHS suffers with and has little ability to do anything about without investing in intermediate care to remove the medically fit cohort from acute beds

From what my O/H tells me (band 8 nurse spending much of her day trying to free up beds) this is entirely correct. also many families are very reluctant to take any responsibility for their relatives' care and I am sure I heard, will double-check with her later, some Trusts are even offering them money to look after them at home.

[Countdown]

They are (or certainly were). They're also putting them up in hotels in order to free up beds.

[Jonathan27]

Not a lot of help for you in the NE I know, but we have private A&Es in Ireland. They are usually run by the insurance companies, and commit to a max waiting time - I think its something like one hour. That being said, attending a public A&E will cost you E100, that ought to keep the waits down, but for some reason doesn't.

[drmike37]

Never, ever go private for something acute. Private healthcare works for non time critical elective stuff. It does not work for trauma or acute illness.

A&E is ruinously expensive. Can you honestly imagine a private company wanting to take that on???

[Sheepshanks]

Jonathan27 said:

Not a lot of help for you in the NE I know, but we have private A&Es in Ireland. They are usually run by the insurance companies, and commit to a max waiting time - I think its something like one hour. That being said, attending a public A&E will cost you E100, that ought to keep the waits down, but for some reason doesn't.

That's interesting - so the people who think that charging patients a tenner for visiting their GP or A&E will fix everything are wrong.

[Jonathan27]

Well not necessarily. A GP appointment here cost E50. If I need an appointment I will generally call in the morning and be offered three or four options for that day. A&E however is different as despite the charges there are always long waits, unless you go to a private A&E. On the one occasion that I have needed it, I decided to drive an hour to the private A&E instead of going to the state one half an hour from home, knowing that it would work out a lot quicker in the end.

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

My experiences of A&E have on the whole been really good. The staff that looked after my Dad in The ICU were amazing, one nurse called Greg in particular is fully qualified to wear his pants on the outside of his trousers.

So if your relative needs an ambulance, just call her one. There were a couple of times my Dad didn't want an ambulance but he needed one.

The first time we waited because he wanted to see if it improved - it didn't. For the 2 or 3 subsequent emergencies (and they were real emergencies) over the period of a year or so I just called him one when I felt he needed one. So do that, if you think shes going to object, just call her one without asking her.

[Sheepshanks]

Jonathan27 said:

Well not necessarily. A GP appointment here cost E50. If I need an appointment I will generally call in the morning and be offered three or four options for that day. A&E however is different as despite the charges there are always long waits, unless you go to a private A&E. On the one occasion that I have needed it, I decided to drive an hour to the private A&E instead of going to the state one half an hour from home, knowing that it would work out a lot quicker in the end.

Thanks - if it was £50 to see a GP here and £100 to go to A&E I'm pretty sure that both would be all but deserted. GP practices would be making doctors redundant.

[seyre1972]

McGee_22 said:

Nope, when things go wrong in Private Hospitals they call 999, more frequently than you would want to think.

This - my wife was a Senior Sister in Intensive Care - Central London hospital .... Their ITU/ICU unit made > £1 million for the trust one year effectively from Private Hospitals whom shifted a patient to them when they got too sick/things went wrong. They bill them

The unit had it's own American Style Intensive Care ambulance - with their own drivers, and sent out their own staff to collect the patients. They also did Tropical Diseases - we've got some very interesting books on my wife's bookshelf that wold put you off going abroad to some places ......

[worsy]

Sheepshanks said:

Jonathan27 said:

Well not necessarily. A GP appointment here cost E50. If I need an appointment I will generally call in the morning and be offered three or four options for that day. A&E however is different as despite the charges there are always long waits, unless you go to a private A&E. On the one occasion that I have needed it, I decided to drive an hour to the private A&E instead of going to the state one half an hour from home, knowing that it would work out a lot quicker in the end.

Thanks - if it was £50 to see a GP here and £100 to go to A&E I'm pretty sure that both would be all but deserted. GP practices would be making doctors redundant.

I think the people who visit both unnecessarily would still go (and refuse to pay) whereas people who were genuine would likely think twice and contribute to greater mortality.

[croyde]

Don't need to charge to clear out A&E.

I got sent to a hospital in Birmingham with a small OB crew to do an as live for the news about waiting times in A&E.

As I'm setting up my camera I'm surrounded by mouth breathing 'walking wounded' asking what I'm doing and that they don't want to be seen on camera.

I ignored them and got on with my work.

The director asked me to get some B roll of the crowded waiting area then shots of busy doctors and nurses.

But.........

The crowds had all feked off and backstage the docs and nurses were all chatting and having cups of tea.

Got to be cheaper to send a TV crew to various A&Es then treat all the time wasters

[CzechItOut]

pavarotti1980 said:

The current problems are nothing to do with hospital bed mismanagement. When you have 20%+ of your bed capacity taken up with patients medically fit for discharge but nowhere to go due to chronic gaps in adult social care it creates a little bit of a bottleneck at admissions units and A&E. Thats not an NHS issue but a local authority problem as the relevant commissioner which the NHS suffers with and has little ability to do anything about without investing in intermediate care to remove the medically fit cohort from acute beds

Would it be better if the NHS and adult social care sat under the same structure, rather than straddling central and local government?