London Ambulance Service apologises to seriously injured cyclist left waiting for more than an hour

Hi, I'm the guy that was injured in the Richmond incident. While I was lying on the wet road, the Dr at the scene said if you stay here you will get hypothemia, so you need to get off the road.  I took a gamble, without knowing the true extent of my injuries, I had to get up and go into a near shop. An hour on the road could have been fatal for me...

ferdeen wrote:

Hi, I'm the guy that git injured in the Richmond incident. while I was lying on the wet road, the Dr at the scene said if you stay here you will get hypothemia so you need to get of the road.  I took a gamble, without knowing the true extent of my injuries I had to get up and go into a near shop. An hour on the road could have been fatal for me...

That sounds horrible and is why I've got an emergency foil blanket stowed on my bike.

Wishing you a speedy recovery.

Wasn't disputing it, ferdeen.  I'd just meant that the media is full of "little old lady waits 96 hours for an ambulance after falling down stairs" type stories at present.

I hope you're doing better, now?

Yes, sorry I was giving my perspective and understand your angle. I'm in physio, still a bit sore, but way better than 4 weeks ago. Thanks!

OldRidgeback wrote:

The Tories have been in power since 2010 and the NHS is on its knees. Go figure.

Nah, there can't be any link between the party in power for so long and all the bad things that have been happening in that time... It's all Corbyn's fault, or Tony Blair.

I think its safe to say its all Corbyn's fault. Imagine where we'd be if he'd actually got into power... all speaking russian and living in mud huts by now for certain.

In all seriousness, I'm growing increasingly frustrated by the general apathy of the general population towards the awful state of our country. Every day we are told of another failure / issue and given some half assed excuse about Russia, pendemic bounceback, blah blah blah.

No one questions it. No one is saying 'why?' or more importantly 'what are we going to do about it?', 'could it be better?'

We should be rioting.

**please note I am aware of the hypocrasy in the above as I type this on my lunch break in the office** 

Good point, look at how he managed to ruin the country without even being in power! Mind you, right-
thinking folks might have been concerned that Labour's share of the vote increased during his tenure. Happily for them he - a euroskeptic - apparently fell foul of Brexit and got Johnsoned, finally leading to a huge Conservative majority!

OldRidgeback wrote:

The Tories have been in power since 2010 and the NHS is on its knees. Go figure.

It's almost like they want it to fail so they can sell it off to their mates for a nice little consideration.

Labour have been running the Welsh NHS since 1997 and it's in an even worse state than NHS England.

Go figure.

Rich_cb wrote:

Labour have been running the Welsh NHS since 1997 and it's in an even worse state than NHS England. Go figure.

Unsurprisingly its not that clear cut.  Scroll down to the end, but worth reading all the way.

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/how-well-is-the-nhs-in-wales-...

That seems to confirm what I was saying.

Worse performance on almost all metrics and over a far longer period.

I though this was the most telling quote:

"The Welsh government has simply chosen not to focus its budget on health to the same extent as governments in London"

Rich_cb wrote:

That seems to confirm what I was saying. Worse performance on almost all metrics and over a far longer period. I though this was the most telling quote: "The Welsh government has simply chosen not to focus its budget on health to the same extent as governments in London"

As opposed to "30% better funded Social care" or " Welsh population has overall worse health"

As I said not clear cut.  But you keep on cherry picking.

It's not cherry picking.

The Welsh NHS is underperforming relative to England, Welsh Labour choose to divert funding away from the NHS.

If the population is genuinely sicker does that seem like a sensible choice?

It's all well and good talking up what they're spending the diverted money on but you can't lose sight of where the money has been diverted from.

1/3 of all ambulance call outs are for 0.6% of the patient population. In many cases these emergency call outs are subsequently classified as wasted calls / "frequent fliers"  - effectively a small number of patients are consuming a huge share of capacity for spurious calls - often drink / drugs / mental health related.

https://www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/articles/one-percent-population-...

The solution to this problem is entirely within the gift of the NHS and has very little to do with the NHS being "on its knees":

- failure to update Triage protocols by LAS to de-prioritise time wasters

- failure to coordinate with drug / alcohol / mental health services

- failure to collaborate between Ambulance Services and Primary Care (using GPs to address the root cause).

This is also compounded by the NHS having recently completed a national procurement for new Ambulance Vehicles that can't be driven by around 1/4 of their staff (too short / too tool). The first ambulance trust to receive these vehicles is reported here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-61847310

The NHS has around 600 CEOs all paid close to £1/2m a year inc pensions - maybe at some point they could get on with running it properly.

If running it poorly affected their salaries and bonuses (and other accountabilities) maybe they would run it properly...

But when targets are hit the financials and not patient care levels it won't work.

That's astonishing if true.  Worth quoting the article

nhe wrote:

The British Red Cross have found that that 367,000 people, which equates to around one percent of the population in England attend A&E up to 346 times a year. ... The research analysis found that a fifth of those repeatedly attending A&E lived alone and also often lived in deprived areas of the country. Frequent users also accounted for 29% of all ambulance call outs and 16% of non-minor-injury A&E visits. The data also revealed that people in their twenties were more likely to repeatedly visit A&E than any other age category. Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: 'High intensity use of A&E is closely associated with deprivation and inequalities - if you overlay a map of frequent A&E use and a map of deprivation, they're essentially the same.'

Particularly the line about young people.

I was aware that certain populations consume proportionally massive amounts of resources though.  That is behind certain ideas to try different interventions which emphasise the social dimension and which minimize harm and also reduce cost.  Sadly the UK mostly still finds this "beyond the pale" eg. drug use rooms, provision of medical-grade drugs or alcohol to long-term addicts.