Posted on 04/22/2007 1:09:42 PM PDT by voletti
A row broke out last night over the state of Britain's hospitals after a retired consultant complained that his wife received far better treatment in India.
Opposition parties accused Labour of running down the NHS and failing to put patients first.
The dispute was sparked by the contrasting experience of Mark Ziervogel, 70, and his wife Toni, 66, in hospitals in India and Glasgow.
She received specialist treatment in two medical centres in India after suffering a serious head injury when she fell off a bicycle in Rajasthan in February.
Her husband, a former consultant radiologist, said the hospital in Ajmer, where she was seen by a neurosurgeon and given CT scans that revealed bruising to the brain, was "superb".
He praised its cleanliness, the efficiency of the staff and the high standard of equipment.
After five days in intensive care she was transferred to the Max Super Hospital in Delhi and on March 6 she had recovered enough to be taken home to Scotland. She was accompanied on the flight by an Indian doctor and nurse, and Mr Ziervogel said he "blushed" with embarrassment when the doctor walked into the "filthy" Western Infirmary in Glasgow.
He said it was more than four hours before his wife was given a bed on a surgical ward, and staff then told him that the hospital was not able to handle patients with head injuries who required rehabilitation.
She fell out of bed and broke her jaw during her stay at the Western. She has since been waiting for five weeks for a bed to become available at the physical disability rehabilitation unit in the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow.
However, Mr Ziervogel praised the staff at the hospital for their "kindness and patience", and blamed the problems on bureaucratic "management and systems".He said: "Staff have provided Toni with the best care they can given the resources they have."
Dr Nanette Milne, the Scottish Conservative health spokesman, said: "The Lib-Lab pact, despite the best efforts of NHS staff, is running our health service down. We will take politicians out of the running of the NHS and let the professionals do their job."
Shona Robison, the Scottish National Party health spokesman, said that after eight years of Labour and Liberal Democrat government, patients and health professionals deserved an NHS "fit for the 21st century".
The consultant, from East Dunbartonshire outside Glasgow, who formerly ran the X-ray department at Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Sick Children, also revealed that his wife's ambulance was kept waiting when it arrived at the Western as another emergency had just come in.
He said standards had declined in the NHS, adding: "It strikes me as strange that an acute receiving hospital with an A&E can only handle one case at a time.
"The Indian doctor was appalled. He was also appalled at the filthy and dirty aspect of the Western."
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said in a statement that a critical incident review into Mrs Ziervogel's fall was underway, and her husband was aware that he would be given an opportunity to "contribute to that review".
A spokesman added that Mrs Ziervogel had been accepted for transfer to the rehabilitation unit later this week.
India's hospitals - the large urban ones anyway - are privately run. These hospitals have an incentive to attract paying patients and word-of-mouth referrals. Their pharma industry produces generics at some of the lowest unit costs in the world and is now doing contract R&D for western firms. NHS treats its patients like the captive customers they are.
India's govt run healthcare sucks royally too, btw.
I spent 6 months in London a few years ago. While there, I had a recurrence of syptoms. (I had a brain tumor removed in 2001.)
I had my American doctor fax me a “prescription” for an MRI and brought it to the neighborhood general practioner. (Under NHS rules, you may only see the doctor dealing with your area.)
I told him why I was there and he said it would take around 6 months to get me in for an MRI. 6 MONTHS!!
I told him I would be paying cash for the procedure and his eyes lit up and he said it would only take a couple/few months in that case. Well golly, ain’t that wonderful?
My husband had a friend who is a doctor there who was able to get me in within a few days. Good thing I had inside connections.
For anyone who doesn’t understand why government paid healthcare is a bad idea, here’s one example that reflects the experiences of so many under NHS rules. So many suffer and even die while waiting for sub-standard treatment.
I had surgery in a hospital in Hermosillo, MX - excellent care - as good or better than any I’ve had in the states.
That's one of the ways that NHS, and most other government health care systems cut costs. By introducing long waits for services, there will be a natural attrition rate (i.e. people dying before they become eligible for treatment), cutting down on the overall costs. Between that and rationing (I read that kidney dialysis is no longer offered to people over a certain age through the NHS), costs are contained.
Mark
Gotta love that timeline.
She fell out of bed and broke her jaw during her stay at the Western.
Well they TOLD him they weren't able to handle patients in her condition (raiseable bed-rails being advanced equipment that's available only at specialized hospital facilities).
Most importantly, in a free economy there is an incentive for health care providers to increase supply in light of increased demand. Not so with govt run system.
Not always.
The US medical system is a stranglehold that restricts supply of doctors in the economy under ‘quality’ considerations.
Ideally, in a genuinely ‘free’ mkt, a dozen hospitals and clinics would bloom in every county of every state and diagnosis costs would fall. The incentive would be use cheaper generic drugs rather than the expensive big pharma ones and so on.
Of course, the risks in such a system are considerable. Point being that if costs have to fall, then the patient ‘community’ so to say, needs to be willing to bear more of the risk.
In a genuinely free market, you would have increased use of Nurse Practitioners, and have a steady career path in nursing so that somebody starting out as an RN could advance to MD via continuing education
My Radiology Department can get you in tomorrow, Monday, or, if things are really busy, on Tuesday or at the very latest on Wednesday.
However, it is not as good as the one in Britain because it is not completely free.
In socialized medicine, you do not pay for medical care because you do not GET medical care.
Well, I've always looked upon the term "rationing" as an artificial control on supply, rather than market forces, but I suppose that you're right.
Mark
For all the perceived ills of socialized medicine, the comparison of the treatment received in India and Britain is completely apples and oranges. You are comparing what is the creme-de-le-creme of Indian hospitals that only the wealthiest of native Indians and white memsahibs will ever see the inside of, to a hospital open to all the citizens of the UK.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather wait for treatment than to be left to die on the street which is what 99% of Indians would face in the event of a major illness.
I agree.
Point is, the best out there costs less than the avg out there and it is better than the avg out here.
Why not allow the heat of a little competition get the avg out here to do just as well as the best out there?
I would disagree with you on the note that India’s private hospitals are restricted to elite and rich Indians. I come from a middle class family where both my parents combind income (the family’s income) is less than $300/month after taxes. Yet all through my chilhood me and my sister had access to good healthcare at private hospitals and clinics. So is the case for about 50-60% of Indians. Yes, the poor have to rely on poorly equipped, badly run govt. hospitals and non-existant rural healthcare centres.
Hear! Hear!
I will not argue about Indian access since I am not familiar with the issue. But if, as An_Indian posted, the lack of access in India approaches 50%, it is still a non-viable system; at least for that 50%.
In many socialized medicine environments, however, you ARE left to die.
Our U.S. rural hospital is in a State bordering Canada and we get Canadian patients here that cannot get timely CT scans in a Canadian city where you can get tickets to a major league sporting event but cannot get a CT Scan without a 6 month wait. A friend asked me how long our CT Scan wait was (sometimes today, usually tomorrow but two or three days at the very most for non-emergencies and "as soon as this patient is off the table" for emergencies) because her Canadian mother had been told she could not get her ordered CT Scan in Canada until December. The question was asked in late summer.
In medicine, a 6 or 5 month wait for a CT Scan can be the difference between finding a curable cancer in time and finding a cancer that has already metastasized all over your body.
That does not qualify as "being left to die in the street". That qualifies as being left to die at home in a nice house in a First World country with great food and High Definition TV in a beautiful city but it still qualifies as "being left to die" ...........
Unless you use the brain God gave you and drive across the Canada-U.S. border to get your CT Scan without waiting in the U.S. and pay out of pocket for it.
Or unless you are a Canadian politician that sings the praises of Canadian socialized medicine but gets his medical care at Canadian Government hospitals that have no waiting times for Canadian politicians.
Canada has a Three Tier medical care system:
1. The average Canadian with brains that uses both the Canadian and the U.S. system and does just fine.......at a financial cost.
2. The Canadian politician that gets "no-wait" service at Canadian hospitals ..... for free.... because all Canadians are equal but some Canadians are more equal than others. They do just just fine also.
3. The really stupid Canadian that believes the socialized medicine party line, patriotically waits his turn for a CT Scan for 6 months and is then told that his Scan showed multiple metastatic nodules in the liver. He is now a dead man walking. But he got "free" care.
Then you have Cuba where medicine is "free" and has Option Number Two for Communist Party big shots and for foreigners with Euros or Dollars but Option One is out of the question for the average Cuban. The average Cuban is given a visit with a health care worker but no diagnostic technology and often not even medicines. Miami is dotted with drugstores with "We Can Ship Medicines to Your Relatives in Cuba" signs on their windows.
When my sister was still in Cuba in the 1980's when the Soviet Union was still alive and well and subsidizing Cuba, she once asked me to mail her some Fleischmann's yeast.
Why?
Her Cuban doctor had diagnosed a vaginal Candida infection, has recommended Fleischmann's yeast douches because no Cuban outside the Communist Party big shots could ever hope to get a tube of Monistat cream but the average Cuban could not even find Fleischmann's yeast in Cuba either.
But, hey! The medical care in Cuba was FREE!!!
A purely private system would provide fantastic care for some but no care for many.
A purely socialized system provides fantastic care for the political big shots and horrible care for many.
So, what is the solution and where can it be found?
Right here.
Whether we admitted or not, the U.S. system is a mix of free enterprise and socialized medicine.
That mix then allows quality care for those that can afford it and also allows quality care for low income patients that need a financial safety net.
In our rural county, if you cannot even pay your electric bill, you can still get your CT Scan at our publicly owned County hospital in a timely manner just as fast as the patient with gold plated insurance or the retired multi-millionaire.
The reimbursement the Hospital and I get from Medicaid is small but the study gets done.
In the U.S., the system is not perfect but the low income patients get "no wait" care at little or no cost.
That is almost as good as Canadian politicians get in Canada and almost as good as Communist Party big shots get in Cuba and much better than rich Canadians in major Canadian metropolitan areas get in Canada without crossing the U.S. border to get their CT Scans our U.S. clinics and hospitals.
:’o
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