NHS and Private Healthcare in the UK

The last few days I have felt a bit flat. I think it is because I have been in the house a lot on my own, feeling tired and generally not too well and it is driving me a bit stir crazy. There is only so much cleaning one person can do! It is not helping that I still haven’t heard a date for my surgery. I have a feeling that my surgeon’s secretary only deals with his private business on Fridays!

The health service in this country is incredibly frustrating. As I have mentioned before, we are lucky enough to have private health care through my husbands work. They basically pay an insurance company to cover their employees and their families. This is particularly great for us as a) we have had sooooooo much use out of it over the last ten years and b)I wouldn’t be able to get private insurance due to my pre-existing condition. All employee schemes take on any risk, so even when N has changed jobs I have still been covered. The thing is, having private health care doesn’t make that much difference. I would say that the only significant difference is that when having a non urgent operation you don’t have to wait for the NHS waiting lists which take 6 months plus, you can just get on and deal with the problem.

There are a lot of people from the US reading this so I shall try to explain our health system as simply as I can. Firstly, when you have a symptom of anything your first port of call is your GP (General Practitioner). They are doctors with a broad based knowledge of everything and no specialisms. Your GP ascertains if and who you would need to see next and refers you to a specialist consultant. If doing this through the NHS you then have to wait x amount of time for your initial consultation with the consultant. Once you have had your initial consultation your consultant would either have treated you and therefore care is over or he would refer you for further out patient or in patient appointments/surgery.

In the case of Ulcerative Colitis you are referred to your consultant who then has you on his list and you are given regular out patient appointments, their frequency depending on the state of your UC. For example I have usually seen mine once every month or more. If you are in remission the visits decrease to six monthly or annually or you are given an ‘SOS’ which is basically authority to go direct to your consultant, bypassing your GP, once your symptoms flare up (I have never had one and always looked at people walking out of the consultants room with one with envy).

Private health care kicks in at the point of GP referral. Once you have your referral letter you can make an appointment with a consultant at a private hospital. All consultants pretty much work NHS and Private. Your insurance means you get to have an initial consultation much quicker than on the NHS and you also get to have any follow up treatment much quicker i.e surgery. I would probably have to have waited at least six months for my surgery (unless admitted as an emergency in the interim) on the NHS. You are allowed one follow up appointment after surgery on your private health care and then you revert back to NHS for follow on out patient care. As the same consultants and surgeons work both NHS and privately this transition is smooth and easy.

I have found in the past, that due to the excellent care you get on the NHS when you have UC it has often been quicker to use the NHS rather than our insurance as with insurance you still have to wait a few weeks for a clinic slot to come up. The consultant tend to work one evening a week in a private hospital so their appointments can be limited.

However, the massive advantage of having private health care is that when admitted for hospital treatment as we often are with UC, you can stay in a private room, often on a a private ward or in a private hospital. This is like being in a five star hotel with your own ensuite room, TV, DVD player, Radio, telephone and a nurse at the end of a bell to do anything at all for you including bringing you cups of tea! You also have proper, edible, delicious food. When on an NHS ward it is like going back 100 years to an uncomfortable bed ona ward of about 20, very little nurse interaction (normally they just do your obs and give you your meds with little conversation), the food is horrendous – literally slop. Last time I was in the private ward was closed so I had to be on a normal ward for a couple of days. One meal time they literally gave me a plate of what looked like diarhoea. It would have been at home on Oliver. The crap they feed people it is a wonder anyone gets better. You also have to share a comunal bathroom and toilet which again, on my last stay was horrendous. There was literally shit on the floor of the toilet which I had to frequent and despite asking a nurse to clean it after an hour I had to do it muyself – foul!

Unfortunately the private ward in the hospital I go to has been closed and may not be reopened by the time I go in. I can’t have my op in the local private hospital as, like most private hospitals, they don’t have ICU (Intensive Care Unit) facilities and it being a major op my surgeon understandably wants the back up of an ICU. This could entirely change my experience and make it far less pleasant – actually hellish. The other problem with a general ward is the crap visiting hours whereas privately you can have visitors whenever you want. Fingers crossed they reopen a room!

So there we have it, my synopsis of the NHS and private health care in the UK – probably not at all clear but I tried my best.

Now I have to go back to waiting for the phone to ring…