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Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

bloomberg.com

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Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#11

Post by chaostheory »

Nearly every country is now suffering from the age demographic bomb where senior retirees are starting to outnumber working adults.

https://www.epbmacroresearch.com/blog/the-global-demographic...

This has major implications for many social safety net programs and entitlements ie there aren’t enough working adults paying into the system, which is also exacerbated by recent anti immigration movements which was a major cause for the UK leaving the EU.

This story is now common in many developed countries that offer socialized healthcare.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#12

Post by lolinder »

skissane wrote: post #9

Isn't this true just about everywhere? Someone who lives in a major urban area is going to have more prompt access to advanced emergency healthcare than someone who lives in a remote rural area, simply due to factors such as travel time, and the clinical need to physically concentrate specialist medical resources (specialist clinical teams need a certain minimum case volume to properly maintain their skills, and if y…

This addresses the title but not the content. The NHS is failing to meet its own goals in a pretty bad way, pretty much everywhere. Whether this is true in every country I don't know, but it's certainly not an inevitability.

> The analysis assessed how quickly patients can access health care in each of England’s 533 constituencies — the British term for electoral districts — and found that nearly every single area is failing to meet even half of eight key indicators tracked by the government, from hospital bed availability to ambulance waiting times. A fifth are meeting none.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#13

Post by bpodgursky »

Aeolun wrote: post #7

I think it’s amazing that a solid system can be defunded like that until it just sorta crumbles under it’s own weight. There’s no immediate solution either. If you build more hospitals, you need more staff, if you need more staff, you need to make it more attractive, but even if you do you need several years before the first doctors/nurses from the wave with renewed interest in the position finishes university. And t…

Healthcare across the entire west is crumbling, and not through defunding. It's driven by demographic shifts that nobody has a real plan to fix.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#14

Post by _gllen »

rootusrootus wrote: post #10

Which country has the best health care in Europe? And what makes it the best solution? I ask from the perspective of an American, with access to great health care but it’s expensive. If we were going to reinvent health care here, who should we copy?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_Health_Consumer_Index

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#15

Post by Barrin92 »

>We have to invest more in identifying and tackling disease earlier if we want to “stop the hospitals from falling over and the GPs from being overwhelmed,” he said.

Demographics and shrinking labor forces alone will bring the system to its knees regardless of money. It's absolutely baffling in the face of this trend that preventative, systemic policies are practically never discussed and everything centers around individual care.

Countries like Singapore show how you can tackle this, strong interventions to prevent entire populations from being obese, a regulated medical sector to bring costs down and private savings funds to encourage personal responsibilty.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#16

Post by analog31 »

skissane wrote: post #9

Isn't this true just about everywhere? Someone who lives in a major urban area is going to have more prompt access to advanced emergency healthcare than someone who lives in a remote rural area, simply due to factors such as travel time, and the clinical need to physically concentrate specialist medical resources (specialist clinical teams need a certain minimum case volume to properly maintain their skills, and if y…

I live in a mid sized urban area, a few blocks from a large hospital. My location was certainly beneficial when I needed emergency treatment. But for anything non-emergency, the waiting lists and "pre approval" battle are appalling.

My spouse, who lives in the same house, but has a different employer, gets much quicker treatment from the same clinics.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#17

Post by civilitty »

skissane wrote: post #9

Isn't this true just about everywhere? Someone who lives in a major urban area is going to have more prompt access to advanced emergency healthcare than someone who lives in a remote rural area, simply due to factors such as travel time, and the clinical need to physically concentrate specialist medical resources (specialist clinical teams need a certain minimum case volume to properly maintain their skills, and if y…

In the UK it’s much worse than normal for rural areas due to chronic underfunding of social services and healthcare.

There’s too many factors to go into but the most pressing issue is that there aren’t enough care home beds available to discharge elderly patients so there’s not enough beds available in hospitals. Ambulances often have to wait long times before they can unload a patient at the hospital which ties them up - at one point ambulances had to wait over an hour on one out of ten trips nationally (thats just the stat the NHS keeps, they often wait for much longer than an hour).

Combined with population growth significantly outpacing growth in NHS budget and staffing, it’s created a perfect storm of shite.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#18

Post by nradov »

bpodgursky wrote: post #13
Aeolun wrote: post #7

I think it’s amazing that a solid system can be defunded like that until it just sorta crumbles under it’s own weight. There’s no immediate solution either. If you build more hospitals, you need more staff, if you need more staff, you need to make it more attractive, but even if you do you need several years before the first doctors/nurses from the wave with renewed interest in the position finishes university. And t…

Healthcare across the entire west is crumbling, and not through defunding. It's driven by demographic shifts that nobody has a real plan to fix.

Ultimately the only viable plan is going to be severe care rationing. In most developed countries we have an aging population with an increasing incidence of chronic diseases and a shortage of physicians. Regardless of whether payments come from governments, employers, or individuals the reality is that we simply won't have the resources to care for everyone.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#19

Post by HarryHirsch »

nradov wrote: post #18
bpodgursky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare across the entire west is crumbling, and not through defunding. It's driven by demographic shifts that nobody has a real plan to fix.

Ultimately the only viable plan is going to be severe care rationing. In most developed countries we have an aging population with an increasing incidence of chronic diseases and a shortage of physicians. Regardless of whether payments come from governments, employers, or individuals the reality is that we simply won't have the resources to care for everyone.

In Britain, citizens have a hard time getting basic dental care that they can afford: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-13/uk-dentis...

The demographic explanation simply does not hold water when routine healthcare is not available.

Re: Ill in England? Your Location Can Determine If You Live or Die

#20

Post by themitigating »

civilitty wrote: post #17
skissane wrote: post #9

Isn't this true just about everywhere? Someone who lives in a major urban area is going to have more prompt access to advanced emergency healthcare than someone who lives in a remote rural area, simply due to factors such as travel time, and the clinical need to physically concentrate specialist medical resources (specialist clinical teams need a certain minimum case volume to properly maintain their skills, and if y…

In the UK it’s much worse than normal for rural areas due to chronic underfunding of social services and healthcare. There’s too many factors to go into but the most pressing issue is that there aren’t enough care home beds available to discharge elderly patients so there’s not enough beds available in hospitals. Ambulances often have to wait long times before they can unload a patient at the hospital which ties them…

You mentioned the population growth but what about aging population? Because of that wouldn't funding need to be exponentially increased each year. At the same time a smaller working population and who are against tax increases would make that difficult.
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