Patients could die because of rising NHS waiting lists for tests and treatment, the leader of Britain's hospital doctors has warned. Delays in identifying conditions such as cancer may mean that a patient's illness reaches the stage where surgery or drugs cannot save them, Dr Mark Porter told the Guardian .... A Guardian analysis of official NHS data on England's six main waiting time targets shows that five are increasingly being breached. The number of patients waiting more than six weeks for a diagnostic test such as an MRI scan has quadrupled in the last year, an extra 2,400 people a month are not being treated within 18 weeks, and 200,000 patients waited longer than four hours in A&E this year compared with the same period in 2010, the data reveals ... Professor Jon Rhodes, president of the British Society of Gastroenterology, said the rise in waits for procedures such as colonoscopy was "alarming". He added: "No one should have to wait more than four weeks for a diagnostic colonoscopy, since delayed diagnosis is a major factor underlying the country's relatively poor survival rates for colorectal cancer." The NHS had too few endoscopists to cope with demand, he added.
With the changes proposed by both the Democrats and Republicans and even more so as a direct result of the new Health Care Bill we will see this becoming not only common in the US but we will hold the Brits out a paragons of virtue compared to the way we deal with the Medicare groups.
All of the above commented on issues we have considered as the Health Care Bill was being forced through Congress but it is only now that we are beginning the see the results. The Brits got there first but we will pass them by in a femto second. Just watch.
Posts
