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From Men's Journal:
Every time you walk into a physician's office, you run the risk of overtreatment: Tests you don't need, medications that are ineffective (or dangerous), procedures that cause more problems than they solve. In many cases the best thing for your health is to do nothing.
Make no mistake: A good doctor is, or should be, your most trusted resource if you're sick. If you're not sick and he wants to treat you anyway, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor. But it does make him a player in a system that operates according to the unspoken and often unexamined assumption that more treatment is better for the patient. It's unquestionably better for the financial health of the stakeholders in the system: the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, the health-insurance companies, and the hospitals. If you don't know how the game is played, the odds go up that you'll wind up the loser.
What do you people think, will people change if they know this?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:27PM
I'd like some statistics on the equally incompetent treatment across the entire NHS, it sounds terrible.
Well, you'll have some trouble there; apparently the NIH doesn't keep track of that sort of thing.
There was a pilot study [nih.gov] done on negative patient outcomes in London hospitals:
almost 11% of patients experienced an adverse event, over half of which were deemed preventable judged by ordinary standards of care. More worryingly, at least a third of these events led to disability or death. This was a pilot study but there is no reason to believe that the results are unrepresentative. The frightening extrapolation of these data suggests that in England and Wales adverse events lead to an extra 3 million bed days at a minimum cost of £1bn per year.
To be fair, the U.S. has a similar problem with reporting such "adverse events", and other studies (cited in my previous link) found them in 5-10% of U.S. hospitalizations.
And, since I'm human and these numbers have little emotional impact on me, I'll share a personal anecdote. My sister, a U.S. citizen married to a Brit, gave birth in a British hospital and nearly became a statistic for a story like this. She was hemorrhaging postpartum, which was not detected for over three hours because the nurses on duty neglected to check on her status during that time. A visiting family member noticed that my sister was becoming listless, pale, and incoherent in her speech, and called a nurse. She could have bled out while the hospital focused on the newborn, and was lucky enough to have family close who detected what the hospital should have but did not.
I'm not going to pretend that my story is representative of all NIH hospitals, I know that anecdote is not the singular of data. Obviously, your relatives had good outcomes, as you stated in your anecdotes. I would encourage you, however, to not bury your head in the sand and pretend that shameful service is impossible under the NIH.
Regarding the American attitude towards Socialist medicine, I think I can give you a tutorial on our mindset. Capitalism has so pervaded our culture that we assume financial incentives are the only significant ones. It's hard for us to imagine that without the threat of increased malpractice insurance rates or other financial penalties that doctors would care about patient outcomes. The perception in the States is that British doctors don't get fired or face loss of license even in the event of gross negligence in their practice. If there is no downside personally to the doctor for malpractice, what motivation does the doctor have to practice well?
That last question wasn't rhetorical, by the way. I delivered your statistics, please return the favor by clearly explaining for citizens of the U.S.A. in the audience what incentives/penalties are in place in the N.I.H. to reduce "adverse effects" due to malpractice.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:11PM
Thanks for your reply. I am in no way saying the NHS is perfect, there are many problems and people are failed by the service every day to varying degrees.
My point in general was, I don't think this is unique or because socialized system in the UK. Humans make mistakes and fail, not all treatments are available, passing the buck happens to meet targets, the list goes on. I was using my anecdotes as a counterpoint to the blanket assertion of the original AC that the NHS fails everyone.
However for all the horror stories from the NHS, they don't seem to hold up against the horrors of the U.S. system, which everyone seems to have a story of. I've seen healthcare systems all over the world, and if i was in a top income bracket in the US, I no doubt would think very highly of the system over there. Saying that, one of my US horror stories is about a high income family being essentially bankrupted, after cancer treatments (unsuccessful) of the main breadwinner (supposedly covered by insurance through their employer).
But in answer to your question
From 2012 [theguardian.com]:
While the system may have its flaws, there are still consequences of not providing adequate care (perhaps not enough), and even if you're a doctor or nurse, you're not above the law.
The problem now as i see it, reforms that are happening are not being made to improve the quality of care, they are being made to drive down the cost and enable for-profit corporations to provide more services, but only the bits they can make money on. The government will have to pick up the tab for the rest of it, as it always has. The NHS is not long for this world it feels, and that's not a good thing. As mentioned before, they're getting U.S consultants in to help carve it up for maximum profitability.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:46PM
Excellent reply, that's exactly what I was looking for.
I'm sorry to hear that you're importing the worst part of our medical culture; having businessmen take over hospitals here has been a bigger disaster than their takeovers of the tech sector - at least when HP gets driven into the ground no one dies.
I'm holding out hope that regardless of the system in place the doctors who are healing people for the love of humanity will stick around and keep being motivated for the right reasons. The stats I quoted seemed to put the U.S. and U.K. at about the same level of outcome, and I'd like to take that as evidence that the horror stories we've heard about each others' systems fall within the (unfortunate) norm. Medicine is hard. =(
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:56AM
Form follows function. Private healthcare in the US has spawned a large industry of medical software. Through the NHS wanting to modernize and computerize and through software houses seeking additional sales, US medical software is now widely deployed in the NHS. This has stratified the NHS in addition facilitating financial settlement between administrative boundaries. Unfortunately, this fails and it has now become routine for parts of the NHS to sue other parts.
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