Making a better country.

[toxo]

This is the place for all you armchair critics. I'll start.

Imagine a doctor calling you and telling you what's wrong with you even though you have no symptoms.

Imagine how easy it would be to treat serious illness if caught at the very beginning. At the moment by the time a cancer is found your body could be riddled with it, sometimes rendering it inoperable. What's the cost, not just to the NHS in time taken to heal it but also the cost to the family and the work situation or business.

Imagine the savings for the NHS in terms of bed hours saved, the amount of medication /equipment needed, to say nothing of no waiting lists and more time spent per patient.

How could this happen?

You re-vamp the NHS and make the Phlebotomy section the heart of the system, the gateway to the NHS.

We've all had the scenario where we're sent for a blood test only to have to go back a couple of months later because it wasn't that, lets look for something else.

WHAT IF at the age of say 8yrs old, and then every five yrs everybody went to Phlebotomy and they took enough blood to test for everything (I know that's oversimplifying it but along those lines). The savings would be astronomical, not just for the NHS but globally, and not just financially but in terms of sick days, staff shortages etc etc etc.

[Lloyd90]

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you have no serious medical training what so ever / aren’t a doctor? 

 

 

[Nuke]

Until you have a perfectly working AI you would have to scale up the services enormously to be able to screen all the tests and to handle all the patients with falls positive findings.

It would be a complete mess.

/Markus 

[Scully]

5 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you have no serious medical training what so ever / aren’t a doctor? 

 

 

😀

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Toxo

How long have you been looking for your utopia?

[JKD]

toxo,,,, you have too much time on your hands and a very vivid imagination,,,, IMHO

Are you an expert in anything or, as you stated, an armchair critic ?!

Also, the title of your thread doesn't allude to the polarised content of your op !?

Edited April 19, 2022 by JKD

[Scully]

What’s that noise? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Noooo, it’s the sound of wheat separating from chaff!🙂

[Pushandpull]

Significant work is being done in just this area. Check out www.nhs-galleri.org

[Walker570]

Fine idea BUT closing on 70 million people in this country now can you imagine the cost and facilities necesaary to do what you suggest.   They couldn't even get the present system runnong sensibly everywhere with covid jabs and we have not yet heard just how much they have cost the country.   It is going to be a long time before disease is pin pointed by a 'Capt Kirk and Doc waving a litle rotating gizmo over the patients body BUT  I just saw a vidieo of a young chap named Pervis emonstrating a new mobile phone which you carried around in a shoulder bag with the old stle handset and that was but 40 years ago.  As my old Grannie used to say....Never say never.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Walker570

[wyn]

The info could be worth a lot of money and be sold or leaked.

People could be denied insurance/ jobs etc on this info

[Stuarta]

Toxo you need to be careful and think before you post, the police can take away your guns if they think you are mentally unwell

[wymberley]

7 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you have no serious medical training what so ever / aren’t a doctor? 

 

 

I suspect that you're wrong and Toxo is in fact a NHS 'vampire' looking to advance his, shall we say, profession.

[udderlyoffroad]

I think you lot are somewhat harsh.  I believe the rest of the English-speaking world refers to Toxo’s proposal as ‘doing bloodwork’.  It’s as if they have worked out better ways of doing healthcare than our beloved NHS (peace be upon it).

[toxo]

Sigh... Don't know why I expected anything different really.

[Vince Green]

No dont take the urine, its a sensible question and it deserves a sensible answer. If you are on a five star private healthcare scheme you get something very close to what he is describing. 

You go for annual check ups and they do a full screening of your bloods.

The question comes with the NHS, what is its purpose?

Is it pro-active or re-active?

Is it in society's interest for everyone to live to be 100? Biologically once we get past a certain age we fulfill no purpose. It may not be kind to say it but Darwin had a point

Chickens that dont lay eggs go to to see Col Sanders God. Why should we be any different? 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Vince Green

[discobob]

1 hour ago, wyn said:

The info could be worth a lot of money and be sold or leaked.

People could be denied insurance/ jobs etc on this info

This is the argument that is used against genetic/gene sampling (simular thing that Toxo is suggesting) - and I agree with that argument. 

[clangerman]

18 minutes ago, toxo said:

Sigh... Don't know why I expected anything different really.

trick is to look on it as a chance for some to show everyone they are a bully! 

[udderlyoffroad]

9 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

If you are on a five star private healthcare scheme you get something very close to what he is describing. 

You go for annual check ups and they do a full screening of your bloods.

Indeed, pretty standard practice in developed nations, and it's not limited to 5-star premium healthcare.  For the simple reason that not only is prevention better than cure, invariably it's cheaper!

Meanwhile it takes 4 weeks to register with a GP in our wonderful NHS.

[Mice!]

There is a TV advert running offering something like this, with your money back if they don't find any issues. 

It all sounds very Sci Fi or like something from a film, several spring to mind and none of them end well.

[Lloyd90]

If you want a genuine answer, then the proposal is akin to the fire brigade driving round spraying water on all houses, even the ones not on fire. 
 

The cost and time it would take to do blood tests on tens of millions of people who had no presenting issue would be astronomical. 
 

The amount of work it would produce would be so much that the NHS would not have time to see any patients who did have symptoms of a problem. 

That added to the fact that a blood test isn’t the be all and end all of tests, and usually just shows indicators / markers that require more tests, the entire system would be overwhelmed. 

 

[udderlyoffroad]

6 minutes ago, Lloyd90 said:

If you want a genuine answer, then the proposal is akin to the fire brigade driving round spraying water on all houses, even the ones not on fire. 

More akin to every house having working interlinked smoke alarms, actually.

This really isn't some fantasy, it's reality, a few short miles across the channel.  But like vaccines, 'blood work' is targeted towards at risk groups first.

We really need to start thinking differently about how we do our healthcare.  Throwing ever more money at the NHS (it's never had so much funding) is not the answer.

[Gordon R]

The suggestion is testing every five years, which is far too long a gap. Why restrict it to blood tests? Yearly urine tests, yearly MRI scans, bone density scans, diabetes checks. Where do you stop?

Aside from finding the staff to do all these tests, the vast majority will be negative. Do the early pick up savings, outweigh the cost of unnecessary tests.

On paper, it sounds reasonable, but totally impractical. 

 

[enfieldspares]

I worked in France from 1999 to 2019. I've also colleagues who have experience of the health system in the USA. The reason the UK NHS is so simply awful is that it is done on a cheapest initial cost basis. Masquerading as offering a guinea seat health service for the price of half a crown.

In France and in the USA if you go to a hospital or GP and the immediate cause isn't easily diagnosed or obvious for your illness or pain...say stomach pain...they will test for the worst case cause so as to quickly see if that is the problem. Which will be in many cases a colonoscopy within seven days or sooner.

In the UK they will give you tablets for trapped wind and tell you to come back in three weeks if you are still in pain. If you are still in pain they'll either increase the dose of the tablets. And to come back in three weeks. Finally after a three of four month wait you'll have a "telephone consultation" with a specialist. He or she will then book you in if the cause still unknown for a colonoscopy in three or four months time.

I know this as I've been there, seen it done it. I had a seven month wait for such in the UK. When I was working in France I went with my wife who at the time was living in France to see her GP. And mentioned the delay in the UK. He told me that if I'd eaten nothing that day or the day before he'd book me for colonoscopy for the next day. If I'd eaten something then for two day's time.

The NHS has become a sacred cow. Johnson's ridiculous slogan on the side of that red Brexit bus. The nonsense of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics and so on and so on. The NHS doesn't work because it's run on the cheap yet still costs us, the nation's taxpayers, a fortune. Like idiots we tolerate its uselessness because of the oft repeated mantra that "the NHS is free". It isn't. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by enfieldspares

[Bigbob]

Maybe in 50 years if progress is being made you give a blood sample yearly and get the instant results , not now the NHS is going to be playing catch up after covid for years 

[toxo]

Comparing the cost of testing against years and years of not having to treat so many illnesses/diseases is just wrong. (won't say what I was tempted to say)

The cost of re-vamping the whole NHS pales into insignificance when compared to the savings.

Anyway I can't be ***** to even try to work out you lot any more so this is adieu. I'll leave you to squirm (Or not in most of your cases) while your precious leader tells a lot more lies in the house in a few minutes.

BYE