David Craig, on April 1st, 2023weekend blog
I try not to write about myself on this blog. After all, any fool can do that. Instead I try to find stories which the mainstream media ‘forgets’ to cover. But this weekend I thought I’d use a personal story as, if this helps just one person, it’s worth boring the rest of you.
Two things happened this week which made me think there might be a point writing about this. Firstly, I tried to book a doctor’s appointment with my local GP surgery. I know the NHS is in trouble even as (for some unfathomable to me reason) it desperately tries to recruit ever more Diversity, Inclusion and Equality (DIE) managers. But I was shocked to learn that the earliest available appointment was in four weeks at another surgery several miles away. So I had to accept this. Then on Thursday evening I saw a documentary about people going abroad for medical procedures as the NHS waiting lists were so long that many of their conditions would be worse, and even become inoperable, if they were sufficiently patient to wait for our collapsing NHS to even consider the possibility of treating them.
So, here’s my story:
I was recently on an extended trip to South-East Asia. While in Thailand I suddenly started getting debilitating headaches on the left side of my head. The first doctor I saw thought it might be due to an ear infection as I swim about one kilometre a day during the winter months. But after a week on antibiotics, the headaches had not improved. So I was advised to go to a major hospital in case I had a brain tumour.
When I first arrived at the hospital there seemed to be a disorganised crowd hanging around the Information Desk. But after about 10 minutes I spoke to one of the staff and within less than an hour was being seen by a neurologist. He planned a series of tests including an MRI Scan and and MRA Scan. Both these are done on an MRI scanner which is a serious bit of equipment costing over £1 million ($1.2 million or €1.2 million). The tests and scans were booked for the next day – a Saturday. And I would have been given the results that day except that Saturday was the neurologist’s day off. So I went back on the Sunday to get the results shown to me on a computer screen, written up in a report and given to me on a CD. Thankfully they showed that what’s left of my brain, in spite of my valiant efforts over many years to support the Chang Brewing Company and Thailand’s night life, is totally normal.
The day of the tests and scans was superbly well-organised with (very attractive) nurses or nursing assistants waiting for me at the end of each stage to take me on to the next stage.
The hospital was not like being in the Thailand we all know and love which works to Thai time (พรุ่งนี้ – prung ni, prung ni) – a very vague concept unlike western time – a country where people sleep most of the time at work and where, if someone can possibly do something the wrong way, they’ll do it wrong at least five times before getting it right. The hospital was really well-run, the doctors excellent and the staff incredibly efficient.
Of course, all of this would be free in Britain. But for the x-rays, blood tests, MRI and MRA scans and two appointments with a neurologist at the Thai hospital I paid about £1,000 (about $1,200 or €1,200).
Just to give you a further idea of prices, an appointment with a general doctor in Thailand at a GP practice or at a smaller private hospital costs just 800 baht (about £20/$22/€22) compared to around £90 in Britain. Each appointment with the neurologist cost 1,600 baht (£40/$45/€45) compared to about £150 to £200 to see a specialist in a private hospital in the UK.
Having worked as a management consultant in almost 100 organisations in fifteen countries and having previously been married to a cancer surgeon in one of the Scandinavian countries for over 20 years, I do understand that a public health service like the NHS cannot have highly-trained doctors and expensive equipment just waiting around in case an appropriate patient turns up. So waiting lists are an effective way of ensuring that there is always sufficient demand for key personnel and equipment. But it still seems beyond incredible that the NHS’s 35,000+ highly-paid, generously-pensioned managers need two to three months to do what a Thai hospital can do in two days.
One of the Thai government’s business strategies to encourage economic growth and employment is to make Thailand a go-to destination for people from around the world for medical procedures. From what I experienced a few weeks ago at the Thai hospital, I know that if I was put on a waiting list in Britain for months for a knee or hip or AMD eye or even cancer operation, I’d be straight on a plane to Thailand and check in to one of the main hospitals which cater for foreigners as their equipment and standard of care are, from what I experienced, excellent. You’d be treated within a couple of days and prices are around a third of what you’d pay in a private hospital in Britain.
And the nurses are prettier and the weather’s better.
And the food isn’t too bad either.
Anyway, hopefully this might be of interest to someone out there.
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The NHS isn’t in trouble. We are in trouble because of the NHS. It is free at the point of delivery which means that we haven’t a clue what any treatment really costs. I suspect that the cost of private treatment is higher than it should be because there is no competition, and the NHS ensures that it stays that way. The problem with socialist run services is that it is impossible to apply any economic considerations to the way they are run mainly because they don’t have customers in the sense that private companies do. The bureaucracy increases because it can. The service from big companies seem to be going the same way. Try phoning one for help or using an online chat and it is likely to take an hour.
There is a more important issue raised by this. The UK residents believe they are entitled to a high standard of living, which means a high pay. The problem is that we have to import food and goods to survive and that means exports to pay for them. When we pay ourselves too much our exports are too expensive. There is always a cheaper supplier. The elites are fully aware of this, which is why they make billions from trading where the profits are highest and it isn’t going to be the UK with its high pay, poor productivity, high taxes and high energy costs.
Myself and some colleagues have had the use of Doctors and Hospitals in Hua Hin over many years and the service and
attention has alwways been excellent.
Far better than anything we could receive in the U.K.
I am even looking at the possibilities of a care home in Thailand for my senile years!
Having myself retired from the NHS myself almost three decades ago, and having currently several close family members employed within it, I don’t know how to respond to this other than to say that the NHS isn’t “on the point of collapsing”. It has already effectively collapsed. People working for the NHS are in despair concerning the ever-lengthening waiting lists, the ever-increasing bureaucracy plus – it has to be said – the ever increasing expectations and demands of the general public. Many of these expectations are to a significant extent the consequence of largely media-created hypochondria. Too many people spend too much time querying the origin of every single ache or pain and demanding to see a doctor immediately. Yet I understand from the now much maligned GPs who do still see patients that people roll up in their consulting rooms demanding drugs or action for diseases they have already self-diagnosed, courtesy of Google. Never mind that they are way off the mark. Too many people are evidently unable to deal independently with every day sprains and strains. They take themselves off to A & E and demand to see a doctor. TV programmes on dieting proliferate, yet Doctors are no longer permitted to tell a grossly obese patient presenting with arthritic joints and demanding instant replacements, that they are “too fat” and that they could themselves improve their general health and alleviate their pain with a bit of dieting! Then of course we have the bureaucratic overload. A close family member was relieved to retire from midwifery last year, not because she was weary of delivering beautiful babies to happy parents, but because her ability to do her job in the way she wished, by putting the mother first and foremost during and immediately following the birth, was being constantly disrupted by the requirement to turn away from the labouring mother every few minutes plus, above all, immediately after the emergence of the baby, in order to click numerous boxes on the computer screen. One of the major problems for the NHS is, I believe, that we now have an organisation which, because of the ease with which dissatisfied patients can resort to litigation, has been forced to become primarily defensive as opposed to pro-active when dealing with the general public. Unfortunately this has consequences for all of us. I know that I would no longer wish to be an NHS professional. (Then of course we have the ultimate “woke” idiocies – the flagrant waste of money on “Equality and Diversity” managers, being paid mega-bucks to ensure that overworked doctors, nurses, midwives, therapists, paramedics, are using the “correct pronouns”.)