Honestly it’s gotten a LOT worse over the last 10-15 years, but it was pretty great especially during the Blair government.
Basically, the UK is fucked ever since David Cameron cut taxes and then was like “oh no we’ve got a massive deficit of the amount we cut taxes by, let’s impose austerity”. If you go to A&E now, you could be waiting up to 48 hours. Though I was seen in about 2/3 hours and out of hospital in about 5 hours when I broke a bone in my foot. That was just for an x-ray, and I was given a boot and crutches. But that was a weekday morning - if it had happened on a Friday night I’d have had a MUCH longer wait.
The NHS is underpaid and understaffed and getting an NHS dentist nowadays is next to impossible.
Charzard4261@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
For the average person it’s pretty great. If you have something minor in the grand scheme of injuries you may have to wait a few hours to be seen, but if it’s serious you’re seen right away. In both cases you go home without having to pay anything at all.
Where it really fails is helping people with chronic illnesses. There’s still a lot of denial about women’s health issues especially so getting diagnosed with something can be impossible if your doctor decides “it’s all in your head”.
Photonic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, there’s that. And the fact that it can take up to 3 months to even get a CT made and reported on.
If you have cancer and you need to wait three months for (the results of) a scan, the cancer may very well have become inoperable or have spread to other organs in the meantime.
Charzard4261@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I obviously can’t comment on everyone’s experience, but for the few people I know that did get cancer (including my mother) they were all scheduled scans within two weeks and had results delivered within another two (or less especially for the first diagnosis).
In my mother’s case everything moved extremely quickly, due to the doctor suspecting something serious the first scan was scheduled in a few days and the results were back before a week had passed.
Photonic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Good to hear that it all moved quickly for your mum.
But, not everyone is so lucky unfortunately. It seems mid an south Essex are the worst places to be when you have cancer.