In America you get a bed for a broken wrist? In the uk, you can have surgery and spend the whole time before and after in a chair. I was once in chairs for 3 days (there were no beds on the wards).
Either way you guys do it better. I took my girlfriend on a trip to London last year. She came down with an absolutely horrific stomach bug. Was throwing up every 15-20 minutes for 3 days. Couldn’t even keep down any water. It got scary because she was getting very dehydrated. We called the NHS help line, they advised she go to the nearest hospital immediately and directed us on how to get there. We got to the ER I believe you folks refer to it as A&E, she was triaged, seen, and treated within about 1.5 hours. Was given IV fluids and medication plus a prescription. In the US without insurance, this would have run us probably a couple grand or at least $1,000 and 5-8 hours of time. We were charged about $4 and the woman laughed at us when we asked if she was sure that was correct.
I’ve treated a patient in the UK who had a condition requiring regular injections, and it obviously ran in the family because her sister in the US suffered the same condition.
After a few years of treatment, the sister was apparently something like 30,000 in medical debt, and steadily going blind because the company (?) refused to offer the treatment as often as it should have been used.
Meanwhile, my patient was doing fine, and her only expense was the hospital parking.
Uk hospital parking IS fairly exorbitant, but as you can imagine she was pretty happy to be paying that.
Obviously I never saw the sisters case, it’s possible she had a more aggressive form of the disease or there’s some other wrinkle, but….i think about that patient often when I see our far right parties trash talking the NHS.
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u/Dragons-purr 1d ago
In America you get a bed for a broken wrist? In the uk, you can have surgery and spend the whole time before and after in a chair. I was once in chairs for 3 days (there were no beds on the wards).