Slipping on ice and breaking arm, hospital treatment

[Saracen]

Nothing wrong with Azerbaijan, mate of mines over there at the mo, its warm, and they have a big flag, the rulers wifes a bit of alright as well apparently

Not suggesting there is anything wrong with Azerbaijan, Trig. It's just transferring a patient from one ward to another, in the same hospital, via it that's problematic.

[Saracen]

....

Yet, despite all this, and all the other issues mentioned in this thread..it's still the best healthcare system in the world (cuba excluded for the moment )

That depends how you define "best", and that necessarily involves some subjective judgements.

For instance, the US system is superb in the facilities offered to patients provided the patient is either wealthy, or has adequate health coverage .... among which, ironically, seems to be that offered to Government employees. For those with cover, you can find a procedure ordered by a GP (like a CAT scan) at 7:30AM (early appointment on the way to work) and have had the scan by 11AM the same morning, in a clinic just down the road. Over here, you're more likely to get the appointment letter a fortnight later, with the appointment itself three weeks after that, at a hospital miles away because that's where the nearest scanner is. Both those examples have happened to my family.

Of course, you really don't want to be a patient under the US system that doesn't have either serious money or good cover.

Choosing "best" between those involves some choices for society, and to an extent for individuals on how much to spend on cover, but in many respects, the US system provides a response to the patient both superior and certainly far faster .... at a price.

"Best" is not an easy conclusion to reach because it requires that kind of value judgement and about matters that are more of a moral nature than a medical one. The NHS is far better at providing a more basic level of service, but providing it to all.

[Flibb]

But surely the good parts of the US system are also available in the UK if you have insurance or money? A friend paid to see a consultant, the appointment was next day, he was then referred back to the NHS and avoided a delay in getting treatment.

[Saracen]

But surely the good parts of the US system are also available in the UK if you have insurance or money? A friend paid to see a consultant, the appointment was next day, he was then referred back to the NHS and avoided a delay in getting treatment.

Aspects of it, yes. But the general, local availability of lots of services seems to be better in the US, because the market encourages it. For instance, the adoption of digital xray scanners by dentists was way ahead in the US, certainly of UK dentists with NHS contracts, and I used to get eye tests done in the US for much the same reason.

[badass]

I doubt an IT system can negotiate transfers and more importantly appropriate times to make transfers.

Ward Clerk's?

Or take into account staffing levels and skill mix.

An IT system can absolutely do that. It just has to be designed properly and the data has to be put in it properly.
There's a saying in the IT industry, in fact it's usedd by many industries.
sh-in, sh-out.
I'm sure you can work out what it means.

[directhex]

Off topic I know buit seriously, why dont people in the US want something similar?

Helping people without billing them is socialism. Socialism is worse than terrorism.

A decent IT system could do that. Don't you dare mention the NHS IT program that's cost £12 billion and only slightly better than an MS Access database knocked up by a computer studies student in an evening.

The gold standard for hospital IT systems is VistA, as written as evol socialist open source software by the US Veterans' Administration (who supply evil socialist healthcare to military veterans). The software was written primarily by medical professionals who were also nerds - not by outside contractors who have never seen a body before - so it's designed 100% for the workflow that medical professionals actually engage in.

Competing for-profit systems in the US are often so bad you need an additional consultant during theater whose only job is to wrangle the IT.

Even really simple things were stamped out through the DIY attitude of VistA - for example, nurses giving out wrong medication is practically a thing of the past in VA hospitals, thanks to advanced technology known as "barcodes" glued to every patient and pill bottle (i.e. the system throws a wobbly if the patient & pill barcodes don't match).

The NHS IT program was a disaster of picking a supplier, not a solution.