If You Think Our Health Care is Screwy, Try Britain’s

You likely have read or heard about the British health system. But you probably haven’t been caught in the thick of it — lying about in a big London hospital and waiting for a procedure on your heart.

That is my fate at the moment. As I write this, I wait for a heart doc to explore my heart for blockages. And to perhaps clear a blockage and add a stent or two to my collection of 30.

You might be surprised at the contrasts. Quality treatment in the U.S. — shoddy treatment here. For instance, I came by ambulance to emergency care. Treatment was identical to what I’ve experienced in the U.S. Prompt, sensible procedures.

But then I was dumped into a holding pen. A waiting room chock-a-block with various deliveries from ambulances. The ambulance crews trundled patients in and dumped them onto chairs to wait a few hours for attention.

If you were there, you would have had a guy with a bloody noggin’ installed at your elbow. You would have dodged his vomit as he spewed into a cardboard mini-bucket provided by the staff. Your other elbow would have been prodded by a young woman who seemed to be having mini-seizures. Across from you, a poor homeless creature. He screamed obscenities at the staff. And shouted at creatures only he could see.

After several hours, I was finally evaluated and after more hours, admitted.

Again, the contrast. For one spell, a nurse of quality. For the next, a nurse who can barely manage the language. She spends much of her time on the phone disputing bills from her cable company and clearly neglecting her patients.

This, in a ward full of people with really fragile hearts. Any of them could suffer a heart attack at any moment — which is why they are here. Not one is on a monitor. My nurse says, “Use your buzzer if you have a problem.” I will remember to do that if I crash.

The quality nurse follows sensible procedures. Latex gloves when handling pills and needles. Hand cleansers at every turn. The slovenly nurse ignores the gloves and cleansers. And cannot keep the medications straight.

Contrasts. The staff use laptops to record your data. Sometimes. Much of the time they scribble on scraps of paper, on the back of forms. Many have a habit of writing your data on the skin of the backs of their hands. Or on the latex gloves on those hands.

At breakfast, a woman rolls in a rickety wagon that holds a few choices. I choose porridge. She lifts a piece of cardboard off a big pot of porridge and wields an old ladle to slop out a bowl of the stuff. She plucks a few slabs of toast and drops them onto your tray. No gloves in sight.

The cardiologist and other docs seem to know their stuff. They give the impression that they are informed and thoughtful.

Ah, but when will they do this intervention on my heart? Well, maybe later today. Or maybe tomorrow. Or the day after that. “If we get into Friday, we’ll have to wait until Monday. We don’t do any interventions on the weekend.”

At some juncture we can choose to go private. That is, to abandon the government-run system and have the procedure done in a private system. Which is probably what we will do. If we ever get to that juncture. Who would then do the procedure? Probably the same team that will do it in the government hospital. They will do it in the evening — after they finish their shift for the government. And they will likely do it in the same surgical rooms.

The incompetent nurse has just taken my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. Her blood-pressure equipment is modern. Her thermometer is super-modern. A new type I have never seen. But she scribbles the numbers onto the back of a crumpled form. She adds them to a mass of similar scribbles. There must be 500 sets of them she has scribbled helter-skelter on the paper. How she knows which are mine is a mystery. Then she casually drops the paper into a wee basket on the blood pressure trolley and waddles away.

I need to have an X-ray. The nurse hands me a folder and gives me directions to find radiology. In my hospital gown and slippers I make my way down eight floors, wander through the lobby, past a fast-food restaurant and into a connecting building and up another lift. Alongside people munching French fries. I wake the guy who handles traffic at radiology. He does his thing. Stuffing something into my folder, he sends me back to my hospital room — aka the lobby and fast-food restaurant.

I’m listening to a nurse prep the guy with whom I share a room. He will have bypass surgery on his heart tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe … and not on the weekend. “Your surgeon will be Dr. Jeffries. Or maybe Dr. Lewis. Or perhaps …” Clearly, the patient will not meet his surgeon. And he has no choice as to who will rip him open. Imagine this, however: He suffered a heart attack three weeks ago. He has been waiting since then to have his surgery.

This is a major London hospital. This is the British health system. This is weird, in places. Sensible in others. I hope to still be with you next week. But one never knows, does one?

Bernie Sanders, you should spend time here — before you urge us to increase government’s role in our health care.

From Tom…as in Morgan.                      

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home in upstate New York. He has a new novel out, call “The Last Columnist,” which is available on Amazon. Contact Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com, read more of his writing at tomasinmorgan.com, or find him on Facebook.