Recent reports by the news media has indicated that up to 30% of people going to A&E had no need to go there
My take is that the current problem is caused by changes to GP surgeries and the like. People are confused as to whether their GP will, nowadays, come out in the middle of the night so choose to go to A&E instead; or maybe the "
phone and chat through symptoms for a diagnosis" solution has resulted in more "
get yourself to A&E" answers?. Either way, rather than hospitals increasingly failing in some way, I think that demand has been increased instead.
I'm not convinced that there are a rash of folk in A&E with trivial symptoms; this has come up in another forum and a number of people there said they had been to A&E recently and didn't see anyone else with trivial symptoms, so might well be the Press flogging papers by latching on to an issue that is not be as widespread as described. Folk here will be familiar with Daily Express annual November forecasts of "Worst Winter for 100 years / generation / ever" :)
For me the acid test is: how many people, with trivial symptoms, are willing to queue for 4 hours to be seen?
My other take, for which I have no answer, is that a free service always results in some people using more than their fair share. Obvious answer to that would be to require payment for the service (backed by insurance payouts or whatever), but I have no idea how that would work in practice - so many issues of low income folk, unemployed, etc. I think only 25% or so of prescriptions are actually paid for? strikes me that that must mean a huge amount of admin, and thereby cost to taxpayer, for the other 75% that are "free". I don't like the American system, but I don't suppose its the only other system in place in the rest of the world?! I do think that something needs to change though; we could spend an infinite amount on healthcare, the expectations of the nation increase over time, but there comes a point when we can't afford what we aspire to have.