O/T Rotherham General Hospital on Fire Yesterday

[millertop]

My son has been in Rotherham General Hospital since 07 May 2018 on B4 & B5 medical wards, on the 10 May 2018 he had emergency surgery, after which he was in the Intensive Care Unit until 20 May 2018, then taken next door into the High Dependency Unit, where he still is at the present time receiving treatment.
The operation on the 10 May 2018 saved his life, with the problems he had & has he & us were told by consultants from Rotherham & Northern General hospitals that he should not be here.
He had his gallbladder & stones removed, problems with his liver, bowel disease ( to which they disconnected the bowel at both ends, removed the diseased part of the bowel ) plus a blood clot in one of the 3 main arteries, which he still has.
Plus he has crohns disease, out of the 3 arteries one is clear, 1 has narrowed, & the other one is blocked, he can't have his bowel reconnected until the narrowed artery is operated on by vascular surgery at Northern General hospital, because there is not enough blood pressure to do the bowel.
He is at the moment having problems with his liver, so he has really gone through the mill, with major surgery ahead.
He is in his 15th week in hospital, alive thanks to the NHS care received.
Plus other bad news is that his partner has been diagnosed with gastric stomach cancer, & is at the moment receiving Kemo-therapy treatment at Weston Park hospital Sheffield.

When I looked at the cost of being in hospital, I read over £800 a day in High Dependency Unit, £1600 to £1800 a day in Intensive Care Unit.
But one staff nurse said it was a lot more than this now.
Up to now he has had 3 operations at Rotherham General Hospital since 10 May 2018

Chuffing hell Eric did he break a mirror?

Hope all goes well eventually for them both

[millmoormagic]

RGH is one of the greatest places on Earth. They took great care of my Mum and Dad, my Wife and our two daughters when they were born. I was treated with the utmost care when I had a cancerous growth on my neck at 40 years old and they took it all away with great precision and left me almost scar free. All for free .......well, taxes paid!

Recently, I went to Sarasota Memorial Hospital with a blinding headache and the diagnosis after 2 hours was tinnitus. I got a bill for $4600 two weeks later.

Wow, unreal the American system isn't it?

[sota]

We pay $1650 a month for 3 of us and have a $7000 deductible each, we means all 3 of us have to pay the first $7000 before the insurance kicks in. People that can't afford to pay get it for nowt. Every dept sends their own bill... xray, doc, nurse, treatment room etc. they just keep coming.

[loyalmiller]

So despite paying 900 quid per month insurance you still have to stand to the first 4,000 quid?

That's unbelievably unfair!

Ironic that America call themselves "the land of the free"

[John2]

People that can't afford to pay get it for nowt.

I don't think it's quite that simple, isn't the cutoff for medicaid something like $16,000? There are many millions of people who might be earning $17,000 and can't afford the ridiculously expensive health care or qualify for medicaid cover.

The US system is an absolute disaster, one of the worst in the world. I had an ex who had a condition where she was allergic to certain fungi and had told her boss. One day she was working and inhaled some of these spores and her lungs reacted and she couldn't breathe, so someone called an ambulance for her and she was treated and OK.

Anything that happens at work is covered by workers comp insurance employers are required to have. She had told her direct boss about the condition but it hadn't been passed on to head office. The head office took legal action to sue her for the $2,000 call out of the ambulance that somebody had called for her(!) After a couple of weeks of stress they thankfully dropped it, an outrageous situation.

The costs are astronomical, the bureaucracy of charging for every single bit of treatment. I had to get treated a couple of times and the paperwork was ridiculous, especially to deal with when you're in pain! They pay double what we do (of GDP) for similar outcomes. This is why people fight against the backdoor privatisation of the NHS, lots of greedy suits lining their pockets at the expense of the patients.

[John2]

So despite paying 900 quid per month insurance you still have to stand to the first 4,000 quid?

That's unbelievably unfair!

Ironic that America call themselves "the land of the free"

What's crazy is that would be considered quite a good plan. Some deductibles are much higher. In terms of the cost of many treatments, $7k is nothing.

Sorry to hear of the experiences of your son Eric, hope all goes well on the road to recovery.