NHS, very poorly indeed
I am not old enough to remember the NHS at inception but had a lot of experience of it during the 1960-70’s. There was one surgery where I had waited about a year for but that was seen as very exceptional at the time. Mostly my procedures were done within weeks or months of need. Several times I’d barely wait for a consultant appointment and this was at a time when the NHS had huge pressures by virtue of such now obsolete practises. Never was I an inpatient for less than 2 weeks regardless of the procedure. A week of assessment prior to surgery and a week of recovery for normal for me. My GP was certainly a different experience to today. He knew us, we knew him. This was in Dagenham, not a small place by any means but, we had the one doctor. We didn’t have appointments, we went when we were sick and we were seen the same day after a fair wait. Sometimes a half hour, others a couple hours. Several times I was direct to the hospital. Wind forward and a decade or so back ...