My horrific experience with a private provider showed why a fully-funded public NHS is so important
This blog is written by Jacob, an NHS patient and Just Treatment supporter based in Hull.
Like many patients I have a mixed experiences of the NHS. On many occasions I have witnessed it perform as a literal lifesaver for family members. It provided an outstanding service in my autism diagnosis at age 25, the specialist who assessed me being incredibly empathic and acknowledging the NHS failure to recognise my disability and the inevitable impact of a delayed diagnosis on my mental health.
Then a few years ago, my horrendous experience with a private provider showed exactly why a properly funded and truly public NHS is so important.
In 2022, I decided to undergo a major surgery at my local private hospital. This procedure is not available as standard on the NHS, but it was vital for both my physical and mental health and so I scraped together the money out of my own pocket to pay for it. Like most people would, I assumed that private healthcare would provide more of a high quality service than the NHS, or at the very least be on be par with the NHS at its best.
On the surgery day however, things seemed to go wrong straightaway. My room was cramped, dirty and shabby, roughly the size of a prison cell. Not the sleek place that was pictured in the glossy brochures. Even the television was glitchy! It seemed like a bad omen. Nevertheless, I took some sedatives and was wheeled through to the operating theatre.
The next thing I remember is waking up screaming on the operating table. The staff stood around bewildered like rabbits in the headlights. In a breach of protocol, they called my mum into the operating theatre as they could not rouse me from the anaesthesia. After an hour I regained consciousness though my mum had to restrain me and collapsed from the effort, lying on a trolley next to me. My mum then had to insist that I had adequate pain relief (morphine) and it took them an hour to find the pharmacist.
After this harrowing episode I hoped for some peace in postoperative recovery, but a few hours later a staff member entered my room, whisked me out of bed and left me standing on my own in the dingy bathroom. There was no sign of the physio support promised by the hospital. There was also a “no falls risk” sign on the wall.
After catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror everything went black, and I fainted. I woke up and crawled to the door crying out for help, with blood trailing behind me and the bathroom flooding from the sink. “This is it” I thought, “I’m going to die.” I feared I would bleed out from my wounds haemorrhaging.
I was then propped up on a chair, when I should have been laid flat, which triggered a hypoxic seizure. At this point a team of medics rushed in and one of them, thankfully, was an epilepsy nurse who administered an anticonvulsant.
Despite this critical incident I received little attention during my stay on the ward, as the day after a batch of NHS patients were admitted for hip and knee replacements. The staff explained to my mum that they were understaffed, as if she would understand their predicament. She was livid on my behalf: “what have we paid for then?!”
On the day I was discharged a resident doctor inserted a catheter without a chaperone present, a breach of General Medical Council safeguarding rules. I was then practically kicked out to make my way home in a taxi, though I was glad to make a quick getaway.
When I returned home my mum was left to help me with what was effectively nursing care. We had to buy our own wound dressings. The painkillers caused terrifying hallucinations that aptly represented the whole ordeal. I relied on the NHS crisis team for emotional support, and my GP who – unlike the hospital pharmacist – prescribed the right medications for dangerous side effects of morphine. I had home visits from a private psychotherapist who screened my mum and I both for post-traumatic stress disorder. Unsurprisingly we both scored highly.
When I complained to the hospital, they were defensive and resorted to gaslighting me with their own self-praise. They did offer to pay for counselling but on the condition that I dropped my complaints. Eventually they relented and paid a token sum of compensation, a tenth of what they charged.
I also complained to the Care Quality Commission, though frankly it felt like a waste of time. The CQC still rates the hospital as “good” but this is based on the most recent inspection which was eight years ago in 2018. The government itself has admitted that the CQC is unfit for purpose. There is simply no meaningful oversight by the CQC.
Despite my mixed feelings about the NHS, this horrific experience has only reinforced my belief in its founding ideal: world class care provided free at the point of need, which should apply across health and social care. It should not be run for private profit - which puts patient care and safety last, and which abuses and exploits people at their most desperate and vulnerable.