Someone dear to me needs a ventilator per tracheostomy (Trilogy 100). Her Consultant Aenesthesist who was in Italy four weeks ago and works on an Intensive Care Unit told me that 6 out 10 Covid-19 affected ITU patients require an ECMO (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg...). This is very bad. I could sense his unease, these are machines you don't come by easily. His ITU is preparing for war, Brexit and the conservative's austerity program has put the NHS to breaking point.
You sure about the ECMO situation? That's the first time I've heard it's that bad. I understood that some 25% of ICU patients required ventilation, but that ECMO-patients had very poor outlook.
Most hospitals have just a handful of ECMO machines, if any. And most of them are talking about not providing ECMO to COViD-19 patients because of this.
That seems low relative to US medical costs in general. I'm sure the average Bay Area software engineer would happily pay that much to save a dying family member.
Bickering isn’t needed, but there is no doubt that many objective indicators of service quality and system stress in the NHS point to a decline. Vacancies in posts alone is a substantial concern and is directly linked to govt policies in training in recent years (withdrawal of the nursing student bursary for example).
Denying the fact that the NH is under pressure isn’t helpful either... we need to be realistic about what to expect when we underfund our healthcare system.
But the NHS is always 'underfunded' because demand for healthcare is infinite. Its funding has gone up continuously. There will never be a time when this isn't a political fight, that is, there's no level of funding that would end this bickering.
