Wasting medical time and a Happy New Year to all in Accident and Emergency this evening

There is a crime of wasting police time but not one of wasting NHS time. NHS time is free as is Police time but waste Police time and you could do time.

If you drink 8 pints and fall over and fall asleep in a corner and are disturbed by the Police, who are concerned for your welfare, and proceed to hit out at one of them you will be arrested, fined or even jailed.

However, if you drink the same 8 pints and fall over spraining your ankle and, after walking 2 miles home, go to sleep and then awake the next morning and decide that your ankle hurts you can then dial 999. You are then taken free to an A&E department and get an x-ray and are told there is nothing wrong with you even though you “thought you had broken your ankle” which you walked on for 2 miles under the influence the night before.

You can even assault the staff and probably get away with it due to the “zero tolerance” of the NHS as you were “poorly”, “under the influence” or “stressed” due to your (self inflicted) “illness” with a good lawyer provided by the legal aid scheme.

You can then demand an “emergency appointment” within 48 hours to ask for a sick note because “you were ill” = pissed and can’t work because you can’t walk on your sprained, but not broken, ankle for at least 3 weeks. And can I have some painkillers “ ’cos it really hurts”?

And this is all free.

This is not made up it is a genuine and frequently repeated scenario in frontline NHS care and this story is from 20 years ago and no different today.

8 pints at £2.40 a pint = £ 19.20.

Ambulance at £ 167.00 a shout.

A&E at £ 79.00 a time.

GP appointment for a sick note at £20.00. Painkillers around £ 7.00 a shout.

Costs to employer and benefits agency don’t know these costs with any degree of authority.

A cheap night out? Unless you are a taxpayer.

Is there not a case of if you drive under the influence of alcohol and get caught you get fined but if you drink and misuse the NHS you get away free?

Given the increasing taxation the Party is exerting why not have a “if you are over the drink drive limit you get charged for all your NHS treatment” policy?

Simple and cheap to administer. Like speed cameras it could deliver millions apart from the fact the NHS is free but drive a car and it is not free unless you are a joy rider. The NHS has millions of joy riders. They are called drunken patients.

ND as a junior grunt well remembers counting how many ill patients they saw in a busy city centre A&E on a Saturday night single handed and out of 30 patients only 3 were not due to alcohol. One had an unexplained painful blood clot in their mouth, one had a stroke and the other almost drowned due to heart failure. These were the ill ones out of the thirty.

The rest were just pissed but hey they had paid their taxes on their booze and fags but complained bitterly when ND had to treat genuine illness in between the drunks that were waiting (to go onto a night club with their drunken and abusive mates). This applies equally to the Police, Fire and Ambulance services at this time of year and most Friday and Saturday nights.

We at ND would like to wish our readers a happy New Year and know full well that whatever we say people will continue to abuse the health service because it is free.

Remember that those in the NHS whom you abuse so freely would also like to enjoy the New Year but a lot of them will not.

Because of you the patient and the Party all of whom will be on call this New Year as politicians are every year picking up the puke, the abuse and the ill and doing nothing about it while they enjoy themselves.

Happy New Year to most NHS workers you deserve it. The time wasters deserve a good financial kick up the proverbial backside.

Praise be to the Party and the NHS for 60 years of treating drunken abusive b*****ds free at the point of delivery of care. Nye Bevin would have been proud.