The global pandemic has changed health care systems all over the world. In the UK if you needed a planned operation, you would see your GP and get a referral usually within in 6 weeks and if you had to go to A&E and needed any kind of urgent surgery then you would probably have it straight away or certainly after only a short wait. We all know if you don’t want to wait you can ‘go private’, well you could but that was before Coronavirus.

Things have now changed, in order to free up beds which could be used for patients struggling with severe life threatening Coronavirus symptoms almost all routine NHS hospital surgeries and treatments were cancelled. Many operating theatres were converted to mini Intensive care units. The NHS made a blanket policy to only to carry out level 1A operations. These are the sickest patients who are likely to die if left untreated for 24hours. Other patients if they were urgent cases would still be admitted to the hospital but would not have surgery and would be placed under monitoring or perhaps even discharged with care in the community.

So lets say you fell and broke your leg and it needed pins and screws. A&E would have put it in a temporary cast and you would be sent to a ward. Before Covid you might have waited a couple of days, now you would wait indefinitely.

At this point you might remember you have private health insurance through your work. The only problem is the government have already bought up all the beds in private hospitals to use for overflow.

If you are in this situation as I was a few weeks ago, not with a broken leg but a reoccurrence of a back injury. Thankfully our teams experience and knowledge led to the them not only identifying the only 3 hospitals still open for business to some extent in London., they also found a top consultant who had practicing privileges at 2 of them.

Had I not had the knowledge to navigate around the NHS I honestly believe I would probably be either blocking a bed still now, or perhaps bed bound in a care home - not great for a 34 year old with a family.

So if you are in this situation, whether you are looking to self-fund or have insurance but even your insurer doesn’t have access to an open hospital, then call us. We are hearing things are improving, but no doubt the impact on the NHS will go on for well into 2021 as so many urgent treatments need to take place that are overdue. Needless to say my wife and daughter now have private healthcare cover

Author:
Dave Hawkins, Founder MET Medical