Petition Tag - hospitals

The government are currently trying to push through measures which will effectively privatise the health service. We want to urge the Labour Party, who created the NHS, to do more to save it.

We would very much like you to add your own comments to this petition.

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Currently in Georgia, the healthcare system is largely privatised and people must pay for their care either through medical insurance or by out-of-pocket payments.

The insurance companies often do not pay out people's claims so many must personally pay for their treatment. In fact, 73% of total health expenditure is out-of-pocket payments.

The same insurance companies often run the hospitals and clinics with the aim of maximising their profit. This usually entails lowering medical professionals' salaries and increasing treatment costs. This lowers the overall level of care and makes healthcare inaccessible for a great many people.

Access to healthcare should not be determined by the invisible hand of the market. It is unjust that the market determines who lives and who dies.

We want the government to introduce a universal healthcare system which is free at the point of use, financed by general taxation and provided by a public, nonprofit national health service.

This would mean that there would be universal coverage throughout the country, universal access throughout the population and improved levels of patient care. We believe this is the right thing to do for the people of Georgia.

It is also the right thing to do for the country and the economy. A healthy population is a more productive one. A universal healthcare system would lower crime rates and make the country more politically and economically stable.

Georgia can afford to do this. According to our calculations, such a universal healthcare system would cost in the region of 850 million GEL per year. If the government increased healthcare spending to 11% of the budget, it could afford to implement this system.

If we want to live in a modern, civilised country with people who care for and respect each other, we need to adopt this model of healthcare.

It is simply not just or acceptable to leave people suffering and dying for want of money.

შესავალი

დღეს, საქართველოში ჯანდაცვის სისტემა ძირითადად პრივატიზებულია და მით სარგებლობა საკმაოდ ძვირი ჯდება.

მოსახლეობის იმ მცირე ნაწილს, რომელსაც სამედიცინო დაზღვევა გააჩნია, მაინც უწევს მომსახურებისთვის თანხის გადახდა, რადგან სადაზღვევო კომპანიები უარს აცხადებენ ხარჯების სრულიად დაფარვაზე. 2009 წელს ჯანდაცვაზე დახარჯული 1.8 მილიარდი ლარის 73%-ს მოსახლეობის მიერ ჯიბიდან გადახდილი თანხა წარმოადგენდა.

სადაზღვევო კომპანიები, ხშირ შემთხვევაში ასევე არიან კლინიკებისა და საავადმყოფოების მფლობელნი და მათი მთავარი მიზანია მოგების მაქსიმირება, რაც ერთი მხრივ, ექიმთა ანაზღაურების შემცირებით და მეორე მხრივ, მომსახურების ტარიფების გაზრდით ხორციელდება. ეს მიდგომა აუარესებს ჯანდაცვის ხარისხს და მრავალი ჩვენგანისთვის მიუწვდომელს ხდის მას.

ჯანდაცვით სარგებლობა არ უნდა განისაზღვრებოდეს ბაზრის უხილავი ხელით. უსამართლობაა, როდესაც ბაზარი განსაზღვრავს იმას, თუ ვინ იცოცხლებს და ვინ არა.

ჩვენ გვსურს, რომ მთავრობამ შემოიღოს ჯანდაცვის უნივერსალური სისტემა, რომელიც უფასო იქნება გამოყენების დროს, დაფინანსდება საერთო გადასახადებიდან და უზრუნველყოფილი ჯანმრთელობის ეროვნული სამსახურის მიერ (ორგანიზების ამ სქემას ტრადიციულად უნივერსალური ჯანდაცვის ბევერიჯისეულ (ბრიტანულ) მოდელს უწოდებენ).

მთავრობის მიერ შემოთავაზებული ბისმარკისეული (გერმანული) მოდელი (რომელიც გულისხმობს ჯანდაცვის სისტემის სავალდებულო დაზღვევით თანადაფინანსებას) ჩვენთვის მიუღებელია, რადგან:

პირველი, თუ გავითვალისწინებთ ქართულ გამოცდილებას დაზღვეული მომხმარებელი მაინც არაა დაცული ფინანსური რისკისგან;

მეორე, საჭირო იქნებოდა შუა რგოლის არსებობა - არა მომგებიანი სადაზღვევო კომპანიების სახით, რაც გაცილებით მეტი დაგვიჯდებოდა და გაგვირთულებდა ჯანდაცვის სისტემით სარგებლობას;

მესამე, შრომის ღირებულება დაახლოებით 15%-ით მოიმატებდა, რაც უარყოფითად აისახებოდა უმუშევრობის ისედაც მაღალ დონეზე.

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The State Government has decided to impose or increase car parking fees at State metropolitan hospitals.

These new fees will have a negative effect on:

• patients trying to access health services
  
• family members and carers visiting loved ones
  
• hardworking and dedicated staff providing health services
  

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Currently in Ontario.. if you have a complaint against a hospital, nursing home or child protective agency there is NO where to turn.

The amendment of this bill, Bill 131 Ontario.. gives us all a voice.. someone who can and WILL investigate the NUMEROUS horrific acts being thrust upon our most vulnerable. PLEASE sign this petition.

Let's give us a voice.. especially for those who cannot speak.

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Lightburn Hospital, in the east of the city, has 120 beds and provides rehabilitative care for older patients, including specialist units for stroke and post trauma patients plus a day hospital and out-patient clinics. This service is supported by an assessment unit located at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

It is under threat from closure due to budget cuts in the NHS.

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The strikes in South Africa are busy destroying our country. Our children have no education, medical care is not available, petrol companies to start a strike on the 28th of August 2010.

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Bellingen Hospital once serviced the Bellingen Shire and Surrounds. Now, despite an increase in Population, The services at Bellingen Hospital are being reduced further and further.

Have your say ! Babies were born there. Old people passed away in their own local community. Sick children were not far from home. Accidents and Injuries were attended to, day and night. Local people were employed. Fine Food was cooked at Bellingen Hospital. Take care of your local Community IN your Local Community.

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PETITION FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THE HYPERMOBILITY SYNDROMES (HMS) AND EHLERS-DANLOS SYNDROME (EDS) SERVICES AT CHAPEL ALLERTON (Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust)

As you are all aware Professor Bird retires after serving the above community of patients at the end of September 2010. Our information indicates that the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust do not intend to continue with the service that our community accesses. So with the loss of Prof. Bird and the highly skilled multi-disciplinary team, the existing and 300+ new patients a year, will no longer have access to what is widely recognised as a designated HMS/EDS Clinic.

This will have a devastating effect on the needs of those of us who access the current service in Leeds. Additionally this will lead to an increase in referrals to the other three existing designated HMS/ EDS Clinics in the UK, namely Glasgow, UCH in London and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. There is no doubt that many of us despite the difficulties in travelling and the extra cost will wish to attend a specialised service in a designated clinic, (especially considering the difficult journey that the majority of us undergo to gain a diagnosis in the first place). It is also apparent that this patient group in fact needs more designated clinics, run by knowledgeable and skilled staff who are up to date with research and who participate in research in attempts to best indentify how to manage and treat what can be a condition which significantly impacts on a patients physical, emotional, financial, family and social lives. It is not in the interests of this patient group to attend ordinary rheumatology appts, so with that in mind we are asking that you all sign this petition for the following reasons;

1.The continuation of a fit for service fit for purpose designated service/clinic for people with HMS/EDS at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
2.The need for more designated clinics for people with HMS or EDS.

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A story about the Health Care System and the great lengths they will take to intentionally cover up their negligence.

The last year my mothers' life unfolded tragically due to the negligence of our health care system, specifically the Regina General Hospital. Our nightmare unfolds...

In February 2007 Wendy McIntyre age 57 was taken into the Regina General Hospital Emergency department after falling and hurting her back at home. After examination she was sent home with no significant injuries and a prescription for morphine. My mother being a renal patient took her prescribed morphine pill at home that night. The following morning when she woke up she couldn't stand or walk on her own and she was incredibly disoriented. We called the ambulance who took her back to the hospital. The same doctor couldn't believe that this was the same woman he had seen the day before and she was admitted to the 3rd floor. She was given some sort of antidote to combat the effects of the morphine. For the next 2 weeks she remained in a state of dementia and was told that she may have suffered a stroke.

During her confused state my mother thought that her room was on fire and after buzzing for nurses who never came she climbed out of bed, fell and fractured her back in 2 spots. Should this have happened...not really. She had become extremely weak during the 4 week stay and our family expressed concerns about getting her some physiotherapy and rehab after she left the hospital. She was discharged and told that she wasn't weak enough for rehab, even though we were told to buy her a walker and think about a wheel chair for her. Keep in mind she was 57. Why wouldn't the health care system want to attempt to rehabilitate her? She went home and 4 days later and was found unconscious on the floor due to a diabetic reaction. Again the ambulance was called and she was admitted into the hospital for the next two months. After many meetings and being very persistent we managed to convince the hospital that she needed some additional care. She was granted a 4 week stay at a rehabilitation center, only catch is that as soon as you are accepted the patients 4 week time period starts. Much to our horror we were told from the hospital that there were no beds available and Mom would have to stay in the hospital until a bed became open, this never happened and she spent the entire 4 weeks in the hospital. On week 3 we were told that a bed had become open and that Mom had spiked a temperature which meant she had to give the bed up.

During her time away from the hospital Wendy continued to go three times a week for her dialysis treatments. On August 27/07 she was admitted into the hospital because her sodium levels were low and her electrolytes were not functioning properly. A few days later her condition had improved and the doctor discussed discharging her. Only because my father expressed a concern for her mobility was she kept in the hospital.

On Sept.2/07 my mother took the walker that was given to her by the hospital outside. My mother at the time was weak but was encouraged by the nurses to use the walker for exercise. The walker started to get away from her and when she went to stop it by applying the brakes they failed. As a result she fell broke her hip and suffered a serious head injury. When asked what had happened she replied "the walker started to get away from me and it didn't stop", when told about this we took the serial number and wrote it down. We assumed that because the nurses realized her extreme lack of mobility they would keep an eye on her, instead she was provided with a walker that had faulty breaks. How can a hospital give a person a piece of equipment and not know if it was working. Little did we know that after her hip surgery she was never going to be responsive again.

We feel that Wendy never did recover from the surgery and that the fall was a direct cause of her death. It also seems that because she fell on hospital property while a patient in the hospital every effort has been made by the hospital and the doctors to cover up the facts and the true cause leading to her death. We feel that if she had fallen at home and suffered head trauma and a broken hip and died a few days later the hospital and health system would be very fast to point to that as a leading contributor to her death.

Somehow the Regina General Hospital has managed to deny that the faulty walker was used (they located the walker that matched the serial number we provided them with but a nurse claims that she used a different walker the morning of her fall), they have botched the autopsy that they told us to have, they have provided three separate causes of death, they can't confirm that the anesthesiologist was aware of her head trauma and they have said that the coroner was involved in September when she died and then deny that the coroner wasn't involved until December. The hospital has manipulated the facts and lied to us from the moment she fell on their property. The very fact that the hospital was reacting to her head injury and not telling the family about her condition is cause for alarm.

Patients deserve better treatment than what my mother received. When a loved one is sick or injured and in the care of the hospital, the care that they receive should never have to suffer. Every patient has a voice but unfortunately for my mother her voice was taken away the minute she fell on hospital property. Every step from her fall on is either conflicted with another explanation provided from the hospital and then covered up. Wendy McIntyre did not get a chance to voice her concerns so her family is now doing it for her. Many arguments have been made to try and explain to us what the hospital wants us to believe. What they have forgotten is that her medical records, autopsy results, coroners role, causes of death and various other information tells a different story. We can all understand the strain that is put on our Health Care System and it's recent limitations, what we can't understand is why short cuts that cause negligence are covered up. If the almighty machine known as the Regina General Hospital is going to cover-up a patients care or lack of they should ensure that they have not ever given the family the documents to prove that a cover-up has taken place.

All the information that we have provided and the additional information that we still have is documentation provided from the hospital. I would hate to think that other families are going through the same thing as ours and have no ideal that they are entitled to ask questions and fight back.

We need to find a way to get our message to the people that are responsible for the negligence.

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Increasingly, patients in hospital wards, and in hospital and doctor's waiting rooms are being forced to listen, either to other people's choice of music, or to the noise of their televisions.

Any unwanted music becomes a form of noise pollution that can irritate or depress, rather than entertain or divert, people who may already be suffering.

This is born out by a survey of 115 blood donors carried out at Nottingham University Medical School in 1995. It found that playing music made waiting donors more anxious before donating blood, and more depressed after donating, than silence.

If such outpatients (all healthy volunteers) feel like this, patients lying often immobilised in beds may suffer far worse. It is particularly unfair to trample on other people's rights to peace, when they are at their most vulnerable in hospital. Anyone who wants to listen to music or radio can do so easily through headphones.

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Euthanasia is not about giving rights to the person who dies but, instead, is about changing the law and public policy so that doctors, relatives and others can directly and intentionally end another person's life.

People do have the power to commit suicide.

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Update May 15, 2006

This petition is now closed. Thanks to all who signed. Thanks to gopetition.com! More people have discovered the terrible news of concentration camps and signed to ask for investigation.

April 14, 2006

Recent reports have revealed several concentration camps in China where tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are being held and face possible death—this is an urgent situation that requires attention from the international community, especially the United States.

According to multiple sources, concentration camps similar to the one in Sujiatun, Shenyang, have been set up in provinces across China to detain large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners. In those camps, the authorities have been harvesting the organs of practitioners while they are still alive and cremating the remains to destroy the evidence, then selling the organs for profit. Clearwisdom.net and The Epoch Times exposed these atrocities to the world in early March, and within three weeks, before Chinese officials addressed the issue to foreign media, the practitioners held in underground concentration camp in Sujiatun had been quickly relocated.

According to tips from Mainland China and different investigations, the Chinese communist regime hastily published the "Interim Regulation for Human Organ Transplant Practice" after the Sujiatun concentration camp was exposed. However, the regulation will not take effect until July 1, 2006, and thus we suspect the regime was allowing time to destroy all evidence of the crimes. Investigations have confirmed that hospitals and transplant centers in Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Hunan, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Anhui, Shan'xi, Xinjiang and etc. are operating overtime to perform transplant operations. Hospital staff members told undercover investigators that patients should come in quickly if they want a transplant, as the hospital can find matching organs in as short as one or two days and it will be difficult after this batch of organs is used up.

This information, supported by multiple investigations, leads to one conclusion: A slaughter to eliminate witnesses and victims of the concentration camps is underway. Because of this urgent situation, the Falun Dafa Association has initiated IGFG (Investigate Genocide against Falun Gong in China) where many credible organizations have been and will be invited to join, aiming to go to China to perform an independent investigation of the persecution of Falun Gong in all the labor camps, jails, hospitals and relevant facilities.

After World War II, the international community deeply regretted its failure to stop the Holocaust and solemnly promised "Never Again." We urgently ask you to take immediate action and activate all possible mechanisms to stop this new genocide in Mainland China. In particular, the U.S. government owns satellites that can provide information on the past and present activities in the concentration camps and labor camps etc.

In the meantime, we know that you are meeting with Hu Jintao later this month. We hope that you can bring up the following points:
1. Open up all of China's labor camps/jails/hospitals for international investigation.
2. Allow IGFG to go into China and research the facts of the persecution of Falun Gong.

We believe such requests are fair, just, necessary, and urgent considering the current situation. Every minute of delay will result in irremediable loss of innocent lives and will be a disgrace to the human race!

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We, the undersigned, hereby wish for there to be a full time health centre for people living with cystic fibrosis. This would allow for a place, outside of hospitals, where families and individuals can go to receive treatments, be cared for when they're ill, and speak to others dealing with the same medical problems as themselves.

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