This article in the Daily Mail had me shaking my head. This is night and day from the US system.
- They called EMS. It took EMS an hour and 28 minutes to arrive.
- When they got to the hospital, the ambulance had to wait 30 minutes to offload their patient
- There was a Four hour wait to see a doctor who ordered a CT scan
- Another hour to get the CT
- yet another hour to get the results and confirm that the woman had had a stroke
My iPhone log tells me I called 999 at 10.51am. My mum was finally settled in a bed on a ward at 1.30am the next day. All in all, it had indeed taken almost 15 hours between me reporting the symptoms of a stroke in my mother, to her receiving the correct care for it.
At the end of it all, they had to pay out of pocket to see a private specialist. The issue is that by then, it is too late and the damage from the stroke is mostly permanent. Free healthcare, my ass.
Now let’s contrast that with the US:
- Here in the US, an ALS ambulance arrives in 10 minutes or less 80% of the time (that is the standard). Still, the average 911 call to arrival at the hospital is 36 minutes in the US.
- From hitting the door, patients have 10 minutes to see a doctor.
- 15 minutes to see the stroke team. (every nurse in my ED is certified by the NIH as a stroke team member)
- Door to CT time is 25 minutes.
- Door to results of the CT being reported is 45 minutes.
- Door to needle time (time from entering the hospital until receiving clot busting drugs) 60 minutes.
My hospital beats every one of those metrics. The times I have given tNK or tPA were less than half of that. When someone with these symptoms enters our facility, the CT is done as quickly as we can move them to the CT room. The doctor and the ED stroke team are nearly instant. Our door to needle time is 27 minutes, on average.
The drugs must be given within 3 hours of symptom appearance or they simply don’t work very well, although some studies suggest that there is SOME benefit in getting the drugs up to 24 hours after symptoms appear. Time is brain.
Now tell me how cool it is to have ‘free’ healthcare.
18 Comments
John Hardin · November 7, 2025 at 11:07 am
In that situation – someone with stroke symptoms, pre EMT response: how useful/hazardous would giving the patient an aspirin (potentially sublingual) be as an immediate response? (Not as an alternative to calling 911, of course.) Does aspirin have any beneficial effects on already-present-and-occluding clots?
Divemedic · November 7, 2025 at 1:41 pm
There are 2 kinds of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. While aspirin helps one, it makes the other worse. Thats why a CT is done before clot busters are given.
Until you know which one you are dealing with, aspirin isnt a good idea.
Rich W · November 7, 2025 at 11:41 am
The old question: How do you want it, good, fast, cheap? Pick two.
Karl · November 7, 2025 at 2:05 pm
Heck, I broke a femur a couple of years back. 911, transport, through ER, into surgery, and with restored to *weight bearing* status was less than 15 hours. In a smaller, semi-urban setting outside a medium city. We don’t appreciate how good we have it w.r.t. medical. I just hope that it will survive the BS socialist economics they are forced to operate under.
banzaibob · November 7, 2025 at 2:45 pm
Healthcare in the UK is not free, they pay through taxes and fees. In this case thay are paying with their life or a permanent disability.
Skyler the Weird · November 8, 2025 at 7:43 am
Plus the NHS imports doctors and nurses from former Colonies who work for less money.
TRX · November 7, 2025 at 4:46 pm
–minutes. –minutes. –minutes.
—
My Dad had a stroke. I carried him to my truck and drove him to the hospital, figuring that would cut the transit time in half. New campus, largest hospital chain in the state.
Pulled up in front of ER, went in, told them I needed a wheelchair. There were two people at the admission desk, who completely ignored me. I wandered the halls until I found a chair, got Dad into it, inside, and one of the clerks deigned to admit I existed. I went back out to move the truck, and a cop was writing me a parking ticket. Thanks, jackass.
Went back in. Waited. Waited. Waited. After 30 minutes I told Dad I was going to get the truck and take him to the other hospital. That seemed to prompt the keyboard jockeys into taking him back to an exam room.
They took his blood pressure, asked me what was wrong, and were angry that he couldn’t answer their questions. Because he’s had a (#@(Ring stroke.
Wait. Wait. An hour passes, and they take him to Imaging. Then they bring him back, pissy because he’s having seizures and “won’t stay still.” Yeah, because he had a *@W*ing stroke.
They eventually moved him to a room, still without actually doing anything as far as I know. And then a few days later he died.
I’m sure that hospital’s responses and times were all properly pencil-whipped into compliance.
Most of my other visits to ERs were similar.
Divemedic · November 7, 2025 at 5:43 pm
I can’t speak about your experience. I wasn’t there. Im sorry that happened, but I can assure you that it doesn’t happen where I work.
A patient comes in with symptoms and we call a stroke alert. CT within minutes. Neurologist exam and evaluation of CT right after. Door to needle time is nearly always less than 30 minutes. I’ve never known a patient that needed it take over an hour.
Jason · November 7, 2025 at 7:31 pm
Location? In the midwest my experience personally was just as described by DM. My problem turned out to be an inner ear (semi circular canal) problem. They did keep me over night so I could get in to the MRI room in the morning (CT scan was done within 15 minutes of my arrival by the way). Neurologist figured it out after MRI. An Epley maneuver did the trick.
TRX · November 8, 2025 at 5:58 am
Baptist Health/Springhill, Little Rock, Arkansas. February 2012.
Danny · November 7, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Free ticket to leave the planet permanently.
JB · November 7, 2025 at 6:31 pm
Late last year I had slurred speech and an a numb left arm. I said to the wife lets wait 24 hours and see. Next morning it did not resolve itself so we drove to the ER. Well they scolded me and within the week it resolved itself. I had been on Eliquis since the previous year when I went to the ER for a rapid heartbeat and the finding was pulmonary embolisms in left lung. No Afib found but an arrythemia in which the Cardioligist suggests I undergo an Ablation. I take Seroquel for a sleep aid over 20 years and my research revealed it can cause arrythemias, which hospital Cardiologists never said to me. So I am weaning myself off Seroquel over the proceeding months to see if the arrythemia resolves itself. But I recieved rapid care throught 911 and critical care stages. Once I was stabilized then the wait for tests and prognosis took days, 5 days in a major Florida hospital. So Im still alive and I note my bill to Medicare for a week is over $100k so far.
Dan · November 7, 2025 at 9:28 pm
You can have free/cheap or you can have quality. You never get both. You do get what you pay for…and if you don’t have to pay for it odds are good you won’t receive it.
Exile1981 · November 8, 2025 at 12:12 am
I’m in Canada, doc phoned me this morning to tell me the last round of tests found blood, so now i need a colonoscopy. They put in paperwork for a referral today. I should hear from the specialists in Q1 next year to book a consult. With that in Q2 and actual procedure in late Q3 or Q4.
Given the 46% tax rate its not free but our MAID program is world class and only a 2 week wait time.
D00fu5 · November 8, 2025 at 1:16 am
I grew up with the NHS and it was crap then, God knows what it’s like now with every random freeloading scumbag on earth thrown into the mix.
However, if I am conscious I am going to resist being availed of the “services” of the US Healthcare system, because I prefer death over a lifetime of debt peonage. It’s not even close to being about treating people anymore, it’s about extracting every possible dime from people trapped into its clutches with spurious charges, refusing to tell people how much anything will cost them and fear mongering about not consenting to every little expensive whim on the part of a doctor. It’s a scam and a racket even before you consider them pushing politically motivated “treatments” like sexuslly mutilating kids and forcing people to take untested vaccines for a cold.
dan · November 8, 2025 at 5:10 pm
I cut my thumb with a razor and went to the emergency room. I asked what it would cost for stitches. They blew me off with let’s see what the doctor says. I asked the nurse what is will cost. She blew me off with let’s see what the doctor says. I asked the doctor and he blew me off with let’s see how things go. He gave me five stitches. The scrub who came to clean up the drip cloth, and assorted materials after the stitching tells the receptionist “It’s a number 5,” or something like that. So the clean up guy was the one who set the price. The receptionist tells me it’ll be $1500.00. $300 per stitch.
Nobody could guess at the price until the clean-up guy told them. They played me.
So I played them back and never paid a dime. Funny how the most common question was “What is your SSN?” and somehow I could never recall…
F-that!! I go in somewhere for service and you can’t give me an estimate before hand? Then, it is the clean-up guy who knows the price and not the administrators, nurses, or doctors?
Yeah. I bet when something big comes, I’ll just go ahead and die rather than feed that beast.
Aesop · November 8, 2025 at 6:31 am
Our record door-to-needle time was 18 minutes, and our average is under 25 minutes.
And we have remote-site world-class neuro docs looking at the pt.’s initial CT scans in real time from home 24/7, deciding stroke/no stroke, while the pt. is still on the CT table, <10 minutes after arrival.
Great Britistan, by contrast, has NHS surgeons who clock out and take a union lunch break while the pt. is laying cut open in surgery.
Canada’s healthcare is so bad 90% of Canadians live within an hour’s drive of an American hospital, and their doctors offer euthanasia as a request box on the sign in clipboard at the doctor’s office.
DrBob · November 8, 2025 at 10:02 pm
After 25 years in radiology (physics) I retired and became an AEMT. One project that I worked on was a small CT to go in the back of an ALS level ambo. The goal was to be pushing tPA about the time the ambo rolled into the bay. But if you can get a usable (albeit not great CT) to rule out hemorrhage with a quick local read you could could push tPA or roll in only need an MD to make a final decision and push.
Aside from every old couple owing an AED, portable CT might save a lot of lives.
Slightly O/T, but did you ever read the Japanese study of 500,000 cardiac arrest patients measuring survival/non-gorked survival as a function of ambo arrival time? Those patients who had AED at the scene as well as compressions did much better that compressions alone.
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