"My heart attack, ambulance service, Morriston Hospital."

Six months ago I was sitting chatting to my wife, when I had a sudden nasty pain that shot from my right shoulder across my back to my left hip and then slowly crept round my back and chest until it met in the middle front.

My wife thought it was indigestion, I thought it was the result of laying concrete, after an hour in pain my wife suggested I 'phone the NHS. Within a few minutes, probably not even 8 minutes, there was an ambulance outside and I was being checked over......and told I had had a heart attack.

I expected to be reassured and left for some future hospital appointment. But no, I was taken to Morriston Hospital where I was checked over, told I needed an operation, operated on and returned home four days later.

While I was in Morriston Hospital there were people there, who had been ill, had recovered and were waiting to return home or waiting for care home places. The current arrangement where care and some services are provided by Local Councils is not working – care and services should be taken away from councils and provided by hospitals. I observe that councils would rather build and run leisure services at a loss to please a few vocal people, rather than provide statutory levels of care.

Likewise our ambulance service, while perfect for me, is apparently poorly run and is apparently unable to provide the required service. This too should be controlled by our hospitals, who then would control the whole health service from end to end.....no wriggle room.

Moving on, hospitals are run like any supermarket, they provide services, but have no control over the number of customers that will arrive on any one day. Should we on the one hand provide enough hospitals, doctors, general staff, beds and equipment to cover the possibility that thousands will have a heart attack on the same day? Or try to guess from past history how many people will be ill tomorrow? And therefore, how many hospitals, doctors other staff and beds we may need tomorrow. There has to be some judgement on this, hospitals, doctors, nurses and all the other people who are needed to provide a hospital service, together cost a lot of money. Is it acceptable to have them all ready for action, with few or no customers, costing the tax payer a lot of money, and leading to staff with out of date experience and practice? Or should we continue with our present system of trying to guess how many people will require urgent life saving services today, tomorrow, or whenever?

Staff can plan their schedules days in advance, but cannot guess how many people will require urgent life saving attention in any 24 hour period.