Queen Alexandra hospital had closed ward to new admissions and declared major incident after outage
A hospital has reopened its emergency department after closing it to new admissions and declaring a major incident after a power cut.
The outage on Monday morning at the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire, also affected phone lines. A small number of procedures had to be cancelled.
Continue reading...Non-cancer electives could be delayed as early as next week as TGA issues shortage alert for multiple products used in surgery and critical care
Surgeries could be cancelled as soon as next week due to an “unprecedented” shortage of intravenous fluids in Australian hospitals, the peak doctors’ body has warned.
The medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), issued a shortage alert on Friday for multiple intravenous (IV) fluid products, which are used in surgery and critical care.
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Continue reading...From experiencing a sudden headache at work to being found slumped under a coat in hospital with a brain haemorrhage
• Inquest finds hospital missed two chances to treat Inga Rublite
Inga Rublite was on a break at work when she came down with a sudden headache. Less than 24 hours later, she lay dying on the floor of an overcrowded A&E waiting room under a coat, hidden in plain sight. The sequence of events that led up to her death show an NHS under strain and the risk of patients falling through the cracks.
Continue reading...CQC ‘got things wrong’ implementing inspection regime and new computer system, interim chief admits
England’s healthcare regulator has issued a public apology over reforms to its monitoring of tens of thousands of hospitals, care homes, dentists and GPs.
The apology from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) came in the wake of care organisations complaining of a “hostile” inspection regime and a major new computer system failing to work properly.
Continue reading...Dr Henrietta Hughes said focus on budgets had led to substandard care and dismissal of legitimate fears
NHS patients raising safety concerns are too often “gaslighted”, “fobbed off” or dismissed as “difficult women”, according to England’s patient safety commissioner, who criticised health leaders for a “relentless focus” on finance and productivity.
Dr Henrietta Hughes said patients and loved ones sounding the alarm about substandard care should be an early indicator of danger or potential harm, but far too frequently they were completely ignored. NHS trusts focusing too much on budgets meant that “the culture becomes toxic, and we’re just on the road back to the Mid Staffs scandal”, she added.
Continue reading...The hospital network says it will walk away from its contract with the private health insurer in three months if a fairer agreement can’t be reached. Has this situation happened before?
The clock is ticking for thousands of patients after Australia’s largest not-for-profit healthcare provider, St Vincent’s, announced it would end its current agreement with health insurer NIB if a fair funding deal could not be reached before 3 October.
The chief executive of NIB, Mark Fitzgibbon, says he hopes negotiations resume, but St Vincent’s maintains the insurer needs to come to the table during the notice period and put forward a proposal that reflects the rising costs of healthcare.
Continue reading...Australian Medical Association is urging both parties to reach an agreement for the sake of patients
Thousands of patients could face higher out-of-pocket healthcare costs after negotiations broke down between St Vincent’s private hospital network and the private health fund, NIB, for a new funding agreement.
On Thursday, St Vincent’s Health Australia gave notice to NIB that it will walk away from its contract within the next 65 business days unless a fairer funding agreement is reached.
Continue reading...Exclusive: NHS Providers head says joining with private health firms and developers would help care backlog
The NHS must be given the green light to partner with private health firms and property developers to build new hospitals to slash the care backlog, a health service boss has said.
The last Labour government was widely criticised over controversial private finance initiative (PFI) deals to erect scores of new NHS facilities that led to vast profits for major corporations.
Continue reading...Only a third of shifts have enough nurses on duty, the Royal College of Nursing says its analysis shows
NHS patients are being left unseen in pain and in some cases to die alone because shifts do not have enough registered nurses, a survey shows.
The Royal College of Nursing said analysis of a survey it carried out showed that only a third of shifts had enough registered nurses on duty.
Continue reading...Only ‘urgent’ tests to go ahead in short term after hospitals in south-east London hit by Russian gang’s seizure of data
Patients denied a blood test because of a Russian cyber-attack on the NHS may have to wait up to six months to have their sample taken, the Guardian has learned.
The delays are so long that some patients have decided to pay to have their blood taken and analysed by a private clinic rather than remain on the NHS waiting list.
Continue reading...Analysis by leading experts the Nuffield Trust reveals that main parties’ manifestos would squeeze health spending
Labour and the Conservatives would both leave the NHS with lower spending increases than during the years of Tory austerity, according to an independent analysis of their manifestos by a leading health thinktank.
The assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of the costed NHS policies of both parties, announced in their manifestos last week, says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for massive planned increases in doctors, nurses and other staff in the long-term workforce plan agreed last year.
Continue reading...Party says pooling resources across regions would deliver 40,000 extra appointments a week for patients
Hospitals would have to share waiting lists and pool resources under Labour’s plans to reduce waiting times by delivering up to 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week.
The party has announced that patients would be offered appointments at nearby hospitals, rather than necessarily at their local one, which would enable people to receive faster treatment. Hospital staff and resources would be pooled across a region and would run evening and weekend surgeries.
Continue reading...Researchers say that a critical mass of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons in operative teams can reduce postoperative complications
Hospital surgical teams that include more female doctors improve patient outcomes, lower the risk of serious complications and could in turn reduce healthcare costs, according to the world’s largest study of its kind.
Studies show diversity is important in business, finance, tech, education and the law not only for equity but for output. However, evidence supporting the value of sex diversity in healthcare teams has been limited.
Continue reading...Hospital to take unprecedented step after drug firm pulled out despite successful trial of treatment
When Great Ormond Street hospital (Gosh) published the results of its gene therapy trial for “bubble baby” syndrome it was hailed as a medical breakthrough. The treatment had a more than 95% success rate for treating the life-threatening disorder in which children have no immune system. But less than a year later, the therapy had been dropped by the pharmaceutical company that planned to bring it to market.
Now, Gosh is taking the unprecedented step of attempting to license the therapy itself on a non-profit basis and without industry involvement, in order to make it more widely available to babies and children worldwide.
Continue reading...With many NHS maternity services struggling and a shortage of midwives, MPs’ plan for overhaul is ambitious
That the findings of the UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma are far from surprising does not diminish the fact that they are shocking, devastating and difficult – indeed distressing – to read. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for birth trauma’s 80-page report should give ministers, NHS bosses and the midwives and obstetricians who deliver care serious pause for thought.
It highlights how “mistakes and failures” by maternity staff lead to stillbirths, premature births, babies being born with cerebral palsy because they were starved of oxygen at birth, and “life-changing injuries to women as the result of severe tearing”. How some mothers were mocked, shouted at, denied pain relief, not told what was going on during their labour, left alone in blood-stained sheets, with desperate bell calls for help going unanswered – all examples of “care that lacked compassion”. And how, in some cases, “these errors were covered up by hospitals who frustrated parents’ efforts to find answers”. It amounts to a shameful catalogue of negligence in the only area of NHS care where two lives – one still unborn – are on the line.
Continue reading...Tees Valley mayor hailed by PM after re-election says route to Tory electoral recovery is ‘getting narrower by the day’
Having seen a fuller version of what Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, said on BBC Radio Tees this morning, I have beefed up the post at 10.16am and changed the headline. Houchen did says Rishi Sunak ultimately had to take the blame for the state of “chaos” the Tory party is in.
Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, told the Commons that Britain continues to view its arms sales to Israel as legal a day after US president Joe Biden warned he would pause the delivery of bombs because they had been previously used to kill Palestinian civilians.
I can say that the foreign secretary has reviewed the most recent advice from the IHL cell, and that has informed his decision that there isn’t a clear risk that the items exported from the UK might be used to commit or to facilitate a serious violation of IHL. That leaves our position on export licences unchanged, but that position is kept under review.
Continue reading...Lib Dems and health trusts say patient and staff safety being put at risk by poor state of ageing infrastructure
Millions of patients are being put at risk in crumbling hospitals that are unfit for purpose, MPs have said, as figures reveal more than 2,000 NHS buildings are older than the health service itself.
Health bosses have repeatedly warned ministers of the urgent need to plough cash into replacing rundown buildings in order to protect the safety of patients and staff. The maintenance backlog has risen to £11.6bn in England.
Continue reading...Moves to deport those receiving care in East Jerusalem have been called ‘a deliberate risk to innocent lives’
Cancer patients from Gaza, including children, are living in a state of limbo in a hospital in East Jerusalem after Israeli authorities threatened to send them back.
The Guardian was given access to the Augusta Victoria hospital, where at least 22 patients from Gaza in urgent need of advanced cancer treatment are living in fear of deportation. As with numerous others, they received authorisation prior to Hamas’s 7 October attack to receive medical care outside the strip, due to the inadequate facilities in Gaza.
Continue reading...Only a single hospital in Port-au-Prince remains open, with others devoid of staff as patients look for care and the dead pile up
Haiti’s healthcare system has all but collapsed amid the ferocious gang insurrection which forced the resignation of the country’s prime minister, leaving victims of the violence with little hope of medical attention, according to aid workers in the stricken Caribbean country.
In the past two weeks hospitals have been set ablaze, doctors murdered and the most basic medical supplies have now dried up. Only a single public hospital in Haiti’s capital now remains operational – and that too is expected to shut its doors soon.
Continue reading...Sector’s boom times look here to stay as desperate patients seek care and more people take medical insurance
It is boom time in private healthcare. It has never been, or needed to be, a big provider of diagnostics and treatment in the UK before. The NHS’s provision of care to everyone, free at the point of delivery, has seen to that. That also explains why take-up of private medical insurance has remained stuck at about 10% of the population. The health service’s mere existence left little room for the private sector to expand.
However, the NHS’s fragile state – it still gives people mostly high-quality care, it just cannot do that quickly any more – is a historic opportunity for the private sector to go from small to significant. It could become what one expert calls “a new normal” – a not unusual place where people get treated.
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