Waiting times for admission to A&E in last week of year likely to be highest recorded by the service
More than a quarter of ambulance patients in England waited more than an hour to be admitted to A&E in the last week of 2022, amid “one of the most difficult” winters in NHS history.
Of all those arriving by ambulance in the week to 1 January, 26.3% waited with crews for more than 60 minutes.
Continue reading...Specialisms such as dentistry have shortages and EU exit still causes issues with medicines in Northern Ireland, thinktank finds
NHS trusts in England have increased recruitment from low-income “red list” countries to make up for the post-Brexit loss of EU staff, despite a code of practice to safeguard health services in those developing countries.
A report by the Nuffield Trust thinktank also identified shortages in vital specialist areas since Brexit, including dentistry, cardiothoracic surgery and anaesthesiology.
Continue reading...Health department data shows deaths have progressively increased from October, with 738 outbreaks now active in facilities
The number of Covid deaths in residential aged care has again surpassed 100 a week, spiking to levels not seen in months.
Health department data, published late on Friday, shows 738 outbreaks are now active in residential aged care facilities, down from 915 outbreaks in the week to 23 December.
Continue reading...Australian Medical Association calls for rebates to match the increased cost of living, but others say Australia must rethink healthcare as a whole
Medicare rebates to GPs need to double to stem the tide of doctors abandoning bulk billing, the Australian Medical Association has warned, while sounding the alarm over “catastrophically bad” access in rural and regional areas.
Doctors groups claim an increasing number of general practitioners can’t afford to offer bulk billing because federal payments have not kept pace with growing costs.
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‘Challenging night’ for WA fire crews in south-west
Earlier today, Western Australian Department of Fire and Emergency Services incident controller Peter Thomas said it had been a “challenging night” for fire crews in the south-west, as bushfires threaten the region.
So our volunteers from the Donnybrook area across the south-west [who have] come to deal with this incident.
We’ve had some strong winds that have been coming consistently from the east, but been fairly strong and making it challenging for our crews.
When we allow sportspeople from Russia to participate in the Australian Open, we do exactly what Putin wants.
It doesn’t matter what flag Russian Federation players compete under. It has Ukrainian blood on it.
Continue reading...Trump-appointed judge rules that children must have parental consent for contraception, in state where most abortion is banned
Texans under the age of 18 are now legally required to seek approval from their parent or guardian in order to obtain birth control from federally funded clinics, a federal judge in the state has ruled.
Title X, the federal grant program which was created in 1970 in order to provide family planning and preventive health services, was ruled a violation of state law and parental rights by federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in December 2022.
Continue reading...Mark Butler signals measure could be lifted if China provides ‘real-time uploading’ of genomic sequencing of cases
Australia’s health minister says he wants pre-flight Covid testing for travellers from China to be “temporary”, suggesting the requirement could be lifted if Beijing shares more information about its outbreak.
Mark Butler suggested on Thursday – the first day of the new testing regime – that the measure was put in place as part of an international push for China to provide real-time data on the genomic sequencing of Covid cases.
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Continue reading...NSW leader says counterparts will back moves to fix national health system, after raising issues with access to bulk-billing GPs
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, believes all state and territory leaders will be united in pressuring the federal government to overhaul Medicare and healthcare services through national cabinet.
Dominic Perrottet and his Victorian counterpart, Daniel Andrews, came out in agreement this week on calling for better integration between primary care and public health systems across the country.
Continue reading...Exclusive: DHSC alleges gowns were not sterile, could not be used within NHS ‘for any purpose’, and technical labelling was ‘invalid’
The UK government has accused a company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone of supplying defective gowns that could have compromised the safety of patients had it been used in the NHS.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid the company, PPE Medpro, £122m for 25m sterile surgical gowns under a contract awarded in June 2020 after Mone first approached ministers offering to supply PPE. However, the DHSC has alleged the gowns were rejected because they were not sterile, their technical labelling was “invalid” and “improper”, and they “cannot be used within the NHS for any purpose”.
Continue reading...In what NHS calls ‘never events’, items including swabs, blades and drill bits left in patients 291 times in England in 2021-22
A rising number of medical foreign objects, including wire cutters, scalpel blades and drill bits, have been left inside hospital patients after surgery in England, new figures reveal.
Blunders involving a “foreign object accidentally left in body during surgical and medical care” led to 291 “finished consultant episodes” in 2021-2022, official data shows.
Continue reading...Downing Street says NHS is receiving funding it needs despite Royal College of Emergency Medicine saying ministers are in denial
Earlier today the vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said ministers were in denial over the extent of problems facing hospital A&E departments. (See 11.19am.) At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the prime minister’s spokesperson tried to avoid sounding complacent, but he did claim the NHS has the funding it needs this winter. He told journalists:
We are confident we are providing the NHS with the funding it needs, as we did throughout the pandemic, to deal with these issues …
We have been upfront with the public, long in advance of this winter, that, because of the pandemic and the pressures it’s placed in the backlog of cases, that this would be an extremely challenging winter. And that is what we are seeing.
We have continued to put billions of pounds of additional funding into the NHS – £7.5bn for adult social care and for delayed discharge over the next two years. And there’s £14.1bn in additional funding to improve urgent and emergency care and tackle the backlogs.
This is certainly an unprecedented challenge for the NHS, brought about by a number of factors.
Could Johnson really win a parliamentary ballot? Or might Conservative members impose him on unwilling Tory MPs (which proved less than successful in the case of Truss)? Above all, is it likely that he would stand in the first place? For all his reputation for recklessness, Johnson has a prudent streak. Both last year and in 2016 he decided not to stand, bruising the feelings of some of those who had invested hope in his candidacy …
It’s possible that a reinstalled Johnson could confound his critics, as he has done so many times before, and win the Conservatives a fifth term. Let Sunak do the hard work, Johnsonians will say – the tax rises, the spending cuts. Then their man can breeze in with his unquenchable optimism, cut taxes and cheer Britain up. Really?
Continue reading...Victorian premier says state-run hospitals should not be acting as safety nets because people ‘cannot find a bulk-billing doctor’
Victorian and New South Wales have banded together to ramp up pressure on the federal government to overhaul Australia’s ailing primary care network through national cabinet this year.
Visiting a newly opened urgent primary care clinic in Melbourne, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said state-run hospitals were too often acting as a safety net amid an ongoing shortage of bulk-billing general practitioners.
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Continue reading...Ministers urged to recall parliament amid warnings patients are dying needlessly due through inaction
The crisis engulfing the NHS will continue until Easter, health leaders have warned, as senior doctors accused ministers of letting patients die needlessly through inaction.
More than a dozen trusts and ambulance services have declared critical incidents in recent days, with soaring demand, rising flu and Covid cases and an overstretched workforce piling pressure on the health service.
Continue reading...New study finds most medications are ineffective against strains currently circulating but thankfully full vaccination still offers protection
The antiviral Paxlovid is the “last drug left in the cupboard” to treat people vulnerable to severe disease and death from Covid-19, a leading virologist says.
The message from Associate Prof Stuart Turville is particularly concerning given the variants circulating now are adept at evading antibodies.
Continue reading...Prof Paul Kelly told Albanese government there was not ‘sufficient public health rationale’ for additional requirements targeting China
The Albanese government imposed pre-flight Covid checks on travellers from China against the advice of the chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly.
The 31 December advice, published by the health department, stated that Kelly did “not believe that there is sufficient public health rationale” for any additional requirements, labelling any restriction on travel from China “disproportionate to the risk”.
Continue reading...Health minister defends country-specific testing as necessary due to ‘absence of comprehensive information’ on Covid’s spread in China
Australia is planning to introduce wastewater testing for incoming flights in an attempt to gather more information about the possible entry of new Covid variants.
The health minister, Mark Butler, announced the measure on Monday in a round of interviews defending the decision to reimpose pre-flight Covid testing for passengers from China as necessary because of a “absence of comprehensive information” about the disease in China.
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Continue reading...Lib Dems say face-to-face GP bookings ‘almost extinct’ in some areas as their survey shows a rise in self-prescribing
Almost one in four people have bought medicine online or at a pharmacy to treat their illness after failing to see a GP face to face, according to a UK survey underlining the rise of do-it-yourself treatment.
Nearly one in five (19%) have gone to A&E seeking urgent medical treatment for the same reason, the research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows.
Continue reading...President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine believes waiting times for December will be the worst he has ever seen
As many as 500 people could be dying each week because of delays to emergency care, a senior healthcare official has said.
The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Adrian Boyle, believes waiting times for December will be the worst he has ever seen, with more than a dozen NHS trusts and ambulance services declaring critical incidents over the festive period.
Continue reading...One in five takeaways in some areas of UK did not satisfactorily meet required standards, data shows
Takeaways in poorer parts of England are twice as likely to need improvement in food hygiene as those in wealthier areas, with as many as one in five in some parts of the UK falling below required standards, according to Guardian analysis.
Almost one in 10 takeaways in England’s poorest neighbourhoods did not satisfactorily comply with food hygiene standards, compared with just one in 24 in the richest, according to an analysis of almost 600,000 inspection reports at the beginning of December, 64,000 of them takeaways.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests
In the decade to 2030, more than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia, with healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests.
The lead health economist with the university’s Centre for Medicine Use and Safety, Associate Prof Zanfina Ademi, who headed the analysis, said it was important to get a predictive picture of the bushfire situation in Australia and its impact on health and the economy.
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