Move will help up to 150 patients a year whose condition has not responded positively to anti-seizure drugs
Up to 150 people a year with epilepsy will have a potentially life-changing new form of surgery on the part of their brain that is causing their seizures, in an NHS initiative.
NHS England is making available a “world-leading” fibre-optic laser beam surgery that would let epilepsy sufferers avoid having to undergo neurosurgery, which is much more invasive.
Continue reading...Paramedics in England missing 117,000 urgent calls each month, as CQC warns of ‘worrying new status quo’
Paramedics in England cannot respond to 117,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals looking after patients, figures show.
The amount of time ambulance crews had to wait outside A&E units meant they were unavailable to attend almost one in six incidents.
673 patients had to wait 10 hours or more to be handed over to A&E staff – NHS guidelines say no one should wait more than 15 minutes.
45,000 patients were delayed for at least an hour and 21,000 for at least two hours – just under the highest numbers ever seen.
While crews spent 558,000 hours attending incidents, they were unable to complete another 117,000 “job cycles”, which equates to 21% of total ambulance capacity – huge rises on the 45,000 job cycles or 7% of capacity in October 2019.
Continue reading...With people aged 65 and over controlling 51% of Britain’s wealth, the logic for investors is simple
• Canadian owners of care homes avoided UK taxes, researchers claim
With a spa, cinema and wood-panelled hall, Reigate Grange in Surrey, where Ann King was abused, is part of a growing trend for luxury care homes. Fuelled by global investors’ desire to capitalise on older people’s property wealth, luxury care applies a cruise-ship sheen to the grittier reality of dementia and the end of life.
The logic for investors is simple. People aged 65 and over in the UK now control 51% of Britain’s wealth, up from 42% in 2008, the year of the financial crash, according to the Resolution Foundation. A large minority of older people can afford £100,000-a-year care home fees because they have houses worth far more that they no longer need. A person in a £1m home who survives for the typical two years of a care home resident would still leave £800,000 in their will.
Continue reading...Hospitals ordered to protect stocks as they fall to critical level amid shortage of staff to take donations
The NHS has declared its first ever amber alert over blood supplies after they fell to a critically low level, prompting warnings that hospitals in England may be forced to cancel operations to protect their stocks.
An NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) official confirmed that overall blood stocks in NHS England were at three days’ worth and levels of O-type had dropped to less than two days’. The normal standard is to hold at least six days’ worth of blood in stock at all times.
Continue reading...Chancellor must top up budgets or face industrial action and further recruitment issues, thinktank warns
More than 100,000 public sector workers would lose their jobs this year if the government refuses to fund higher than expected pay awards for nurses, doctors, teachers and care workers, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The IFS said the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, faced a choice of either topping up public sector budgets or accepting the likelihood of industrial action, further problems recruiting and retaining staff, and a decline in quality of services already under extreme strain.
Continue reading...Major disruption to NHS over winter feared if ballot of 300,000 staff over 5% pay increase results in industrial action
Hundreds of thousands of nurses across the UK are to be balloted about going on strike in a move that risks disrupting the NHS this winter.
For the first time in its 106-year history the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is balloting 300,000 of its members about strike action and recommending that they vote in favour.
Continue reading...Sally Mays’ parents fought for seven years to hear details of chat outside mental health unit their daughter was turned away from
An NHS trust has “not covered itself in glory” in its dealings with the family of a vulnerable young woman who killed herself after being refused admission to hospital, a coroner has found.
The three-day hearing looked at evidence withheld from the original inquest into the death of Sally Mays, who killed herself in 2014 after being turned away from a mental health unit.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
Continue reading...The chancellor says the move will save 28m people £330 on average next year
Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time, a demographic milestone for a state that was designed a century ago to have a permanent Protestant majority, my colleague Rory Carroll reports.
Thérèse Coffey is deputy prime minister as well as health secretary. Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, and responding to a question from the former Labour MP Ed Balls, who was presenting, she said that as deputy PM whould be would “chairing things like the home affairs committee and different elements like that”. But she rejected claims this meant she would be doing the health job part time. She said:
I’m conscious that in two weeks we’ve already pulled together our plan for patients and we will continue to develop that.
I don’t think it will be a case of being part-time ... We don’t have fixed working hours.
Continue reading...Thérèse Coffey announces measure aimed at freeing up beds in hospitals in England before winter pressures
Ministers are setting up a £500m emergency fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible in an attempt to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter.
Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, unveiled the move in the Commons on Thursday as part of her plans to tackle the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays for care.
Continue reading...New health secretary’s demand to improve patient access to GP care in England is immediately criticised by family doctors
No patient should have to wait more than two weeks to see a GP, the new health secretary will demand , in a move that has already been criticised by family doctors.
Thérèse Coffey will on Thursday set out a new “expectation” that everyone seeking an appointment with a GP should get one within 14 days while outlining a major plan to tackle the NHS’s growing crisis.
Continue reading...Exclusive: change to registration process will pave way for thousands of staff trained overseas to come to UK, says government
Ministers will introduce legislation as soon as parliament returns on Monday to tackle the NHS’s worsening staffing crisis by making it easier for overseas nurses and dentists to work in the UK.
The move is part of a drive by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to increase overseas recruitment to help plug workforce gaps in health and social care.
Continue reading...NHS launches autumn drive with jabs offered first to care home staff and residents, and housebound people
Millions of care home residents, staff and housebound people in England will be invited for their autumn coronavirus vaccine booster from Monday.
Health teams will visit care homes and private homes to vaccinate about 1.6 million residents, staff and housebound people in the latest phase of the vaccine programme, NHS England has said.
Continue reading...Charities say social care crisis is ‘crippling patient flow’ in hospitals and has created a ‘miserable situation’
Patients are waiting up to nine months to be discharged from NHS hospitals in England despite being medically fit to leave, according to “shocking” figures that will pile pressure on ministers to tackle the social care crisis.
Health experts say the incredibly long-delayed discharges are yet more evidence of the impact of the shortage of social care beds and provisions to get patients home safely.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Analysis of 126,000 cases over a decade shows ‘deeply worrying’ racial disparities in NHS wait times
Black and Asian people in England have to wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than white people, with some forced to wait an extra six weeks, according to a “disturbing” analysis of NHS waiting times.
A damning review of the world’s largest primary care database by the University of Exeter and the Guardian discovered minority ethnic patients wait longer than white patients in six of seven cancers studied. Race and health leaders have called the results “deeply concerning” and “absolutely unacceptable”.
Continue reading...When Covid struck and BAME patients died disproportionately, students of heath inequalities were not surprised
As the first Covid wave hit, it quickly became clear that people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds were dying in disproportionate numbers.
The immediacy and visibility of these deaths was shocking and revealed a disparity so clear-cut that some wondered if the explanation could be genetic. But those who have spent a lifetime studying health inequalities were less surprised. People from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds do worse across a wide range of health outcomes.
Continue reading...Suggestion of activities to help improve mental and physical health part of wider movement of ‘social prescribing’
GPs around England are to prescribe patients activities such as walking or cycling in a bid to ease the burden on the NHS by improving mental and physical health.
The £12.7m trial, which was announced by the Department for Transport and will begin this year, is part of a wider movement of “social prescribing”, an approach already used in the NHS, in which patients are referred for non-medical activities.
Continue reading...Article by Tory hopeful arguing NHS ‘cannot be put on pedestal’ shows she fully backed 2009 cost-cutting pamphlet
Liz Truss personally supported cuts to the NHS, arguing the service “cannot be put on a pedestal” in an article in which she also criticised the “inexorable” rise in doctors’ pay.
The newly emerged opinion piece was written by Truss to support a thinktank report she co-authored that called for patients to be charged for GP appointments and doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10%.
Continue reading...Users trying to check in for flights were left unable to access proof of their vaccination status for several hours on Thursday night
British travellers were left struggling to board flights after the NHS Covid Pass system went down for several hours on Thursday night.
Users trying to access proof of their vaccination status via the NHS app and website found that the service was unavailable, with the app telling users: “We are sorry the NHS Covid Pass is currently unavailable.
Continue reading...PM hopeful co-authored pamphlet that also called for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% and abolition of universal child benefit
Liz Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in a pamphlet she co-authored in 2009, the unearthed document has revealed.
The Tory leadership frontrunner also wanted to see the universal child benefit abolished in the report, which she co-wrote with six other people when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank.
Continue reading...Ministers accepted urgency of need of those infected in 1970s and 1980s, who are dying at the rate of one every four days
Survivors of the contaminated blood scandal have been awarded interim government payments after a 40-year battle, but thousands of parents and children of the victims have still received nothing.
Ministers have accepted the urgency of the need to make the £100,000 payments to about 3,000 surviving victims, after being warned that those mistakenly infected with HIV and hepatitis C were dying at the rate of one every four days.
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