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.
Continue reading...Latest updates: foreign secretary’s supporters accuse former chancellor of resisting changes to EU regulation as sixth hustings looms
Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, has used an article in today’s Guardian to propose that the government should halt the increases in the energy price cap planned for later this year and next year and, if necessary, take energy companies into public ownership to ensure that they keep prices down.
Alongside the Lib Dem plan, with which it has some similarities (they also want a price cap freeze, and more money raised through a windfall tax), it is the most radical and ambitious proposal on the table to tackle the energy bills crisis.
Continue reading...Survey by Cancer Research UK shows poorer people less likely to see their family GP, reducing survival chances
Half of people with possible cancer symptoms in the UK do not contact a GP for at least six months, potentially reducing their chances of survival, research has found.
Poorer people are less likely than the better-off to see their family doctor once they have eventually sought medical help, a survey by Cancer Research UK found.
Continue reading...Staffing crisis drives nurses to strike ballot amid warnings of cancelled operations and surge in admissions
The cost of living crisis will add further strain to an already imperilled NHS this autumn, experts have warned, amid concerns the healthcare crisis could deepen if urgent action is not taken.
Healthcare professionals say the NHS is at risk of a surge in hospital admissions, operations being cancelled en masse, and increasing difficulties over discharging patients if such pressures, potentially combined with a further wave of Covid and a bad flu season, are not tackled.
Continue reading...Outage that affected services across system may not be fully resolved until next week, says IT provider
Ministers are working to coordinate a “resilience response” after a cyber-attack caused a significant outage across the NHS computer system.
The outage affected services across the system such as patient referrals, ambulances being dispatched, out-of-hours appointment bookings, and emergency prescriptions.
Continue reading...Employment conditions can tie staff to roles for up to five years and impose fees of £14,000 for an early return home
• Trapped and destitute: how foreign nurses’ dreams turned sour
The NHS must halt the use of “repayment clauses” in contracts for international healthcare workers, MPs have said.
Members of the Commons health and social care committee came to this finding after an Observer investigation in March revealed how some workers were being forced to pay thousands of pounds if they wish to quit their jobs before their agreed contract ends. Widely used in both the private health and social care sector and in the NHS, the clauses are designed to help with retention of workers and recouping costs associated with overseas recruitment.
Continue reading...