Category Archives: NHS

More than half of England’s army veterans have health problems – report

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Survey finds many ex-military personnel fear being misunderstood and are reluctant to seek professional help

More than half of England’s army veterans have experienced mental or physical health issues since returning to civilian life, and some are reluctant to share their experiences, a survey has revealed.

The survey of 4,910 veterans, commissioned jointly by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA), found that 55% have experienced a health issue potentially related to their service since leaving the armed forces. Over 80% of respondents said their condition had got worse since returning to civilian life.

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Junior doctors in England vote to continue striking until mid-September

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BMA members overwhelmingly back further stoppages and overtime bans in long-running pay dispute

Junior doctors in England have voted to keep on striking until the middle of September in their long-running pay dispute, bringing a fresh wave of disruption to the NHS.

Those belonging to the British Medical Association voted overwhelmingly to stage further stoppages in addition to the 41 days of strikes held since last March.

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Government urged to tackle poverty to help the NHS

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Healthcare delays in deprived communities mean greater need for expensive emergency treatment, research finds

People living in poverty find it harder to live a healthy life and face barriers to accessing timely treatment, new research suggests.

A report by the King’s Fund, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, finds that the delays people living in deprived communities face for healthcare mean they are more likely to need expensive emergency treatment.

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Labour MP Foy says she has breast cancer and urges others to get checked

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Mary Kelly Foy, the MP for Durham, is recuperating from surgery and is expected to make a full recovery

A Labour MP has urged women to attend breast cancer screenings as she revealed her own diagnosis.

Mary Kelly Foy, the City of Durham MP, said she was recuperating from surgery and was expected to make a full recovery thanks to an early diagnosis.

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Health workers’ unions call for Frank Hester to lose NHS contracts

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BMA says Tory donor should resign from his company as questions grow about how many times Hester has met Sunak

Unions representing GPs and health workers have called on the Conservative donor Frank Hester to stand down from running NHS contracts, saying his “racist and misogynistic comments” breach its fit and proper person test.

Hester’s company TPP runs the electronic patient records of almost half the medical practices in the UK. His remarks about Diane Abbott have prompted calls for him to step aside amid a growing political row.

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East London fertility clinic has licence suspended after losing embryos

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Investigation begins into Homerton Fertility Centre after errors discovered in freezing processes

A fertility clinic in London has had its licence to operate suspended because of “significant concerns” about the unit, the regulator has said.

The Homerton Fertility Centre has been ordered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to halt any new procedures while investigations continue.

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‘My GP suggested it’: Britons explain why they went private for surgery

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As it emerges that one in 10 planned NHS operations in England are done in private hospitals, patients tell their stories

One in 10 planned NHS operations in England are now done by private hospitals, according to figures from the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, the trade body that represents private health providers. Here, three patients explain why they recently had to turn to the private sector for an operation.

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Private hospitals ‘cannibalising’ NHS in England by doing 10% of elective operations

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Campaigners say health service cannot provide care quickly because of underinvestment, which is allowing firms to ‘make a killing’

Private hospitals are doing one in 10 of all planned NHS operations amid patients’ frustration at long delays in NHS care and political pressure to cut waiting times.

New figures seen by the Guardian prompted campaigners to warn that the NHS is “allowing the private sector to make a killing” and is seeing more and more of its services “cannibalised” because years of underinvestment mean it can no longer provide care quickly.

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Private healthcare could become ‘a new normal’ as NHS grows weaker

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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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UK politics: Sunak refuses to say how abolition of national insurance would be funded – as it happened

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PM says ‘people trust me on these things’ and refuses to be drawn on whether government would forgo entire £46bn raised from measure

Keir Starmer has accused Jeremy Hunt of repeating the budget mistakes made by Liz Truss during her disastrous premiership.

In comments on the budget during a visit to a building site this morning, Starmer focused on Hunt’s proposal to abolish employees’ national insurance over time, saying that this was a bigger unfunded tax promise than those in Truss’s mini-budget. (See 9.28am.)

How humiliating was that for the government yesterday?

We’ve argued for years that they should get rid of the non-dom tax status, they’ve resisted that. And now, completely out of ideas, the only decent policy they’ve got is the one that they’ve lifted from us.

Nothing that Jeremy Hunt did yesterday, nor anything the OBR said, changes anything very significantly. Which is a shame. Because that means we are still:

-heading for a parliament in which people will on average be worse off at the end than at the start,

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Drug that could slow womb cancer to be rolled out by NHS in England

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Dostarlimab or Jemperli, an immunotherapy used alongside chemotherapy, could extend life expectancy

A drug that could improve the quality of life of hundreds of women with womb cancer will be rolled out on the NHS across England from Tuesday.

Dostarlimab, also known as Jemperli, is an immunotherapy that works by attracting specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells to help the immune system attack them.

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NHS waiting lists falling but will stay above pre-Covid levels until 2030, IFS says

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Length of time patients must wait for A&E care, diagnostic tests, cancer care and surgery will remain high, report predicts

The NHS hospital waiting list will be falling “consistently” by the time of the general election but will remain even larger than it was before Covid until 2030, a new report predicts.

In potentially good news for Rishi Sunak, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the waiting list for operations in England is expected to “start to fall consistently but slowly from the middle of 2024”, during the months leading up to the election, which is widely expected in November.

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Government U-turn on plans to double number of medical students in England

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Fears for impact on NHS workforce as leaked letter reveals ministers stall on aim to increase trainee doctors to 15,000 by 2031

Ministers have dramatically stalled plans to double the number of doctors being trained in England by 2031 in a move that has caused dismay across the NHS, as well in medical schools and universities, the Observer can reveal.

In June last year, ministers backed a long-term plan to expand the NHS workforce and pledged, amid great fanfare, to “double medical school places by 2031 from 7,500 today to 15,000, with more medical school places in areas with the greatest shortages to level up training and help address geographic inequity”. Labour is also committed to raising the number of doctors to 15,000 by 2031.

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Seeing same GP ‘improves patient health and cuts workload of doctors’

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Study analysing data from 10m consultations in England also says practice can free up millions of appointments

Seeing the same GP improves patients’ health, reduces doctors’ workloads and could free up millions of appointments, according to the largest study of its kind.

Primary care is under enormous strain, with patients struggling to book consultations, GPs quitting or retiring early, and financial pressures causing some practices to close. Four-week waits hit a record high in 2023, with 17.6m appointments taking place at least 28 days after being booked in England last year.

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ITV announces drama on contaminated blood scandal after Post Office series success

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Peter Moffat will write show about what is considered one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in NHS history

ITV has announced a drama on the contaminated blood scandal, widely considered to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in NHS history, after the success of its series on the Post Office.

The drama, which is being written by the Bafta award-winning screenwriter Peter Moffat, will show how people with haemophilia and other blood disorders were contaminated with blood infected with HIV and Hepatitis C, the American media site Deadline reported.

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‘Martha’s rule’ granting urgent second opinion to be adopted in 100 English hospitals

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Initiative before national rollout will allow review of care for patients whose condition is deteriorating

Patients whose health is failing will be granted the right to obtain an urgent second opinion about their care, as “Martha’s rule” is initially adopted in 100 English hospitals from April at the start of a national rollout.

The initiative will allow patients and their loved ones to get a review of their condition and treatment directly from doctors and nurses not involved in the medical team treating them.

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London hospital and Sheffield clinic affected by faulty egg-freezing products

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Guy’s hospital and Sheffield clinic may have used faulty freezing solution that could damage eggs and embryos

Scores of women have been affected by the use of a faulty freezing solution at fertility clinics in London and Sheffield, with frozen eggs and embryos potentially destroyed as a result, the fertility regulator has said.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) confirmed the issue was limited to Guy’s and St Thomas’ assisted conception unit in London, and Jessop Fertility in Sheffield.

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NHS nurses being investigated for ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud

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Scam involves more than 700 healthcare workers who used proxies to pass test in Nigeria enabling them to work in the UK

Hundreds of frontline NHS staff are treating patients despite being under investigation for their part in an alleged “industrial-scale” qualifications fraud.

More than 700 nurses are caught up in a potential scandal, which a former head of the Royal College of Nursing said could put NHS patients at risk.

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Record one in five NHS staff in England are non-UK nationals, figures show

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Figure of 20.4% is highest since records began in 2009, prompting warnings over growing reliance

One in five NHS staff in England are non-UK nationals, according to figures that show the pivotal role foreign workers play in keeping the health service afloat.

Healthcare workers from 214 countries – from India, Portugal and Ghana to tiny nations such as Tonga, Liechtenstein and Solomon Islands – are employed in the NHS. And the proportion of roles filled by non-UK nationals has risen to a record high, according to analysis of NHS Digital figures.

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More than 1.5m patients in England waited at least 12 hours in A&E in past year

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Lib Dems say last month an average of 5,735 people a day faced waits of 12 hours or more to be seen

More than 1.5 million patients in England had to wait 12 hours or longer in A&E in the past year, according to figures that MPs say lay bare the impact of the government’s neglect of the NHS.

Last month 177,805 patients faced waits of 12 hours or more to be seen in emergency departments, an average of 5,735 a day. It means one in 10 patients (12.4%) arriving at A&E waited 12 hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged.

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