HEALTHCARE FOR ALL

The 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England that are responsible for planning, commissioning, and funding NHS services also have a legal duty to involve people in their area in these processes.  The Health and Care Act 2022 states that citizens, their carers and representatives have the right to be...

The decision by Bath and NE Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) to award a contract for the provision of all community care services across the ICB area to a private equity-owned company – HCRG Care Group – is continuing to cause some controversy.  The ICB managed to...

According to headline figures from a report by private health market analysts LaingBuisson, the private medical insurance (PMI) business is booming. Almost one in eight people, or 4.68 million, have some form of PMI, but does this figure give us an accurate picture of the trends? The report covers up to...

John Lister comments on the government’s 2025 mandate to NHS England and NHS England’s delayed 2025/26 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidelines With local and national media headlines again and again flagging up the long delays of patients and ambulances at hospital emergency departments, delays endangering the lives of patients waiting...

The Trump agenda is not all about gagging scientists and people fighting against inequality: the aim is to minimise state spending, not least on health care, to maximise the possibility of tax cuts for Trump’s backers, the super-rich. But slashing government health spending, and in particular cutting the already restricted...

Mental health services continue to be under-resourced, leading to long waits and poor care. This week, MPs called for urgent national reform of the NHS’s eating disorder services if they are to address the UK’s escalating eating disorder crisis. In the report The Right to Life: People with Eating Disorders...

Wes Streeting may have sneaked out his announcement during Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on January 20, hoping attention would be focused elsewhere, but it’s clear that the new timetable for building new hospitals is bad news for almost all areas of the NHS. Of course, the underlying problem was the...

While most of the Trump health-related policies will primarily impact on Americans, and especially the poorest and most discriminated against, the biggest international impact will come from Trump’s decision to begin the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization. Trump made a similar push to leave WHO relatively late...

Donald Trump’s second term as US president has already begun to attract accusations of damage to scientific research and efforts by any branch of the federal government to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Despite having won his re-election on the basis of votes from poorly informed working-class and rural...

The government has launched an independent commission to reform adult social care. The task force, led by cross-bench peer Louise Casey, will develop plans for a new national care service, one of Labour’s election manifesto pledges. The process will have two phases. The first, which will identify critical issues and...

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Bedford, Luton and Milton Keynes The Integrated Care System (ICS) had submitted a plan to NHS England projecting a balanced budget (break even) for 2024/25 (p21), one of the few systems in the country to do this. However this requires “efficiencies” of just over 6% at £106m, with “unmitigated risks”...