Health News Blog

The NHS must be set back on its feet once more
Here's a reaction to the election of a Labour government from Keep Our NHS Public. "Delivering on health care is a good place to start, and it is an urgent priority to fully invest in the NHS, including committing to full pay restoration for NHS staff."

Labour's NHS pledges analysed
"Blair-Brown government [NHS] performance was improved precisely by increasing funding and investing in staff, making the NHS one of the best services in the world" ..."Myths of unaffordability and the efficiency of privatised services need to be dispelled and the vital role of public health reaffirmed."

How privatised eye care hurts the NHS
"The effect of outsourcing - a ‘hollowing out’ of NHS eye care departments due to the loss of income and activity from cataract care has the potential to leave the NHS eye care departments as a ‘poor service for poor people’.

Why not privatise the NHS?
For an analysis of why privatising the NHS a) gives a poorer service b) is poor value for money, and c) the effect upon the publicly provided NHS, see this Keep Our NHS Public briefing.

Rolling back privatisation
Campaigner John Lister points out Labour's Manifesto commitment to roll back privatisation in public services. "Before any service is contracted out, public bodies must carry out a quick and proportionate public interest test, to understand whether that work could not be more effectively done in-house." We wait to see it carried out for privatised NHS services!

It will drive you to tears
The TV film "Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis" reveals the desperate catastrophe that 14 years of Tories' underfunding has wrought. This has been known this for years, and they've done nothing to improve it. You can only assume that the Tories want the NHS to fail.

Union victory at Barts
Nearly 700 Unite members working as porters, cleaners and facilities staff were demanding a payment for working in the pandemic. After months of negotiations, strikes and demonstrations, workers have now accepted a deal; they get additional "special leave" to the equivalent value of the lump-sum payment.

A&E waits means "plane load of deaths each week"
President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine says situation is ‘nothing short of a national scandal’. Research by the RCEM found there was one excess death for every 72 patients that spent eight to 12 hours in an A&E department.

Theft of patient data was from a private provider
The cyber attack by Russian group Qilin was made from the private firm Synnovis which manages blood tests for NHS trusts and GP services, primarily in south-east London.

"NHS would be worse off" with both
An assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of NHS policies of both Labour and Conservatives says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for planned increases in doctors and nurses in the workforce plan agreed last year.

"Destabilising NHS eye care"
The percentage of NHS cataracts delivered by the private for-profit sector has increased from 24% in 2018-19 to 55% in 2022-23. The Royal National Institute of Blind People said the use of private providers is having a “destabilising effect on NHS eye care services”. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists says that while the independent sector has “continued to expand to a level where there’s less and less benefit and more and more cost”.

Privatised to a "dodgy US firm"
The Camberwell Satellite Dialysis Unit provides excellent care and that the staff are like family to their patients but it's now being outsourced to US giant Diaverum. A CQC report from April 2023 into one “inadequate” dialysis centre run by Diaverum found it had risked disease transmission by not keeping dialysis lines clean, among a litany of other failures.

Private health get £10 million profit per week
We Own It analysis reports that £6.7 billion, or £10 million a week, has left the NHS’s budget in the form of private profits on all private contracts given by the NHS from January 2012 to May 2024. Ask your prospective MP "Isn't it time there was a cross-party consensus against NHS outsourcing in the next parliament?"

Labour to clear waiting list without more staff?
Starmer promises that the backlog of about 3.2 million people now waiting more than 18 weeks for NHS treatment will be cleared within five years. But unless Labour confronts the longstanding staff shortages it's not possible. First, a Labour government will have to deal with NHS pay the value of which has fallen in the last decade.

Junior doctors to strike just before election
Junior doctors in England are to strike for five days in the week leading up to the general election. Keir Starmer vowed to “get in the room” with junior doctors to settle the pay dispute. Well it's likely he'll get the chance.

Millions of patients wait 2 weeks for a GP
In September 2022, the government said patients would be able to see a family doctor within two weeks of booking a consultation. Thérèse Coffey, then the health secretary,promised to prioritise the issue. Now more than 5 million patients a month are waiting longer than a fortnight for a GP appointment.

BMA chair calls for GP resignations
The chair of the GP committee, Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, said that GPs should consider resigning from the  NHS over the way they are treated by the government.