GP workforce crisis deepens
Despite government rhetoric GP numbers continue to fall. There were 27,153 FTE fully-qualified GPs last month, down from 28,129 at the end of 2019. The Royal College of GPs warns of ‘intense workload and workforce pressures’.

ULEZ and public health funding
Yes this is an opinion piece, but it says it how it is. Air pollution is the biggest killer, between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths every year are due to human-made air pollution.

"Not enough time with patients"
As an example of the worrying picture of the intense pressures being felt at the NHS frontline, a poll across a range of NHS professions shows they have too little time to help patients and the quality of care the service provides is falling.

Mental health callouts: no new cash
Health services will not get any new funding when they take over responsibility for mental health emergencies from police next month, increasing pressure on ambulance and A&E services already in crisis.

Consultants strike for "the future"
"We’re seeing a drain of expertise from this country... as a consequence the NHS is crumbling, patients are suffering – our ask is to restore pay to improve retention."

NHS facing an exodus of doctors
Sunak says there's no need to act over doctor's leaving to go to Australia. But medical leaders are increasingly worried about an emerging trend of senior doctors quitting the NHS. Striking consultants have been offered new jobs in Ireland paying up to £233,000 pa.

Private equity take-overs are "worse"
A review of private equity healthcare service takeovers across eight countries including the US, UK, Sweden and the Netherlands reveals that private equity ownership of healthcare services including hospitals and nursing homes is linked to a harmful effect on cost and quality of care.

40 "new" hospitals promise
The National Audit Office says the government is on track to break a key election promise to build 40 new hospitals in England by the end of the decade.

Health institutes urge leaders to invest
The Kings Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust writes to political leaders to urge them to "...make a decisive break" from years of NHS underinvestment. "The NHS has endured a decade of under-investment...capital spending has been well below comparable countries. As a result, the health service has insufficient resources to do its job."

Austerity has lead to decline in quality of care
The coalition government’s austerity programme in the early 2010s led to the heath service no longer being able to meet key waiting time targets, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation have said.

Patient death: Physician associates under fire
A patient died after receiving care from a physician assistant. The largest share of the blame "...lies with NHS England and its determination to solve our workforce crisis on the cheap".

The public's view of the NHS at 75
Above all, the health service makes people proud to be British, more than a) our history b) our culture c) our system of democracy d) the royal family. Also, the NHS being free at the point of use, affordable and paid for via tax is the aspect that make people (55% of respondents) most proud. So despite the real Tory opinion of a health service being free and paid for by general taxation, we, the people believe in the NHS.

Doctors think Tories want to destroy the NHS
The NHS is in a state of “managed decline” because recent governments had made “a conscious political decision” to deny it adequate resources or tackle staff shortages. So said BMA chairman Professor Philip Banfield. "Most frontline medics believe ministers are seeking to destroy the NHS because they have starved it of cash and mistreated its staff.

Why not bring it in-house?
The government has issued a tender for private firms to run the NHS Supply Chain, which was privatised by the Coalition government in 2006. Read here the reasons for the Covid PPE catastrophe and why  ithe NHS Supply Chain needs to be brought into public ownership.

Kings Fund: NHS versus other countries
The NHS was compared to the health systems of similar countries. The UK has below-average health spending per person compared to other countries, it lags behind in its capital investment and has substantially fewer key physical resources, including computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners and hospital beds. The UK has strikingly low levels of doctors and nurses, and is heavily reliant on foreign-trained staff.

Former Public Health England boss ...
At the Covid enquiry, Duncan Selbie who was chief executive of PHE said the Treasury insisted on cuts to public health to allow spending on the general NHS to increase. Public health took the hit for Treasury demands for cuts.  The grant for these services was reduced by 14 per cent in real terms in the six years running up to 2021.