Health News Blog
Edited by Ken Kirk
24th March 2023
Nurses seek no confidence vote over pay deal
Nursing staff are attempting to trigger a vote of no confidence in their union, it requires 1000 signatures. They would receive a one-off bonus and a rise of 5% in 2023/24. The rate of inflation is currently 10.4%.
"The offer does not boost pay significantly"
Normal pay increases are consolidated, which means they carry forward into succeeding years and apply to the pensions paid out at retirement. By contrast, “bonus payments” do not carry forward and do not contribute to pension. Failure to resolve the pay crisis will do nothing to retain staff or end the staff shortages.
Pay offer: "no new money...out of exisiting budgets"
Tory minister says: "...I am confident that we can find it, either within the NHS budget or wider government spending". So more NHS underfunding is on its way.
Tax break for the wealthy
There are fairer and better ways to deal with that problem than simply handing over a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money to fund a tax cut for the wealthiest 1%, 84% of whom aren’t doctors. The £4 billion tax giveaway will benefit the wealthiest people by dramatically increasing how much they can stash away in pensions while enjoying the full tax benefits.
Six billion unwanted masks, gloves and aprons
"‘Something has gone wrong" claims a Government procurement veteran. "Something has gone horribly wrong". "When supplies arrived staff found stickers covering expired use-by dates. One box of gowns was opened to reveal an infestation of insects. Treasury minutes show that, of the 37.9 billion pieces of PPE – aprons, gloves, visors, masks, gowns, goggles and the like – that were acquired at a cost of £13.1 billion.
We are the least likely to see a GP
An international study finds that people in the UK are the least likely to get an appointment with a GP.
17th March 2023
Proposed pay deal explained
1. NHS workers in England would receive a one-off non-consolidated award of 2 per cent of salary, and an additional one-off, non-consolidated payment, branded an “NHS backlog bonus”, whose percentage varies by pay band. Additionally, lowest paid workers will get a consolidated increase of 10.4%, with all other NHS workers receiving a flat rate of 5%.
2. The government has agreed to commit to a national evidence-based policy framework on safe staffing, focusing on registered nurses, and it will produce an implementation plan for the forthcoming NHS long-term workforce plan, including an intention to reduce reliance on agency staff.
Unions hail strike a success
After months of rolling strikes involving thousands of NHS workers including nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists, the government ditched its claim that this year’s pay deal could not be reopened.
Hospitals told to share data with Palantir
NHS hospitals have been ordered to share patient’s confidential medical records with an American spy-tech company owned by a billionaire Trump donor who claimed the NHS ‘makes people sick’.
500 deaths in 2022 after long ambulance waits
More than 500 seriously ill patients died last year before they could get treatment in hospital after the ambulance they called for took up to 15 hours to reach them. Here's an example.
8th March 2023
The NHS is being privatised!
Imported from the US, Intgrated Care Systems now run your NHS. From July to December 2022, over 2000 private companies received over £2 billion. NHS monies are flowing to private companies, including firms with a dismal track record in the UK and some whose US parents have faced multi-million pound penalties from state and federal authorities.
NHS crisis: demonstrate your anger this Saturday
We do not need to remind you about the unprecedented crisis in the NHS, but we do need to ensure our voice is heard. We also stand by NHS staff forced to take strike action and seek to expose the political choices this Government is making to underfund and privatise the NHS.
The corruption of US medicine by the quest for profit
"The perversion of healthcare, particularly medical care, by an explicit profit motive leads to the US having both the greatest cost and the worst health outcomes of the wealthy countries of the world." This, without a return to the founding principles of the NHS, is where we are headed.
The state of dentistry in the UK
Referring to the hypocrisy of Tory NHS policy, the author says "... you stoutly proclaim your undying commitment to the service while starving it of funds until it collapses."
Half ambulance workers seen patients die
Three-quarters of those surveyed said that delays had an impact on patient care every day. And over half said they had spent an entire shift waiting outside an A&E to hand a patient over to hospital staff.
2nd March 2023
What Hancock's messages show
Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, says that Chris Whitty recommended that anyone going into a care home should be tested for Covid. Hancock claimed "to have thrown a 'protective ring' around care homes" but the UK was slow off the mark by international comparision and didn't have sufficient capacity to test all entrants to care homes.
Spending on management consultants while wages fall
As pay in Britain continues to fall, and cuts to vital services - schools, justice system, housing - endure, spending on private-sector consultants has spiralled out of control. Between 2016 and 2019 spending on management consultancies in the NHS more than trebled. Now NHSE gives £13 million contract to PA Consulting to merge its regional teams - value for money?
A&E waits linked to 23000 excess deaths last year
There's a pay wall on this Telegraph article but the message is clear. Royal College of Emergancy Medicine warns more than 1.6 million patients waited at least 12 hours for emergency treatment in 2022.
NHS needs sustained long term funding rises
The NHS will recover only with continuous funding increases over the next decade. Here are 10 evidence-based reasons for sustained rises in NHS budget.
Palantir involved in our NHS??
Tory MP David Davies said "Patient trust is vital to our NHS, so foreign companies such as Palantir, with its history of supporting mass surveillance, assisting in drone strikes, immigration raids and predictive policing, must not be placed at the heart of our NHS.” The government is planning to give a major contract on patients data to Palantir.
NHS strikes dates
Thousands of junior doctors will walk out from 13 March until the morning of 16 March, and nurses, paramedics, blood collection workers and other NHS staff in new strike over pay on 8th March.