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.

Former NHSE chair lobbied for private firm
Former Tory minister David Prior sent an email to the CEO of NHSX (technology arm of the NHS) urging him to 'have a conversation' with the head of American digital health giant Teladoc. It looks as if the leaders of our NHS are keen to privatise it.

Should legal action be part of a health service?
When a hospital trust was legaly challenged by a firm whose bid was unsuccessful, the trust withdrew the offer to the successful bidder. King’s College Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’ invited bids for a  non-emergency patient transport contract. Once the decision was made an unsuccessful bidder sued the trusts and in response the trusts withdrew the offer to the winner. How much does this sort of commercial activity cost our NHS? Is privatisation value for money?

Does the NHS need "rebranding"?
Should the NHS spend its funding to "rebrand" itself? Is the public's image of the NHS defined by a commercial impression governed by PR branding, or is it down to its provision over the years of comprehensive high quality care for all?

PPE Medro argue it supplied what was asked for
"Ministers were to blame for ordering £122 million of unusable hospital gowns from a firm". So said its lawyers. The firm is linked to the Tory peer Baroness Mone; it had no experience in procuring such produce.

NHS docs to strike: pay cut by 26% since 2008
Members of the British Medical Association are expected to take part in a 72-hour walkout, possibly in mid-March. "Junior doctor roles had seen pay cut by 26% since 2008 once inflation was taken into account".

18th February 2023

New strikes will include A&Es and cancer care
A two-day continuous strike, the largest such action in NHS history will include cancer wards, A&E departments and intensive care units in England. It will run for 48 hours from 6am on 1st March.

NHS consultants run private firms to cut waiting lists
Senior NHS clinicians are earning a lucrative sideline running private firms that offer to cut waiting lists at their own hospitals. Top consultants in Manchester, Sheffield and London are among directors of so-called “insourcing” agencies.

Should we have McKinsey involved in our NHS?
The US giant consultancy firm McKinsey has been appointed to create a new data model for NHSE. It will advise bringing together the internal systems across the NHS. What's wrong with that? McKinsey has unsavory work with fossil fuel companies, cigarette-makers, opioid distributors, regulatory agencies and autocratic regimes and its cost-cutting recommendations downplayed safety concerns at U.S. Steel, Disneyland and American immigration centers.

Streeting: "We'd use private hospitals"
Wes Streeting said a Labour government would use private hospitals to help out the NHS. But since 2010 the NHS has been starved of funding, so that now it's on its knees. While a sizeable chunk of its budget has been siphoned off to private healthcare.

RCN: "Match Wales and we'll call it off"
...but Sunak won't! He's boxed himself into a corner and he can't back down, otherwise the right of his parliamentary party will slaughter him. Meanwhile just visit a hospital picket line, the passing traffic honking is deafening, public support is still strong.

Deadlock over strikes "putting patients at risk"
Deadlock over NHS pay is putting patients in danger say chief nurses. Unions have warned that the government is making no moves towards resolving the strikes; One general secretary accuses the government of lying about negotiating.

Sunak's NHS solution, "Ramp up private medicine"
Sunak's ideas are to leave the NHS struggling with underfunding and to pump more of the NHS budget into private provision.

US health system on it's way to UK?
With so-called Integrated Care arriving, just re-badged US Accoutable Care, this writer examines the world's most inefficient and unfair heath service, the US's.

Is Ireland's system so great?
Sajid Javid sang the praises of fees for GP and hospital visits. “Take Ireland where some people are entitled to free healthcare based on household income." But is Ireland's health system as good as he claims?