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?

Coroner issues 'risk of future deaths'
Lyn Brind, 61, was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn with chest pains but could not be admitted because the hospital had “no space”. She died after a 4 hour wait in an ambulance. The coroner took the unusual step of writing to Steve Barclay to raise concerns about the NHS and social care. Will he do anything to genuinely improve things?

Ambulance waits: 57000 patients at risk of harm'
Thousands of people suffered harm as a result of delays in ambulances handing over patients to A&E teams in December. Here's an example, who's responsible for this state of affairs?

Another headline grabbing plan
The government have come up with a crackpot 'hospitals at home' plan, patients cared for by video link. I suppose it makes it look as if they're doing something.

Labour taken to task over their "plans"
Keir Starmer’s prescription for the NHS is both vacuous and dangerous. The major “reform” needed is significant long-term investment to reverse the managed decline initiated by Tory austerity measures.

Emergency delays: 500 patients dying each week
Long waits in A&E were linked to increased mortality and somewhere between 300 to 500 people a week are dying as a consequence. It's a political choice, says the BMA, not to tackle the intolerable pressure on the NHS.

Nurses and paramedics pay: a fact sheet
The Health Foundation calculates that real terms basic pay for nurses has fallen by almost 10% since 2012. Nurses’ real pay is down £4,300 and paramedics’ real pay is down £5,600. Of course, pay is not the only issue; stress due to unfilled staff vacancies weighs heavily on staff morale.

NHS in crisis: how it got to this
There were no 40 hour waits for ambulances prior to May 2010, and no 24 hour waits in A&E. Very few patients exceeded the 4 Hour A&E wait target, until George Osborne’s austerity regime halted the decade of investment in the NHS and ushered in a decade of decline. The crisis was "year's in the making" says John Lister.

Streeting's self referral idea demolished
Wes Streeting has proposed that NHS patients should be allowed to refer themsleves directly to hospital consultants. This idea has not been well received by the GP community. His comments demonstrate a failure to understand the workings of the service over which he’d one day like to preside.

Private healthcare nets £40 million profit
..and pays directors £621,000. Virgin Care, now rebranded as HCRG Care Group, earnt huge sums of money from the NHS and local councils in 2021/22 thanks to more than 35 contracts.

The NHS we need
Read the leaflet written by Keep Our NHS Public that states the founding principles of the NHS - a comprehensive service entirely publicly-run and publicly-funded from general taxation - and to which it should be returned.