Health News Blog

Corporate surgery owner accused of profiteering
Operose Health, owned by US insurance giant Centene, has been allowed buy up more than 50 GP practices across England. An investigation by the BBC’s Panorama programme found that Operose was using physician associates to undertake appointments because they are cheaper to employ than GPs.

Rundown hospitals a danger to patients
Health leaders are warning that without an urgent injection of capital funding, patient safety is at risk owing to lack of maintenance on hospital buildings. The NHS in England is facing a £9 billion maintenance backlog. Half of that sum is required to tackle failings classed as posing either a “high” or “significant” risk to patients and staff.

Yet Javid says NHS doesn't need more money
Despite the rundown state of our hospitals, see above, Sajid Javid said the health service already had the resources it needed and did not require more to care for patients effectively.

NHS faces funding cut in 2022-23
Every NHS health system has seen their core recurrent funding reduce in real terms in 2022-23. Public sector inflation, forecast to be 4 per cent this year, will wipe out the 3.3 per cent cash increase in the funding allocated to integrated care systems.

Private cancer treatment provider collapses
Rutherford Health runs four cancer hailing the game-changing’ elective recovery deal to treat NHS patients. Now we learn it's set to be liquidated. Rutherford is owned by Schroder UK Public Private Trust.

Demoralised nurses driven out of profession
According to the Royal College of Nursing most nurses warn that staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet the needs of patients, and that some are now quitting their jobs.

'Impossible to improve hospital discharges'
Behind a paywall I'm afraid, but in essence, as is obvious to any sane person, there must be placements available in social care to permit the discharge of elderly hospital patients. Targets to reduce delayed discharges “will not be met” unless the government “invests in domiciliary care wages,” amid high numbers of vacancies in social care.

ICSs face £1 billion gap in first year budgeting
Integrated Care Systems face a financial gap of more than £1 billion 2022-23, even after factoring in additional inflation funding provided by NHS England, even when the extra £1.5 billion announced recently is included. NHS England has instructed ICSs to find efficiency savings to close the gap and deliver a breakeven position for the year.

10 year decline in beds causes A&E crises
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the huge loss of beds since 2010-11 was causing “real patient harm” and a “serious patient safety crisis”.  What will the government, who caused the problerm in the first place, do about it? Nothing.

Standards commissioner launches investigation into Tory peer
You may remember Peter Selwyn Gummer. In 1990 he fed his daughter with a burger in the Mad Cow Disease crisis and was also embroiled in the parliamentary expenses scandal. Here he recommended to the government a company that was part of a group in which he was a director and shareholder.

Virgin Care contract cancelled after private equity take-over
Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Bath and North East Somerset Council have cancelled an extension to the contract whereby it has been providing NHS and council commissioned health and care services since 2017.

27th May 2022

Is your health data at risk?
The government has become acutely aware of the commercial value of our personal data, especially our sensitive health data. This raises concerns that existing protections for sensitive patient data may be undermined by new measures to allow greater commercial access.

Ambulance service will collapse in August
This is behind a paywall, but in essence a struggling ambulance trust could face collapse entirely this summer if the region’s worsening problems with hospital handover delays are not taken more seriously.

'Barn theatre': what about staffing?
This is being hailed as a fantastic idea, but does it address the root cause of waiting lists at all? Does having a larger theatre achieve anything when there's a shortage of staff?

Thousands of NHS workers may quit
Health leaders fear significant numbers of lower-paid workers will leave for higher wages in the private sector amid rising food and heating bills and soaring inflation.

Nurse fined over pay protest wins compensation
A 61-year-old mental health nurse who worked throughout the pandemic, received a £10,000 fixed penalty notice for organising the protest on 7 March 2021 over the government’s proposed 1% pay rise. Manchester police has now accepted that the fines were unlawfully imposed.

Numbers of nurses leaving NHS highest in 4 years
More than 27,000 nurses and midwives quit the NHS last year, with many blaming job pressures, the Covid pandemic and poor patient care for their decision.

A&E waits 4 times longer than official figures
Internal NHS England figures for February and March show around one in five admissions waited more than 12 hours from arriving until being admitted to a ward. The official stats published by NHSE record a shorter, time period from ‘decision to admit’ to admission.

KPMG fined £14 million for forging Carillion audit
Carillion collapsed with £7 billion of debts in January 2018, resulting in 3,000 job losses and causing chaos across hundreds of its projects, including two big hospitals. This was close to the biggest fine which was against £15 million Deloitte in 2020 over audits of the software company Autonomy. Yet they're allowed to carry on making billions - why?

Corporate GP contracts given £18 per patient more
The traditional GP surgery is operates with a GMS contract, General Medical Services. To encourage private companies to run primary care APMS (Alternative Provider Medical Services) contracts were introduced. For a 10K patient practice they get £180K more. Fair?

MHRA: board members funded by big pharma
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe. Six of its board members are receiving payments from the pharmaceutical industry.