Health News Blog

NHS vacancies at a 'staggering' new high
The number of posts lying vacant in England's NHS England has reached a “staggering” record high of 132,139, almost 10% of its planned workforce. NHS leaders said the huge number of empty posts showed why the health service is in a deepening crisis, with patients facing long waits for almost every type of care.

New PM will inherit an NHS 'on its knees'
The Truss-Sunak shows have debated a range of topics, but there's one glaring omission, the crisis in the NHS. In the hour-long debates there was hardly a mention of the NHS, despite it being engulfed in its biggest ever crisis. The Guardian's health editor discusses the horrible winter that NHS staff face.

Fit patients wait months to be discharged
Patients are waiting up to nine months to be discharged from England's NHS hospitals in despite being medically fit to leave, according to “shocking” figures that will pile pressure on ministers to tackle the social care crisis.

KONP chair "How to re-establish our NHS"
"We should pay staff properly and not divert money to shareholders and private companies." Dr Tony O'Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public discusses improving our NHS on LBC radio.

Scotland's nurses to be balloted for strike
Nursing and midwifery staff in Scotland are prepared to strike over pay. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Royal College of Midwives (RCM, Unite, Unison and GMB have all rejected the 5% pay offer from the Scottish Government, with the majority voting in favour of taking strike action in consultative ballots.

Wes Streeting's plan
Behind a paywall. In essence Labour will - "harness data and technology to transform the way patients get care", "publish a workforce plan", "fix the broken care system" but doesn't say how, "will recruit 8,500 extra mental health professionals", "use spare private sector capacity to get NHS waiting lists down while we set to work making the NHS so good that people never need private healthcare." But doesn'r say enything about increasing overall funding.

Covid heroes hardest hit by cost of living crisis
Losing their homes, struggling for food – cleaners, health and transport workers say strikes are their only option. Claire, 45, has worked as a carer for seven years. In April, she was evicted after falling into rent arrears. She now lives with her brother. Heart-rending stories like this are common place amongst low paid NHS staff and transport workers.

34 hospital buildings are unsafe
Health minister Maria Caulfield admitted that thirty-four hospital buildings in England have roofs made of concrete that is so unstable they could fall down at any time.

Privatisation linked to 557 treatable deaths
Researchers found that every additional 1% of annual CCG budgets that went on outsourcing was associated with a rise in treatable mortality. "These results suggest that increased outsourcing to the private sector could lead to a decline in the quality of care provided to patients."

Anything rather than fund NHS adequately
As NHS staff battle to keep patients services afloat, right wing politicians and pundits see the worsening crisis that has been created by a decade of underfunding as a possible opportunity to rehearse more of their ideas for NHS “reform”.

Privatisation results in wasteful litigation
This is behind a paywall but tells of the overhead expenses that competitve tendering produces. The contract to the current provider of services in women’s prison in South Gloucestershire wasn't renewed and former Care UK now Practice Plus Group has lodged a High Court claim against the national commissioner.

Preoccupied by tax cuts Tory leaders ignore the NHS crisis
In 2010 Labour bequeathed an NHS with its lowest ever waiting times, highest patient satisfaction, lowest use of private operations and, yes, it almost reached EU levels of spending. Now starved of money since 2010, the NHS is failing as never before. 

Most would support strike over NHS pay
55% the public believe that an above-inflation pay rise for NHS staff of more than 9% would be a fair increase. 58% UK believe health workers would be justified in taking industrial action if the government pay award in England is below inflation.

Staffing crisis putting patients at risk
Commons health and social care select committee asserts that the absence of a credible government strategy on NHS-wide understaffing. It says the NHS is facing the greatest workforce crisis in its history which is putting patients at serious risk of harm.

Presiding over a failing NHS
This HSJ article is behind a paywall but NHS bosses said the problem is the lack of an operating model for how NHS England should oversee the service, confusion over what integrated care systems should be responsible for, the lack of clarity on which standards providers should be seeking to meet.