Health News Blog

Acute pressure on NHS 111 is 'shocking'
A senior nurse tells how the NHS 111 telephone advice service is increasingly unable to help those who ring seeking help. This is just one result of years of underfunding; and a staffing crisis.

Shortage of GPs and their mental health
"This is a crisis for GPs and an emergency for patients. Years of underfunding and neglect have severely damaged general practice leaving us with a skeleton staff across Great Britain and no plan for filling the gaps."

Tory donors given public health jobs
One, Oluwole Kolade, is a partner of Livingbridge, a private equity firm with extensive investments in private healthcare. Another, Simon Blagden, donated £376,000 to the Tories; he has been made a member of the UK Health Security Agency advisory board. UKHSA replaced Public Health England in April 2021.

Health and Care Bill: Why it matters
Despite the concerns of many NHS staff, official bodies and health campaigners, the Health and Care Bill became an act of parliament on 28^th April. So why the Health and Care Act is a threat? Because possible denial of emergency care, a worsening of the staffing crisis and increased privatisation. Read more here.

Ambulance waits: 40,000 put at risk
This article is behind a paywall. In essence the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives has estimated that more than 38,000 patients were put at risk of harm during March – more than 4,000 of them seriously – while they waited in an ambulance outside hospital.

£2 billion a year on private mental health beds
The NHS’s increasing reliance on independent care providers comes despite some health service bosses’ concerns that there are persistent and sometimes fatal problems with the quality and safety of care at private mental health units. Here's one view on unsafe private mental health provision.

PPE scandal: Tory peer's home raided
PPE Medpro was awarded two government contracts worth £203 million. Tory peer Michelle Mone appears to have been instrumental in PPE Medpro being entered into the “high priority” VIP lane in May 2020. Her home and the offices of PPE Medpro were searched by police.

Campaign to send letters to your ICS
There are two campaigns aimed at sending letters to your local ICS, demanding a commitment to maintaining a comprehensive health service and no private sector representatives on ICS boards and committees. Please join in, it's your health service. One is by WeOwnIt, and other by Keep Our NHS Public.

"New" hospitals builds revealed
You might remember that trusts were ordered to call any new extension, e.g. a new hospital wing, a "new" hospital. Now the specific order in which the "new" hospitals will be built has been published.

Councils pay £1 million a year for care placements
Private providers have been accused of making “obscene” profits out of some of society’s most vulnerable children, as local authorities reveal they are being quoted as much as £50,000 a week (£2.6m a year) for one child. Council owned or jointly owned childrens homes must be cheaper, this is market ideology madness.

Tory waiting lists drive patients to private treatment
After 12 years of Conservative NHS underfunding massive record-breaking waiting lists are forcing patients, at least those that can afford it, to pay for private treatment.

Hancock's stay at home of firm mired in Owen Paterson scandal
Randox donated £160,000 to the Conservative party between 2010 and 2018. It hired Paterson as a consultant, paying him £100,000 a year. Now it's revealed former health secretary Matt Hancock was given an overnight stay at a country estate owned by the head of Randox.

NHS staff: 'Brutalised and burnt out'
There's an escalating mental health crisis that has seen hospital staff take more than 8 million days off sick in the past five years. A hospital consultant said "“We brutalised our staff for months on end. Then, not surprisingly, quite a lot of them have left or retired." The government does nothing about ther staffing crisis.

Staff shortages left NHS vulnerable to Covid pandemic
Capacity in the NHS is about skilled workers and that tap can’t be turned on in an instant. We are reaping the seeds of years of workforce policy and planning failures. So says Anita Charlesworth, director of the Health Foundation.

After 12 Tory years it's come to this
Volunteers to be used to assist with ambulance emergency call-outs. It comes with ambulance response times at the worst level ever recorded – prompting the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Katherine Henderson, to say lives are being put at risk.

Women in poor areas die earlier than most other countries
Women living in the 10% most deprived parts of England have a lower life expectancy than the average woman in countries such as Colombia (79.8 years), Latvia (79.7 years). Globally, only Mexico has a lower overall life expectancy (77.9 years) than women in the poorest parts of England.

Is Sajid Javid putting political ideology before prevention?
This article identifies government cuts in public health budgets. The public health grant fell by a quarter from 2015 to 2021. It had reduced support grants for local government and thus a range of wider supportive and preventive services and wider determinants of health. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that local authorities in the most deprived areas had been hit hardest.