Health News Blog

£60 million to Deloitte of your taxes
That's how much the Tory government has handed over to Deloitte for what the Public Accounts Committee has described as our 'failing' Test and Trace system.

FT: We must spend more on health and social care
Alas behind a paywall, but quotes the Institute for Fiscal Studies "between 2009−10 and 2019−20 UK government health spending grew at an average real-terms rate of 1.6 per cent per year — lower than any previous decade in NHS history." And we must spend more wisely, not as above.

Please sign to protect the NHS
A We Own It petition asking The House of Lords to protect the NHS aganist the NHS Bill, and pass on to others.

Minister's should face misconduct charges
The People’s Covid Inquiry formed by Keep Our NHS Public and lead by Michael Mansfield QC, said there had been “serious governance failures” at Westminster that contributed to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

"Pandemics aren't new, we were so unprepared"
So says Roy Lilley. The fact that we were so unprepared was underlined when the under-resourced PHE was binned and replaced by the UK Health Security Agency, with a budget fit for a small country.

Midwife shortage: home births suspended
A severe shortage of midwives has led to home birth services being closed or reduced by a number of hospital trusts across the UK.

Javid refuses to acknowledge staff burn-out
Ministers are playing-down what staff are saying, that they are physically and emotionally exhausted by constant pressure. Sajid Javid refuses to acknowledge the scale of the crisis; otherwise he would have to admit that it's down to Tory underfunding, particularly 2010 to 2018 .

GPs vote in favour of industrial action
GPs have voted in favour of taking limited forms of industrial action to protest against the government’s drive to force them to see patients face to face. The chronic shortage of GPs is the reason patients are facing long waiting times.

Why market doctrine in NHS doesn't work
This article is behind a paywall but you see enough. Privatisation failures are exposed yet again by the pursuit of financial gain by private interests. 15 CCGs are being sued by a French firn over the awarding of an £85 million contract.

Call for inquiry into PPE contract
Although she denied it, it seems that Tory peer Michelle Mone did act on behalf of PPE Medpro Ltd over two contracts for face masks and surgical gowns valued in total at £203 million.

One million pounds a day of your taxes
That's how much management consultants are costing in the privately-run "NHS" Test and Trace system. At the end of October it employed 1,230 consultants. Test and trace has average daily contractor rates of £1,100, costing us £1,353,000 a day.

Patients stuck at surgeries due to ambulance delays
Patients experiencing life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes or major breathing problems are becoming trapped for many hours in GP surgeries, unable to get hospital treatment because ambulances are taking so long to turn up.

Record 5.8 million waiting for hospital treatment
Many hospitals can now cope only with patients coming through emergency departments. A total of 5.8 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September. This is the highest number since records began in August 2007.

A coming winter crisis?
Underfunding throughout the 2010s meant that the service was increasingly ill-equipped to cope with the rising prevalence of chronic illnesses. Even in November 2019, several months before Covid-19 hit, NHS England was described by senior leaders as being "on its knees". No wonder, now, the CEO of the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said that “many hospitals are only able to cope now with people coming through emergency departments”.

Renationalise the NHS
Here's a petition to rid our NHS of a bloated bureaucracy of commissioners, accountant and lawyers, and of private profit-hungry healthcare firms, and allow most funding to get to the medical frontline, to pay for more nurses, doctors and hospital beds. For all our sakes, sign it.

Warnings of impending NHS crisis
A number of news sources have issued a warning that the NHS is on the verge of collapsing. Firstly, a respected CEO of a trust said his trust was in a “profound crisis”, and that it “was ceasing to function as a hospital”. Another said "This is far worse than January". A survey of NHS leaders confirmed this; it found that patient safety is being put at “unacceptably high” risk.

Bed occupancy already at winter levels
The CEO NHS Providers said the situation was unprecedented and “very worrying” as exhausted hospital staff prepare not only for higher levels of Covid but other respiratory infections such as influenza. Bed occupancy is generally above 90%; a recommended level to avoid cross infection is no higher than 85%.

NHS is being "deprofessionalised"
Here's further evidence of on-going Conservative plans to cut funding at all costs regardless of health outcomes by lowering professional standards of healthcare workers. Senior nursing roles are being advertised to those with no nursing qualification.

Hour-long ambulance waits quadruple
A leak reveals that ambulance waits for hand-overs at A&Es are rapidly getting worse. The number of waits over one hour has quadrupled in the last year.