Health News Blog

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.

The state of the NHS after 12 Tory years
Yes Covid has provided cover for Tory mismanagement and underfunding, but this is the current state of the NHS. Firstly, families have been asked to take in Covid-positive loved ones. Secondly, staff shortages that were there even before the pandemic have caused cancer patients face delays, and thirdly, swamped mental health services are turning children away.

Falling public satisfaction after 12 Tory years
At 36%, overall satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest level since 1997. Importantly. the British public do not want an insurance based health system; it wants a taxation-based adequately-funded health service.

The Tories created the NHS crisis
Opinion piece it may be, but you know it's true. "Ministers can blame Covid, but the NHS was already plagued with a 4.4m waiting list. There are fewer doctors, nurses, beds and intensive care places than in comparable countries".

Javid cuts NHS funding, then gives it 13 objectives!!
This article is behind a pay wall, but you see enough. The government has cut NHS funding for 2022-23 by £330 million. It then gives it 13 objectives that includes "recovering and maintaining non-covid service delivery". Achievable?

Odd way to thank staff: free parking stopped
Parking fees were waived for workers for hospital workers on the Covid-19 frontline in July 2020, but health secretary Sajid Javid has put a stop to it.