Health News Blog

NHS vacancies: 39,652 nurses and 8,158 doctors
Here's the latest report from NHS Digital. The staffing crisis is the number one NHS issue, and the government ignores it while pumping money into the private health sector.

Scandal of NHS charging pregnant women
Vulnerable migrant and asylum-seeking women with no recourse to public funds are being issued huge bills ahead of giving birth or aggressively pursued for payments during their pregnancy.

Privatisation: Johnson lies, then the truth
Watch a short video of, firstly, johnson saying "absoultely, there will be no privatisation of the NHS", and then evidence of the increasing privatisation of the NHS since the notorious Health and Social Care Act 2010.

Number of 12 hour waits set to rocket
The HSJ article is behind a paywall. However, changes set out in the NHS Standard Contract for 2022-23 will see 12 hour waits measured from point of arrival instead of decision to admit will expose the true number of long waits hidden by current reporting rules.

NHS ombudsman: "flaws in NHS Bill"
The ombudsman said the NHS Bill would force an investigation into healthcare scandal to “operate behind a curtain of secrecy” and undermine his investigations into lapses in patient safety and could deny grieving families the full truth about why a loved one died.

400 staff a week are quitting the NHS
A record number of more than 400 workers in England have left NHS every week; reasons cited are burn out and post traumatic stress disorder. There are now concerns that the exodus is impacting the quality of care.

No requirement for ICB to give emergency care
The NHS Bill does not require an Integrated Care Board (ICB) to provide emergency care for everybody in its area. This will mean more bureaucracy and potential arguments as ICBs bill each other for people who are visitors and who require A&E care.

Centene GP take over: it's not unlawful
The High Courts did not rule that the decision by North Central London Clinical Commissioning Group to allow Operose Health (Centene by another name) take over the London GP chain ATMedics Ltd. was unlawful. Patients have demonstrated outside their surgeries; they do not want their practice taken over by an American corporation.

NHS contract removed from PCR rules
The Public Contracts Regulations of 2015 (PCR 2015) ensure that environmental, social, and labour legislation is taken into consideration when public contracts are arranged. The NHS Bill permits PCR2015 to be excluded in commissioning NHS contracting arrangements. A government consultation on this subject is linked here.

Covid contracts: Serco's profits surge
The so-called "NHS" test and trace system - actually entirely run by private companies - was described by the National Accounts Committee as failed despite its "eye watering' budget of £37,000 million of our money. Serco benefited through a £623 million contract to manage Covid testing sites and operating contact-tracing call centres. Now we hear that Serco has paid out £100 million to its shareholders.

NHS bill: destroys the Bevan model of care
The bill has been presented with positive buzzwords around integration and collaboration. But campaigners warn that the new proposals are a form of privatisation by stealth. For the first time since the creation of the NHS the state will continue to fund healthcare in England but largely abstain from being involved in its organisation.

NHS bill: campaigners discuss its impact
Peter Roderick and Allysson Pollock discuss the impact of the NHS Bill, revealing how rules governing who gets healthcare will be made by NHS England not parliament. It's the Americanisation of our health service.

New testing centres need 6000 new staff
In a headline catching announcement in October last year, the government plans to set up new regional early diagnostic testing centres. But where will the 6000 staff needed for them come from?

Profit motives have no place in our health service
Under the lastest contract with private hospitals they will be paid a minimum amount up to £90 million per month, a substantially higher rate than the NHS.

Inequality in the NHS
A new report shows that the health service, like other institutions, has a deep-seated problem, a blight that Covid has made harder to ignore.

Why no NHS staffing plan?
Sajid Javid has announced a delivery plan to tackle the backlog in an NHS that has 100,000 vacancies including about 8,000 medical and 40,000 nursing professionals. All successful organisations rely on long-term workforce planning to meet demand, so why do we treat the NHS and social care as an exception? 

Doctors call for action on racial inequality report
Health officials have paid lip service to racism in the NHS for years, but that has got us nowhere. The voices calling for real action come from all dirtections.

A depressing analysis of the NHS Bill
Peter Roderick and Allyson Pollock reveal the awful truth about the government's NHS Bill - it's the end of the Bevan model of high quality comprehensive healthcare.

Do you know what PHM is?
The NHS Bill introduces Population Health Management into the NHS. To quote NHS England "PHM uses data to understand what factors are driving poor outcomes in different population groups". But don't we know already what these are - poor diet, inadequate housing, lack of exercise, occupational factors? Here, a campaigner takes the PHM's advocates to task.

Dido Harding's appointment was unlawful
Well, did you expect otherwise? Yet another example of Johnson government illegal trickery; well done the Good Law Project.