Health News Blog

Serco hospital porters and cleaners on strike
London hospital staff at Barts, Royal London and Whipps Cross who were outsourced to Serco start a two week strike. The mainly black, Asian and ethnic minority staff are paid 15% less than directly employed staff.

Another Nightingale hospital waste of money
Nightingale units set up in hospital car parks are described by Professor Karol Sikora, a cancer expert at Buckingham University as "an abuse of taxpayers’ money and a complete waste of time". The hubs cost £10 million but only one has received any patients, just 7. He said "What is needed in the NHS ....is staff and trained staff." There are 40,000 nurse vacancies in the English NHS, yet the government lavishes money on private hospitals.

PPE that cost £2.7 billion goes unused
5 billion items of protective gear costing £2,7000,0000 of the NHS budget is either defective or no longer needed.

Challenge to US surgery take-over in court
Operose Health, a UK subsidiary of Centene bought AT Medics, a firm that was set up by 6 medics. It meant that the US giant ran 49 surgeries in London. The merger created the largest private supplier of GP services in the UK. The request for a judicial review is being brought by Anjna Khurana, an NHS patient and Islington councillor. She claims she is one of 375,000 patients across London who were only informed of the takeover of their GP surgeries after the event.

Another £225 million to the private sector
The usual HSJ paywall here but it's the same story. While the publicly-run NHS remains impoverished - there are 40,000 nurse vacancies - the Tory government continues to lavish millions of our NHS budget on the private healthcare sector. Yes the NHS is overstretched owing to Covid but also due to years of underfunding.

Appalling crowding in A&Es
The number of ‘trolley waits’ of more than 12 hours has continued to rise; leaked data suggest there will be more than 12,000 long waits in January, and senior medics warn of ‘appalling crowding’ in emergency departments.

Money spent on private sector: who benefits?
During the Covid crisis, private companies have pocketed millions in furlough payments while billing the NHS for services that we now know weren't fully used.

Covid contracts: anything but transparent
61 Parliamentary Questions were submitted to Ministers seeking details on the cost of private contracts and the number of patients treated. But ministers were "unable to provide details" on the amounts paid to individual providers under the contract.

NHS Bill: campaigner insists it is about privatisation
With detailed precision a Liverpool campaigner disects the NHS Bill to show it will further privatise the NHS, but in an underhand way.

How private providers are gorging on NHS budget
With millions on the NHS waiting list the public NHS is impoverished while the private sector thrives. The Tories have thrown £10 billion to private providers for the backlog.

Public NHS is underfunded and overwhelmed
The service was already collapsing long before the arrival of Covid, and there is little sign of it receiving funding it needs. All the headline grabbing announcements of extra funds cannot hide the facts - since 2010 the Tories have destituted the NHS.

Pledge to increase GP staff broken
Only 9,500 of the promised physiotherapists, pharmacists, mental health therapists and other clinical staff so far have been recruited, against the Tory election promise of 26,000.

NHS 'on deathrow due to Tory underfunding'
Here's a number of letters pointing the finger at the reason for the parlous state of the NHS; whereas this is a summary of how the NHS was allowed to get in this condition, and, this exposes real Tory thinking on the NHS.

NHS leaders warn 'act now on staffing crisis'
The NHS went into the pandemic with 40,000 nurse vacancies. Now, owing to staff Covid absences, it's in close to collapse. NHS leaders state the obvious - millions of patients will suffer worsening quality of care unless ministers take immediate action to alleviate the staffing crisis. But while the government throws billions at the private sector the publicly-run NHS is left on life support.

20 trusts declare a 'critical incident'
More than 20 hospital trusts have now declared a 'critical incident' amid staggering staffing shortages caused by the rapid spread of Omicron.

New Nightingale hubs, but where are the staff?
This is behind a paywall but tells the places where the new hubs will be. It also says. "The units would be led by hospital consultants and nurses, but with ... staff brought in with rapid training to be able to perform routine checks and other tasks.” Really, where exactly will we get trained staff? The old Nightingales were an expensive waste of our money.