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Ombudsman warns over-stretched doctors could put cancer patients at risk

England’s NHS Ombudsman has warned that cancer patients could be put at risk because of over-stretched and exhausted health staff working in a system at breaking point and delays in diagnosis and treatment.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) revealed that between April 2020 and December 2023, his Office carried out 1,019 investigations related to cancer. Of those 185 were upheld or partly upheld.

Issues with diagnosis and treatment were the most common cancer-related issues investigated by PHSO. These issues included treatment delays, misdiagnosis, failure to identify cancer, the mismanagement of conditions, and pain management.

Complaints about cancer care also included concerns about poor communication, complaint handling, referrals, and end-of-life care.

Most investigations were about lung cancer, followed by breast cancer and colorectal cancer.

The Ombudsman recently closed an investigation around the death of Sandra Eastwood whose cancer was not diagnosed for almost a year after scans were not read correctly. The delay meant she missed out on the chance of treatment which has a 95% survival rate.

In 2021, PHSO published a report about recurrent failings in the way X-rays and scans are reported on and followed up across the NHS service.

Mr Behrens said, “What happened to Mrs Eastwood was unacceptable and her family’s grief will no doubt have been compounded by knowing that mistakes were made in her care.

“Her case also shows, in the most tragic of ways, that while some progress has been made on my recommendations to improve imaging services, it is not enough and more must be done.

“Government must act now to prioritise this issue and protect more patients from harm.”

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Source: Parliamentary Health and Health Service Ombudsman, 9 March 2024

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Blind people in England at risk from ‘shocking’ social care delays, finds report

The lives of thousands of blind and partially sighted people are being put at risk by delays in vital care that they have a legal right to after being assessed as visually impaired, according to a report.

More than a quarter of English councils are leaving people who have just been diagnosed as blind waiting more than a year for vision rehabilitation assessments and potentially life-saving support, the report by the RNIB revealed.

It cited the example of one person who died while waiting for council help. The Guardian can reveal that the case involved a woman from Church Stretton in Shropshire who had been waiting 18 months for an assessment when she tripped on a pothole and died later from head injuries. She had been trying to teach herself how to use a white cane, without any support or training, despite getting a certificate of visual impairment.

Councils are obliged to provide such help for those coping with a recent visual impairment under the 2014 Care Act. The support involves helping people cope practically and mentally with visual impairment at a critical time after a diagnosis.

The social care ombudsman recommends that councils should provide these services within 28 days of someone receiving a certificate of visual impairment.

But the RNIB report, which is based on freedom of information requests to councils in England, found that 86% were missing this 28-day deadline. The report, Out of sight – The hidden scandal of vision rehabilitation warned that the delays uncovered in the figures were dangerous.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 March 2024

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East London fertility clinic has licence suspended after losing embryos

A fertility clinic in London has had its licence to operate suspended because of “significant concerns” about the unit, the regulator has said.

The Homerton Fertility Centre has been ordered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to halt any new procedures while investigations continue.

The clinic in east London said there had been three separate incidents highlighting errors in some freezing processes. This resulted in the “tragic loss of a small number of embryos” that either did not survive or became “undetectable”, which means an embryo stored in frozen liquid solution in a container cannot be found during subsequent thawing.

The clinic has informed the patients affected and apologised for any distress caused.

Homerton Healthcare NHS foundation trust said it began an investigation in late 2023 and immediately made regulators fully aware of it. The HFEA is now conducting its own investigation alongside the trust.

In a statement, the clinic said that while the investigators had not been able to find any direct cause of the errors, it had made changes in the unit to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.

All staff now work in pairs to ensure all clinical activities are checked by two healthcare professionals, competencies of staff within the unit have been rechecked, and security at the unit has been increased.

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Source: The Guardian, 8 March 2024

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Patients exposed to excess radiation by out-of-date radiology device

Patients are being exposed to radiation doses at the “upper limit of safe” because a hospital is relying on a radiology machine three years after its “end of life” with a substandard second-hand part.

The risk was revealed in board papers from Medway Foundation Trust, in Kent, among several other serious problems linked to outdated equipment.

Recent board papers said the machine was necessary for maintaining the trust’s interventional radiology service which includes being on-call 24/7.

It said: “Owing to the age of the machine we are experiencing a growing number of faults and breakdowns and due to its age no new parts are available.

“At present a second hand tube has been installed to replace the existing faulty equipment.”

But the papers went on to say the second-hand part has a defect “causing serious issues with the imaging [which] has the potential to increase imaging acquisitions required which will increase patient radiation dose and lengthen the procedure time”. 

A business case for a new machine described current radiation doses as “within the upper limit of safe”.

The trust indicated “mitigations” are in place, including additional reviews of patients who use it.

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Source: HSJ, 11 March 2024

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Patients facing uphill struggle to see GPs

Patients in parts of England are facing an uphill struggle to see a GP, experts say, after an analysis showed wide regional variation in doctor numbers.

The Nuffield Trust think tank found Kent and Medway had the fewest GPs per person, followed by Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes.

It comes as ministers have struggled to hit the pledge to boost the GP workforce by 6,000 this Parliament.

But the government said it had plans in place to tackle shortages.

However, Dr Billy Palmer, of the Nuffield Trust, said: "Solely boosting the number of staff nationally in the NHS is not enough alone - the next government should set a clear aim of reducing the uneven distribution of key staffing groups and shortfalls to tackle unfairness in access for patients."

The think-tank report found while the government had met its target to increase the number of nurses by 50,000 this Parliament, the rises had not been felt evenly, with some specialist nurse posts, such as health visitors and learning-disability nurses, seeing numbers shrink.

Dr Palmer said minimum numbers of GPs may have to be set for local areas - and better incentives to attract them to those with the fewest.

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Source: BBC News, 8 March 2024

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More than a quarter of ambulance staff ‘sexually harassed by public’

More than 58,000 NHS staff reported sexual assaults and harassment from patients, their relatives and other members of the public in 2023 in the health service’s annual survey.

For the first time ever, the NHS staff survey for England asked workers if they had been the target of unwanted sexual behaviour, which includes inappropriate or offensive sexualised comments, touching and assault.

Of the 675,140 NHS staff who responded, more than 84,000 reported sexual assaults and harassment by the public and other staff last year.

About 1 in 12 (58,534) said they had experienced at least one incident of unwanted sexual behaviour from patients, patients’ relatives and other members of the public in 2023.

Almost 26,000 staff (3.8%) also reported unwanted sexual behaviour from colleagues.

Rates were highest among ambulance workers, with more than 27% reporting sexual harassment from the public and just over 9% from colleagues.

The survey also found record numbers of health workers experienced discrimination, including racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism, from patients and colleagues last year.

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Source: The Guardian, 7 March 2024

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Coroners' death reports reveal rise in NHS warnings

Coroners in England and Wales sent 109 warnings to health bodies and the government in 2023 highlighting long NHS waits, staff shortages or a lack of NHS resources, the BBC has found.

The number of cases identified that were linked to NHS pressures was the highest in the past six years.

Prevention of future death reports (PFDs) are sent when a coroner thinks action is needed to protect lives.

About 35,000 inquests take place in England and Wales each year. In a fraction of those - about 450 - the coroner writes a PFD, or Regulation 28, report.

The BBC analysed 2,600 PFDs - and supporting documentation - sent between 2018 and 2023.

The proportion of the total number of PFD reports that referenced an NHS resource issue rose to one in five in 2023, from one in nine in the two years before Covid.

Of the 540 reports written last year, 109 were found that highlighted a long wait for NHS treatment, a shortage of medical staff or a lack of NHS resources such as beds or scanners.

Of these, 26 involved mental illness or suicide, and 31 involved ambulances and emergency services.

The government says it "responds to, and learns from, every report".

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Source: BBC News, 8 March 2024

 

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‘First of its kind’ guidance sees BMA set out PA ‘scope of practice’

Physician associates should never see ‘undifferentiated’ patients in a GP setting, the BMA has declared in new ‘first of its kind’ guidance.

Today, the union has published a national scope of practice laying out how physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AA) should work safely in GP practices and secondary care. 

According to the BMA, the guidance is different from what it describes as the current ‘piecemeal or fragmented approach’ whereby individual organisations set their own guidelines for how PAs should be supervised.

In general practice, the guidance said a GP ‘should first triage’ all patients and ‘decide which ones a PA can see’, suggesting annual health checks as an appropriate contact. 

The union is also clear that PAs ‘must not make independent management decisions for patients’ and must be clear in all their communications that ‘they are not doctors’. 

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Source: Pulse, 7 March 2024

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Researchers study brain activity of surgeons for signs of cognitive overload

It is a high-stakes scenario for any surgeon: a 65-year-old male patient with a high BMI and a heart condition is undergoing emergency surgery for a perforated appendix.

An internal bleed has been detected, an anaesthetics monitor is malfunctioning and various bleepers are sounding – before an urgent call comes in about an ectopic pregnancy on another ward.

This kind of drama routinely plays out in operating theatres, but in this case trainee surgeon Mary Goble is being put through her paces by a team of researchers at Imperial College London who are studying what goes on inside the brains of surgeons as they perform life-or-death procedures.

Goble looks cool and collected as she laparoscopically excises the silicon appendix, while fending off a barrage of distractions. But her brain activity, monitored through a cap covered in optical probes, may tell a different story.

The researchers, led by Daniel Leff, a senior researcher and consultant breast surgeon at Imperial College healthcare NHS Trust, are working to detect telltale signs of cognitive overload based on brain activity. In future, they say, this could help flag warning signs during surgery.

“The operating theatre can be a very chaotic environment and, as a surgeon, you have to keep your head and stay calm when everyone is losing theirs,” said Leff. “As the cognitive load increases, it has major implications for patient safety. There’s no tool we can use to know that surgeon is coping with the cognitive demands of that environment. What happens when the surgeon is maxed out?”

In the future, Leff envisages a system that could read out brain activity in real-time in the operating theatre and trigger an intervention if a surgeon is at risk of overload.

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Source: 2 March 2024

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USA: My emergency patients wait hours — or days — for a hospital bed


It has been well-documented that Covid-19 took a devastating toll on emergency departments nationwide, revealing and exploiting the fragility of our acute-care system. Less has been written, however, about the side effects of hospitals’ attempts to recover from that era — one of the most serious of which is the proliferation of boarding.

As hospitals scramble to regain their footing (and their profit margins), the financial incentive structure that undergirds US medicine has gone into overdrive. Inpatient beds that might previously have been reserved for patients who require essential care but generate very little money for the hospital, are increasingly allocated for patients undergoing more lucrative procedures.

The consequences of this systemic failure cannot be overstated. Four hours is supposed to be the maximum time spent boarding in an emergency department, but recent data shows that hospitals in the US are failing to meet that goal when occupancy is high (which it routinely is).

"On any given shift, hallways in the emergency department are lined with patients on stretchers. Boarding leads to a cascade of harms — including ambulances diverted to hospitals far from patients’ homes, patients charged for beds they haven’t yet occupied and overwhelmed emergency medicine personnel leaving the field because of burnout," says Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician and a scholar in the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA.

Many narratives around boarding focus on the patients themselves, shaming some for inappropriately using the emergency department. Proposed solutions include pushing patients to urgent-care centers or modifying “patient flow.” But the issues with boarding cannot be addressed with such minor tweaks.

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Source: The Washington Post, 28 February 2024

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Health services for eating disorders overrun

Health services for Londoners with eating disorders are struggling to cope with demand, a new report warns.

Data from London's mental health trusts shows adult referrals have increased by 56% - from 3,000 to nearly 8,000 - in the last six years

Child and adolescent referrals increased by 158%, from 1,400 to 4,000, in the same time period.

The report has been compiled by the London Assembly's health committee.

It has made 12 recommendations to London Mayor Sadiq Khan and City Hall officers, which include assessing other physical and mental health indicators as well as just patients' bodyweight as per their BMI.

One consultant clinical psychologist told the committee that "almost all of the eating disorder services in London do not have the staffing levels available to safely provide the care required".

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Source: BBC News, 7 March 2024

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NHS England leaders welcome £6bn budget boost but say much more is needed

NHS leaders have welcomed the £6bn budget boost Jeremy Hunt handed the beleaguered service to help it meet rising demand, tackle the care backlog and overhaul its antiquated IT system.

The chancellor gave the NHS in England an extra £2.5bn to cover its day-to-day running costs in 2024/25, after the Institute for Fiscal Studies had warned that it was set to receive less funding next year than this.

Julian Hartley, the chief executive of hospital body NHS Providers, said the money would offer “much needed – but temporary – respite” and “some breathing space” from the service’s acute financial difficulties, which have been exacerbated by inflation and the costs incurred by long-running strikes by NHS staff.

However, there was little to stabilise England’s creaking adult social care system, and Hunt’s budget delivered an ongoing squeeze on resources, said the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS).

“Millions of adults and carers will be disappointed,” said Anna Hemmings, joint chief executive of ADASS. “Directors can’t invest enough in early support for people close to home, which prevents them needing hospital or residential care at a greater cost.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 March 2024

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ICB shelves same-day hub plans due to GP and patient backlash

Same-day access hubs will not be mandated in North West London as the Integrated Care Board (ICB) bows to pressure from GPs and patients.

In a letter to GP teams, seen by Pulse, the ICB said that their controversial same-day access programme "will not form part of the single offer for enhanced services for 2024/25".

Instead, ICB leaders said they want to work with PCNs "to consider how access can be improved" and that they do not have a "presumption" about a "particular model" all PCNs should adopt.

They are now aiming for a new model to be implemented from April next year instead.

The hub model aimed to "deliver a single point of triage for same-day, low complexity" demand for all 2.1 million residents within the integrated care system, leaving GP practices with only longer-term, "complex" care.

But London GP leaders, as well as patients, raised "immense concern" with the plans, including patient safety, quality of care, and logistics.

In response to these concerns, the ICB confirmed yesterday that it has "adjusted" the same-day hub programme, and that it wants to "move forward collectively" to address both patient access issues and GP pressures.

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Source: Pulse, 6 March 2024

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Long Covid: Health staff go to court for compensation

Nearly 70 healthcare workers with Long Covid will take their fight to the High Court later to sue the NHS and other employers for compensation.

The staff, from England and Wales, believe they first caught Covid at work during the pandemic and say they were not properly protected from the virus.

Many of them say they are left with life-changing disabilities and are likely to lose income as a result.

The Department of Health said "there are lessons to be learnt" from Covid.

The group believe they were not provided with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, which includes eye protection, gloves, gowns and aprons.

In particular, they say they should have had access to high-grade masks, which help block droplets in the air from patient's coughs and sneezes which can contain the Covid virus.

But the masks they were given tended to be in line with national guidance.

Rachel Hext, who is 36, has always insisted that she caught Covid in her job as a nurse in a small community hospital in Devon.

"It's devastating. I live an existence rather than a life. It prevents me doing so much of what I want to do. And it's been four years."

Her list of long Covid symptoms includes everything from brain fog and extreme fatigue to nerve damage, and deafness in one ear.

Solicitor Kevin Digby, who represents more than 60 members of the group, describes their case as "very important".

He says: "It's quite harrowing. These people really have been abandoned, and they are really struggling to fight to get anything.

"Now, they can take it to court and hope that they can get some compensation for the injuries that they've suffered."

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Source: BBC News, 6 March 2024

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Menopause is not a disease, say experts

The menopause is not a disease and is being “over-medicalised”, experts have said.

High-income countries, including the UK, commonly see menopause as a medical problem or hormone-deficiency disorder with long-term health risks “that are best managed by hormone replacement (therapy)”, they said.

Yet, around the world, “most women navigate menopause without the need for medical treatments”, the experts, including from the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and King’s College London, said.

They argued there is a lack of data on whether health problems are caused by menopause or simply by ageing.

In a first paper in The Lancet Series on the menopause, the experts said: “Although management of symptoms is important, a medicalised view of menopause can be disempowering for women, leading to over-treatment and overlooking potential positive effects, such as better mental health with age and freedom from menstruation, menstrual disorders, and contraception.”

Series co-author Professor Martha Hickey, from the University of Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital, said: “The misconception of menopause as always being a medical issue which consistently heralds a decline in physical and mental health should be challenged across the whole of society.

“Many women live rewarding lives during and after menopause, contributing to work, family life and the wider society.

“Changing the narrative to view menopause as part of healthy ageing may better empower women to navigate this life stage and reduce fear and trepidation amongst those who have yet to experience it.”

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Source: The Independent, 5 March 2024

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Hospital patient given 'corridor care' for 14 hours

A patient says he felt ignored and that NHS care was lacking after he spent 14 hours on a bed in a hospital corridor.

Ivan Philpotts, 77, from Norwich, was transferred between wards at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), having contracted pneumonia.

He said he was left in a bed in a corridor with no access to water, was unable to eat and that his wife was unable to visit.

The hospital said it had experienced a high number of patients last week.

"I felt very vulnerable," Mr Philpotts said. 

"Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of you and you were sitting there, people walking by you.

"I was there from 8.30 in the morning until 9.10 at night before I actually got into a bay. We got no communication whatsoever."

The hospital trust is one of just two in England that has been carrying out a trial of a "corridor care" scheme.

The Royal College of Nursing's eastern regional director Teresa Budrey said: "We're starting to normalise it and that's not OK.

"There are patients who are suffering for hours, without proper privacy or equipment and you've also got nurses dealing with an expanded number of patients.

"We need government minsters and employers to come together for some bigger solutions across the system."

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Source: BBC News, 6 March 2024

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Neil Gray’s backroom deal with NHS unions ‘risks patient safety’

Patient safety has been put at risk by ministers striking a backroom deal with unions to cut the equivalent of 10,000 health service jobs by reducing the working week, NHS bosses have warned.

Briefings prepared by the chief executives of Scotland’s NHS boards reveal top management thrown into chaos after appearing to be blindsided by the new health secretary, Neil Gray.

Two weeks into the role, Gray, who replaced the scandal-hit Michael Matheson on 8 February met with unions without NHS staff present and signed off sweeping changes to working conditions, setting a deadline to implement them within five weeks.

The Scottish Conservatives have called the deal “deeply alarming”, while Labour accused the new health secretary of “standing idly by while chaos looms”.

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Source: The Times, 4 March 2024

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Florida is swamped by disease outbreaks as quackery replaces science

Shortly before Joseph Ladapo was sworn in as Florida’s surgeon general in 2022, the New Yorker ran a short column welcoming the vaccine-skeptic doctor to his new role, and highlighting his advocacy for the use of leeches in public health.

It was satire of course, a teasing of the Harvard-educated physician for his unorthodox medical views, which include a steadfast belief that life-saving Covid shots are the work of the devil, and that opening a window is the preferred treatment for the inhalation of toxic fumes from gas stoves.

But now, with an entirely preventable outbreak of measles spreading across Florida, medical experts are questioning if quackery really has become official health policy in the nation’s third most-populous state.

As the highly contagious disease raged in a Broward county elementary school, Ladapo, a politically appointed acolyte of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, wrote to parents telling them it was perfectly fine for parents to continue to send in their unvaccinated children.

“The surgeon general is Ron DeSantis’s lapdog, and says whatever DeSantis wants him to say,” said Dr Robert Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at south Florida’s Nova Southeastern University with more than four decades of research experience.

“His statements are more political than medical and that’s a horrible disservice to the citizens of Florida. He’s somebody whose job is to protect public health, and he’s doing the exact opposite.”

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Source: Guardian, 3 March 2024

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Primodos: MPs say 'covered-up' evidence could reveal 'one of the biggest medical frauds of 20th century'

MPs are calling for a new review into the dangers of the drug Primodos, claiming that families who suffered avoidable harm from it have been "sidelined and stonewalled".

MPs said the suggestion there is no proven link between the hormone pregnancy test and babies being born with malformations is "factually and morally wrong".

A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on hormone pregnancy tests claims evidence was "covered up" and it is possible to "piece together a case that could reveal one of the biggest medical frauds of the 20th century".

Around 1.5 million women in Britain were given hormone pregnancy tests between the 1950s and 1970s.

They were instructed to take the drug by their GPs as a way of finding out if they were pregnant.

But Primodos was withdrawn from the market in the UK in the late 1970s after regulators warned "an association was confirmed" between the drug and birth defects.

However, in 2017 an expert working group found there was insufficient evidence of a causal association.

But MPs now claim this report is flawed. It's hugely significant because the study was relied upon by the government and manufacturers last year to strike out a claim for compensation by the alleged victims.

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Source: Sky News, 1 March 2024

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First over-the-counter birth control pill in US to go on sale later this month

Opill, the first birth control pill approved for over-the-counter distribution, is now being shipped to retailers and pharmacies, the company behind the pill, Perrigo, announced on Monday. It will be available in stores and online later this month.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Opill last year, paving the way for the United States to join the dozens of countries that have already made over-the-counter birth control pills available. Opill, which works by using the hormone progestin to prevent pregnancy, is meant to be taken every day around the same time and, when used as directed, is 98% effective.

The pill’s arrival on shelves comes at a deeply fraught time for US reproductive rights: not only has the US supreme court demolished the national right to abortion, but the nation’s highest court is set to hear arguments over two abortion-related cases over the next few months.

“Week after week, we hear stories of people being denied the reproductive health care they so desperately need because of politicians and judges overstepping into the lives of patients and providers. Today, we get to celebrate different news,” Dr Tracey Wilkinson, a pediatrician in Indiana and a board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement.

“As Opill makes its way to pharmacies across the country, I am relieved to know that birth control access will become less challenging for so many people, but especially young people.”

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Source: The Guardian, 4 March 2024

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Medical leaders back rise in number of physician associates

Medical leaders support a planned increase in the number of physician associates (PA) in the NHS.

But the British Medical Association (BMA) is concerned about a new law allowing the General Medical Council (GMC) to regulate PAs, who must be supervised by a fully qualified doctor.

The doctors' union says it blurs the lines between doctors and PAs and could risk patient safety.

Two families whose relatives were seen by PAs want the roles defined.

The NHS has 3,286 PAs, who assist healthcare teams and are not authorised to prescribe or request scans.

PAs and anaesthetic associates (AA) qualify after a funded two-year master's degree. They often have a science undergraduate degree, but that is not a prerequisite.

Their role includes taking medical histories, conducting physical examinations and developing treatment plans.

Like PAs, AAs are healthcare professionals who work as part of a multidisciplinary team with supervision from a named senior doctor.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said on Tuesday that it welcomes a push to increase the number of PAs in the NHS, but that it is "vital" that there are clear guidelines on how they are deployed.

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Source: BBC News, 5 March 2024

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CEO admits ‘risk aversion’ clogging up hospitals

Medics and managers must overcome a system-wide “aversion” to risk after their integrated care system was identified as a national outlier for low numbers of patients discharged home, according to the ICS’s chief executive.

Kate Shields, CEO of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICS, has highlighted a discrepancy between the ICS and the rest of England, with a lower proportion of patients discharged with no new social care requirements, or discharged directly to their own home, with only intermediate additional care (known as ”pathways” 0 and 1 in national discharge guidance). 

Problems with delayed patient discharges – known as “no criteria to reside” patients – are a major contributor to overcrowding and long waits in the emergency department at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, as well as severe delays for ambulances to handover patients.

Discharge on pathways 2 and 3 – to a care home or intermediate care bed, with substantial additional care requirements – typically take a lot longer, and require more resources. 

Ms Shields’ comments come 18 months after an external report warned of an “over-reliance on bedded care” in Cornwall.

Speaking at a meeting of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board last month, Ms Shields said the health economy needed to “look at how we get people out of hospital faster”.

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Source: HSJ, 4 March 2024

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Surgeon claims Bath's RUH 'covered up' patient blinding

A surgeon sacked by a hospital after raising safety concerns has accused the trust of a cover-up after a patient was partially blinded during an operation.

Juanita Graham, 41, lost the sight in her left eye during an operation at Bath's Royal United Hospital (RUH) in 2019. She is now suing the trust.

Serryth Colbert said he was put down as the lead author on an investigation into the incident, but said he "did not write a word" of it.

Mr Colbert has described the hospital investigation into Mrs Graham's operation as "deeply flawed".

The surgeon, who specialises in the head, neck, face and jaw, has made several serious allegations about patient safety at the RUH, and believes these claims led to him being regarded as a troublemaker and dismissed in October 2023.

Mrs Graham, from Trowbridge, said she was still traumatised by the operation on her eye.

"I remember coming round, seeing the time and felt like a gush and I couldn't see," she said.

"The next time I remember waking up again, I thought it was my partner but it was a surgeon and he was crying. I said 'what's gone wrong?'".

After the operation, a Root Cause Analyses (RCA) report produced by the trust said the hospital was not to blame, although it did say the risks could have been explained more clearly to Mrs Graham.

Mr Colbert, whose name was added as the lead investigator, said his only involvement in the report was when he was called on the phone by a nurse, who he said did the RCA, to explain what the operation involved.

The 48-year-old surgeon said: "I have been put down here to my amazement as the lead author on this.

"That is not correct. I did not write a word of this.

"The conclusion is the root cause of the complication was down to a bit of paperwork which could have been performed a bit better.

"The root cause was not down to paperwork. It was all covered up... that was indefensible."

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Source: BBC News, 29 February 2024

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USA: Care quality, safety 'worse than expected' during Covid-19 pandemic

A new CMS report reveals disparities in care quality and patient safety within US hospitals before and during the pandemic, finding "a large proportion of measures had worse than expected performance." 

CMS released its 2024 National Impact Assessment Feb. 28, which is released every three years and evaluates the measures used in 26 CMS quality and value-based incentive payment programs. This edition of the report compares quality measure scores pre-COVID-19 with hospitals' results in 2020 and 2021, the initial years of the COVID-19 public health emergency. 

Here are eight findings from the 72-page assessment:

1. During 2020 and 2021, a large proportion of measures had worse than expected performance, including significant worsening of key patient safety metrics.

2. Half or more of the performance measures in five priorities had worse results in 2021 than expected from the 2016–2019 baseline. Priorities with the highest proportions of worse-than-expected results in 2021 were wellness and prevention (69%), behavioural health (55%), safety (54%), chronic conditions (52%), and seamless care coordination (50%). 

3. Specific to safety, standardised infection ratios worsened significantly in hospitals for central line–associated bloodstream infections (94% worse), MRSA (55% worse) and CAUTI (34% worse). Before the Covid-19 PHE (2015–2019), 34,455 fewer healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) were reported in acute care settings. 

4. More than 35% of measures in two priorities had better results in 2021 than expected from 2016–2019 baseline trends. Those priorities are seamless care coordination (50%) and affordability and efficiency (38%). 

5. Specific to affordability and efficiency, emergency department visits for home health patients fared 1.4 percentage points better, and acute care hospitalization in the first 60 days of home health in 2021 was 1.5 percentage points better. 

6. Accountable entities with the highest proportions of worse than expected results in 2021 were clinicians (64%), accountable care organizations (54%), and acute care facilities (54%). 

7. Wellness and prevention had the highest percentage of measures showing health equity disparities; notable examples include pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations among racial and ethnic groups.

8. Comparison racial and ethnic groups fared worse than the White reference group on 40 of 45 (88.9%) affordability and efficiency measures and 32 of 41 (78%) chronic conditions measures. For example, disparities were recorded for Black or African American patients in 32, or 71%, of the affordability and efficiency measures, mostly related to readmissions.

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Source: Becker Hospital Review, 29 February 2024

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Almost 70,000 children missing out on mental health treatment

Almost 70,000 children are missing out on mental health care they should be eligible to receive as the NHS falls short of key targets, The Independent has revealed.

An internal analysis, seen by The Independent, shows in England the NHS has fallen short of a target, set in 2019, for 818,000 children to receive at least one treatment session from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in 2023.

The actual number of children who received treatment in the 12 months to December was 749,833, falling short of the target by around 9%.

The figures came as the government announced this week it would expand the number of early access mental health hubs for children to cover 50% of the country by 2025. However, campaigners urged ministers to commit to covering the entire country to help “turn the tide on the crisis” in children’s mental health services.

The NHS analysis shows, as of December, CAMHS in the South West was furthest away from its targets with 78% of children seen out of those eligible. In London, 80% of the target was achieved and in the North West 105%.

Laura Bunt, chief executive at YoungMinds, said: “Referrals to mental health services are at a record high with more young people than ever in need of support with their mental health. We know that many young people are struggling in the aftermath of the pandemic, facing intense academic pressure to catch up on lost learning, a cost of living crisis and increasing global instability.

“Every young person should be able to access mental health support when they need it, but too many don’t get it until things get much worse.  Services continue to be significantly underfunded and the number of young people receiving treatment falls woefully short of what is needed. To turn the tide on this crisis, the government must prioritise young people and their mental health by investing in prevention and early intervention.”

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Source: The Independent, 2 March 2024

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