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Labour ‘on course to miss’ key NHS pledge on waiting times

Labour is unlikely to meet its key election pledge on tackling NHS waiting lists, analysis has suggested.

Sir Keir Starmer was elected after promising that 92% of routine operations and appointments would be carried out within 18 weeks by 2029.

However, a major report by the Health Foundation think tank said that, at the current rate of progress, Labour would “fall short of delivering on its headline pledge”.

The overall hospital waiting list stands at 7.4 million, down from 7.6 million when Labour took office. But it has risen for the past two months, and currently only 61 per cent of patients are seen within the 18-week target.

The report said that based on current trends, the overall waiting list will be 4.7 million at the time of the next general election in four years’ time. This would be the lowest figure since 2021, but not low enough to meet the election pledge.

It also warned that further disruption, such as another wave of junior doctors strikes, could make it even harder to lower waiting lists.

Dr Francesca Cavallaro, a senior analytical manager at the Health Foundation, said: “The scale of the challenge remains significant, and even getting close to meeting the target would be a considerable achievement. This will require not just more activity, but smarter use of resources and continued investment in the NHS workforce and infrastructure. And there are several factors that could hold back progress, including if future referrals rise faster than expected and the potential impact of further industrial action."

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Source: The Times, 25 September 2025

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Lab fault sees hundreds fast-tracked for unnecessary cancer tests

More than 1,300 patients were referred for urgent bowel cancer investigations they may not have needed after a calibration error at a shared NHS pathology service.

South West London Pathology identified a processing error affecting fecal immunochemical test (FIT) results, meaning results were five times higher than they should have been between 27 December 2025 and 4 March 2026.

Of the 17,000 FITs processed during that period, 4,223 returned incorrect results.

A total of 1,326 patients were subsequently placed on the two-week wait urgent cancer referral pathway and may have undergone a colonoscopy or CT colonoscopy, which they did not need.

The error occurred after a unit conversion process – used to translate results into the format used by UK GPs – stopped being applied for a period of time. HSJ understands this was due to human error rather than a technical fault.

16 NHS trusts and one integrated care board spanning London and Surrey had patients referred, with 281 GP practices having registered patients impacted by the incident.

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Source: HSJ, 2 June 2026

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Knee surgery for cartilage damage does not benefit patients, study suggests

A common knee surgery for cartilage damage does not benefit patients and may lead to worse outcomes, a 10-year trial suggests.

The study tracked outcomes for patients treated for a meniscus tear, who were given a partial meniscectomy, one of the most common orthopaedic surgeries. Their trajectories were compared with patients who had randomly been assigned to receive “sham surgery”, in which no procedure was carried out.

Patients who had undergone the surgery, which involves trimming frayed meniscus tissue, did not appear to benefit and scored worse on a range of measures designed to measure knee function, pain and progression of symptoms.

Prof Teppo Järvinen, an orthopaedic surgeon and researcher at the University of Helsinki who led the study, said: “Our findings suggest that this may be an example of what is known as a medical reversal, where broadly used therapy proves ineffective or even harmful.”

“We now know that these meniscal tears are very frequently found in patients with no symptoms,” said Järvinen. “Over the past 20 years, evidence has accumulated to suggest that most of these findings on MRI are purely incidental.”

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Source: The Guardian, 29 April 2026

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Knee replacements stall in regions of England with weight rules for patients

The number of knee replacement operations carried out has dropped in regions of England with restrictions on surgery for overweight patients, with people in more deprived areas worst affected, researchers have found.

Patients needing surgery but unable to lose weight are being denied surgery that could ease pain and increase mobility, the team from the University of Bristol said.

Health campaigners expressed alarm, claiming the policy was a “blunt tool” being used to replace conversations between doctors and patients and risked exacerbating health inequalities.

Over the past decade, rules have been brought in by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across England to restrict access to hip and knee replacement surgery for patients who are overweight or obese.

The study, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, suggests that regions that introduced policy changes for access to knee replacement surgery based on a patient’s weight or BMI have seen a decline in surgery.

The lead author, Joanna McLaughlin, of the Bristol Medical School, said: “Our study raises the concern that these policies are linked with worsening health inequalities with fewer NHS operations for the least affluent groups.

“We could see the rates of surgery dropped for those worst off but increased for those who are best off, which correlates with more private surgery going on in those areas.”

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Source: The Guardian, 29 June 2022

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Knee implant used by NHS known for years to be faulty

A knee-replacement implant, used in thousands of UK operations, was known to have a concerning failure rate eight years before it was finally withdrawn, the BBC has discovered.

Patients have told File on 4 Investigates how they were left immobile or addicted to painkillers after receiving the NexGen knee implant, because it ended up slipping out of place. Hundreds of people have now had to undergo a second corrective operation.

Knee surgeons say the implant's US manufacturer, Zimmer Biomet, took too long to acknowledge there was a problem with one particular component.

Zimmer Biomet says patient safety is its "top priority" and that its products are approved in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Debbie Booker from Southampton had an operation to replace her left knee in 2016.

Although initially it appeared to have been successful, she started to experience severe pain a year later while on holiday in Majorca.

"I laid a bag of ice on my knee and for four days I had to do that every few hours because I was in agony," she says.

Debbie says the pain resulted from the knee implant slipping from the tibia and wearing away the bone.

Over the next few months she says she became reliant on prescription painkillers: "I was on fentanyl and morphine. It took me a long time to come off of the morphine because I was addicted."

Zimmer Biomet started marketing this modified version in 2012. It was cheaper than the earlier model, so it made financial sense for the NHS, according to Prof David Barrett, a knee specialist at Southampton University.

"[The NHS] were justified by saying, 'we have every reason to think it'll be fine,'" he says.

In the decade that followed, more than 10,000 patients were fitted with this version of the implant.

However, File on 4 Investigates has discovered that concerns were first flagged in 2014 by the National Joint Registry (NJR) which keeps a record of implant surgery across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

At that point, there was insufficient data to draw any reliable conclusions, the NJR told us. It is not an easy task to isolate a specific component that is not working as it should, it added.

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Source: BBC News, 12 August 2025

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Kindness: an underrated currency

Cultivation of kindness is a valuable part of the business of healthcare, discusses Klaber and Bailey in an Editorial in the BMJ. 

"When we reflect on the past decade, it feels as if we have made a big mistake in healthcare. We have allowed the dominant narrative to be around money, taking the focus, energy, and leadership away from our core purpose of delivering the best care possible. Balancing the books is important, especially in a tax funded system, and we have a duty to drive value for every pound we spend — but money is not the most important thing."

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Source: BMJ, 16 December 2019

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Killer evaded medication over needle fear, report says

Triple killer Valdo Calocane was not forced to take his anti-psychotic medication because he did not like needles, a major review of his NHS care has revealed.

The NHS England report identified numerous failings that show "the system got it wrong" with Calocane, who stabbed to death Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates in Nottingham in June 2023.

It laid out how Calocane, who has paranoid schizophrenia, had no contact with mental health services or his GP for about nine months prior to the killings - and was discharged after failing to engage with them.

The NHS said it had taken the decision to publish the report in full, in line with the wishes of the families, and "given the level of detail already in the public domain".

The independent review, by Theemis Consulting, looked into the treatment given to Calocane by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust prior to the killings, as well as the interactions the NHS had with other agencies involved in his care.

The key findings of the report include:

  • Calocane's risk "was not fully understood, managed, documented or communicated".
  • There were missed opportunities to take more assertive action towards Calocane's care.
  • The voice of Calocane's family "was not effectively considered to support the dynamic evaluation of risk" during his treatment.
  • Other patients under the care of the same trust, some of whom had been discharged, had also perpetrated acts of "serious violence" across 15 incidents between 2019 and 2023.
  • Calocane had no contact with mental health services or his GP for about nine months prior to the killings.

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Source: BBC News, 5 February 2025

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Kidney patients’ health was put at risk, doctor tells BBC

A group of doctors offered a controversial medical technique which allegedly put kidney patients' health at risk.

At least 20 patients at Queen Alexandra Hospital (QA) in Portsmouth have been using the procedure, which is not recommended in UK guidelines.

A consultant was wrongly sacked from the hospital in 2018 after objecting to the practice.

The hospital trust said the safety and care of its patients was its priority.

Jasna Macanovic, who worked at the QA for 17 years, had raised concerns about the way the trust was allowing some staff to deliver the dialysis technique - known as buttonholing.

"I don't think they're fit to practise medicine," Dr Macanovic told the BBC.

When Dr Macanovic examined the records of 15 patients using the buttonholing technique at the QA, she found infection rates four times higher than they experienced using the standard technique.

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Source: BBC News, 15 March 2024

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Kidney condition detected in minutes by app

A mobile phone app has speeded up the detection of a potentially fatal kidney condition in hospital patients. Acute kidney injury is caused by serious health conditions, including sepsis, and affects one in five people admitted to hospital. It accounts for around 100,000 deaths every year in the UK.

During a trial at London's Royal Free Hospital, doctors and nurses received warning signals via a mobile phone app in an average of 14 minutes, when patients' blood tests indicated the condition. The new alerting system, known as Streams, developed by the Royal Free with technology firm DeepMind, sends results straight to front-line clinicians in the form of easy-to-read results and graphs.

This could could save the NHS an average of £2,000 per patient by alerting clinicians to acute kidney injury sooner. However, although the findings, published in the journal Nature Digital Medicine, led to earlier recognition, it did not lead to any improvements in the primary outcome measure (renal recovery) or in secondary outcomes, which included survival, length of stay in hospital, and admission to the intensive care unit.

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Source: BBC News, 1 August 2019

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Key stroke treatment still not available around the clock across England

The NHS has not made a “life-changing” treatment for stroke available around the clock across England despite ministers repeatedly promising that it would.

The health service was expected to improve stroke care by making a clot removal technique called mechanical thrombectomy available everywhere in the country 24/7 from 1 April.

Doctors describe it as a gamechanging intervention that, if done quickly, can help someone who has had a severe stroke avoid ending up with a serious disability as a result.

However, seven of England’s 24 regional stroke centres are still not providing thrombectomy on an all-hours basis, mainly because they do not have enough doctors and other staff to do so.

Experts fear the NHS’s failure to deliver universal 24/7 access to the treatment could mean patients who have a stroke overnight, in the evening or at weekends in underserved areas may become avoidably severely disabled, or may even die, because they could not have the procedure.

More than 100,000 people a year in the UK have a stroke, of whom 38,000 die and many others are left with life-changing disabilities that rob them of their independence.

Dr Sanjeev Nayak, a stroke specialist at the Royal Stoke hospital in Stoke, said: “A patient presenting during normal working hours in a well-served area may receive rapid, life-changing treatment, whereas the same patient presenting at night or in a different region may not receive thrombectomy at all. This creates a real postcode lottery in access to one of the most effective treatments in modern medicine.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 April 2026

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Key NHS long-term plan target to be missed ‘due to covid’

The NHS is set to miss a major national target to eliminate inappropriate out of area placements within mental health by the end of March, HSJ can reveal.

At least eight of the 52 English NHS mental health trusts surveyed by HSJ are predicting they will miss the national deadline of getting rid of their inappropriate OAPs by the end of next month.

The national target was one of the headline mental health pledges set out in  2014’s Five Year Forward View. The pledge was also in 2019’s long-term plan.

Inappropriate OAPs refer to people being sent out of their region to an inpatient mental health bed if no beds are available within their area. Patients are regularly sent hundreds of miles away from their homes.

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Source: HSJ, 23 February 2021

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Kettering Hospital ward accused of traumatising children may close

Children's services could be forced to close at a hospital that is accused of leaving young patients traumatised and sick through poor care.

The care regulator said it had taken action to "ensure people are safe" on Skylark ward at Kettering General Hospital (KGH) in Northamptonshire.

Thirteen parents with serious concerns after their children died or became seriously ill have spoken to the BBC.

A BBC Look East investigation has heard allegations spanning more than 20 years about the treatment of patients on Skylark ward, a 26-bed children's unit.

The BBC discovered:

  • An independent report found staff left a 12-year-old boy - who died at KGH in December 2019 - for four hours suffering seizures, and suggests little effort was made to obtain critical care support.
  • In April 2019, nurses allegedly dragged a "traumatised" four-year-old girl down a corridor in agony, insisting that she could walk. Medics are accused of refusing to carry out an MRI scan, which would have detected a dangerous cyst on her spine.
  • Mothers claim to have been threatened with safeguarding referrals, with one stating a referral was made against her after she complained her son was struggling to breathe, while another likened it to blackmail.

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Source: BBC News, 20 February 2023

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Kettering hospital ward accused of failing children rated inadequate

The safety of a ward accused of failing children has been rated as inadequate by inspectors.

The care regulator warned Kettering General Hospital (KGH) in Northamptonshire over its children's and young people's services.

Inspectors' worries include sepsis treatment, staff numbers, dirt levels and not having an "open culture" where concerns can be raised without fear.

Since the BBC's first report in February highlighting the concerns of parents with children who died or became seriously ill at KGH, dozens more families have come forward, bringing the number to 50 to date.

Inspectors found that "staff did not always effectively identify and quickly act upon patients at risk of deterioration".

They said there were sometimes "delays in medical reviews being undertaken outside of normal working hours", highlighting one case where a seemingly deteriorating patient was not seen until three hours after being escalated to the on-call team.

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Source: BBC News, 20 April 2023

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Kettering hospital boss says site is not fit for care

The chief executive of a hospital has said the building is not in a condition "we should expect any of our nearest and dearest to receive care" in.

Kettering General Hospital chief executive Simon Weldon described the site as "a big hotchpotch of things, some things that are new, about 10 years old, to things that are 100 years old, and everything in between".

He added: "Those are not conditions a modern hospital should be proud of, those are not conditions we should ask any staff to work in, they are not the conditions we should expect any of our nearest and dearest to receive care."

The initial £46m the hospital was award in 2019 was to replace the temporary "power plant". 

Mr Weldon said he would submit a business case to get money "to fix the vital infrastructure work that will keep this site safe". But he said the hospital really needed to be rebuilt, and that "fixing the hospital would be bad value for taxpayers".

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Source: BBC News, 7 July 2022

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Kettering hospital baby death was investigated by major crime team

In 2016, Kettering General Hospital (KGH) became the focus of a major criminal inquiry. Documents seen by the BBC reveal detectives looked for evidence of gross negligence manslaughter over the treatment of Jorgie Stanton-Watts, a vulnerable toddler.

Seven years of investigations followed, by the hospital, regulators and a coroner. The family has struggled to hold people to account.

Since Jorgie's death, a BBC investigation has heard from more than 50 parents with serious concerns about the treatment of their children, many of whom died or suffered injury.

The Northamptonshire hospital has also been inspected regularly.

In April the Care Quality Commission (CQC) downgraded the hospital's children's services to inadequate, the lowest possible rating.

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Source: BBC News, 10 January 2024

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Kettering General Hospital chief apologises over children's care

A chief executive whose hospital has been accused of failing children has admitted it has not always "got it right" and apologised at a meeting.

The care regulator has warned Kettering General Hospital (KGH) over its children's and young people's services and rated them inadequate.

Dozens of parents with children who died or became seriously ill have contacted the BBC with concerns.

Deborah Needham told a board meeting she was "here to listen" to worries.

In April it was revealed inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) raised concerns over sepsis treatment, staff numbers, dirt levels and not having an "open culture" where concerns could be raised without fear, following an inspection in December.

The CQC had inspected the Northamptonshire hospital's paediatric assessment unit, Skylark ward, and the neonatal unit after hearing concerns of safety.

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Source: BBC News, 9 June 2023

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Ketamine could help suicidal people struggling with dark thoughts, new study claims

The class B drug ketamine could help to treat people suffering from severe suicidal thoughts, a study has suggested.

Researchers from the University of Montpellier in France said the sedative could save lives, as it appears to alleviate dark thoughts in patients admitted to hospital for their mental health.

The finding was based on a controlled trial involving 156 adults with severe suicidal ideas, which ran from April 2015 to March 2019 in seven French teaching hospitals.

The participants included people with bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. However, patients with a history of schizophrenia were excluded from the study.

Although the team found the side effects of ketamine were minor and had diminished by day four, they cautioned that more research was needed to examine its benefits.

“Ketamine is a drug with a potential for abuse. Longer follow-up of larger samples will be necessary to examine benefits on suicidal behaviours and long term risks,” they wrote.

Commenting on the study, Riccardo De Giorgi, a PhD student at the University of Oxford, said: "These findings indicate that ketamine is rapid, safe, and effective in the short term for acute care in hospitalised suicidal patients.”

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Source: The Independent, 4 February 2022

Ketamine for the acute treatment of severe suicidal ideation: double blind, randomised placebo controlled trial 

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Kent nurses help to boost learning disability health check uptake

A trial, which took place at the start of 2020 but had to be cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic, has found having learning disability nurses involved in the delivery of annual health checks at GP practices can help improve uptake. Despite the trial being cut short, it was still considered a success with a second trial being launched. 

“This project highlighted that the specialist expertise, knowledge and skills of the learning disability nurses working with the GPs, can help improve the assessment process of the annual health checks and overall positive health outcomes for people with a learning disability.” said Lisa Harrington, specialist community matron in learning disabilities, a nurse on the project.

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Source: Nursing Times, 3 August 2021

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Kent Hospital improves safety rating in latest inspection

The Care Quality Commission have increased the safety rating for the William Harvey Hospital, in Kent, from 'inadequate' to 'requires improvement'. This comes after the hospital was hit with a safety scandal after staff and members of the public raised concerns about a lack of infection control amid outbreaks of Covid-19.

“I am pleased to report that since our last inspection, leaders have worked hard to improve infection control practices in the medical care services departments at both hospitals, although some improvements still need to be fully embedded, particularly at William Harvey Hospital. We also found that there was a positive culture in the service across both hospitals, and staff felt empowered to report incidents. These were fully investigated by managers and, importantly, learnings were shared with the wider team.” Amanda Williams, CQC’s head of hospital inspection has said. 

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Source: The Independent, 5 August 2021

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Kent and Medway: Review into patient harm after DMC 'failure'

At least 18 serious cases are being investigated by NHS bosses after GP and dermatology services were stripped from private medical company.

The Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) confirmed on Monday an independent review was taking place. It will see if delays to treatment for thousands of patients using DMC Healthcare services "caused harm".

The NHS removed contracts worth £4.1m a year from the private firm in July.

DMC was responsible for nearly 60,000 patients at nine surgeries in Medway, and skin condition services in other parts of Kent, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

In north Kent, there were 1,855 patients needing urgent treatment and a further 7,500 on the dermatology service waiting list. Of those, 700 had been waiting more than a year.

Nikki Teesdale, from Kent and Medway's CCG, said it was "too early" to reach definitive conclusions around the 18 serious cases. Speaking to Kent and Medway's joint health scrutiny committee on Monday she said of the 18, five had been waiting "significant periods of time" for cancer services.

"Until we have got those patients through those treatment programmes, we are not able to determine what the level of harm has been," she added.

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Source: BBC News, 29 September 2020

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Kent and Medway: Dermatology patients 'exposed to risk of harm'

A private company carrying out dermatology services has had its contract suspended by the NHS over concerns about patients safety.

DMC Healthcare ran the service which oversaw the care of almost 2,000 patients in north Kent and Medway for more than a year. NHS bosses says those patients may have been harmed and the contract was suspended in June.

A helpline has been set up to ensure affected patients are seen by GPs and follow-up treatment can be arranged.

Paula Wilkins, Chief Nurse at Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group, said: "In mid-June we suspended most of DMC's dermatology service when we became concerned about patient safety."

"I'm very sorry to say, we now know there have been delays in appointments, including for the diagnosis and treatment of cancers, and that has exposed people to the risk of harm."

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Source: BBC News, 21 July 2020

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Keir Starmer urged to protect HIV funding for once-in-a-generation opportunity to end Aids

A coalition of leading charities, advocates and MPs has backed a letter from the editor-in-chief of The Independent, Geordie Greig, urging Sir Keir Starmer to protect UK funding for the global HIV response – or risk missing “the incredible opportunity to end the Aids pandemic within the next few years”.

In 2024, the world was on track to end the pandemic by 2030, but devastating aid cuts from rich countries this year, including the UK and the US, have thrown this prospect into doubt.

The Elton John Aids Foundation, the National Aids Trust, Medecins Sans Frontieres and the STOPAids coalition are among the groups backing The Independent’s call for funding to be protected.

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Source: Independent, 22 December 2025

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Keeping with Kennedy’s advice, measles patients in the US turn to unproven treatments

Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened.

Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment.

“I’m worried we have kids and parents that are taking all of these other medications and then delaying care,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the sickest children in this outbreak have been hospitalized.

Some seriously ill children had been given alternative remedies like cod liver oil, she added. “If they’re so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, they should have been in the hospital a day or two earlier,” she said.

In his first public statements about the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy faced intense backlash for minimizing the situation, saying it was “not unusual” and falsely claiming that many people hospitalized were there “mainly for quarantine.”

In the following weeks, Mr. Kennedy altered his approach, offering a muted recommendation of vaccines for people in West Texas while also promoting unproven treatments like cod liver oil, which has vitamin A, and touting “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.

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Source: New York Times, 15 March 2025

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Keeping electives on same site as A&E is ‘optimal’, says CEO

The chief executive of three NHS trusts says ringfencing elective care within an acute hospital site is potentially more ‘productive’ than sending it to a separate ‘cold’ site.

Glen Burley, who leads a “provider group” in the West Midlands, says his trusts have been grappling with the challenge of how to maximise elective activity without it being disrupted by emergency pressures.

The conventional view – as outlined in the NHS long-term plan – is that performing more elective care on a separate site from emergency can help ensure theatre lists are not disrupted.

But George Eliot Trust, which has been led by Mr Burley since 2018 and only has a single district general hospital, has created a “ringfenced” elective hub within the site.

In an interview with HSJ, Mr Burley said: “So I actually think the most productive model in the NHS is if you can pull that off.

“If you can actually protect your elective capacity and offer it on the same site [as] urgent care, so the clinicians are not having to move between sites, you’ve got optimal productivity.

“The challenge right across the NHS has been avoiding that spillage, of emergency care into your elective capacity.

“As you get busier and you escalate… the order in which you encroach into areas that you should not encroach into, is really key in that. We are saying we are going to protect our elective beds in a way that we haven’t done before."

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Source: HSJ, 14 March 2022

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