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Hospitals in England could shed 100,000 jobs in response to cost-cutting orders

Hospitals in England could axe more than 100,000 jobs as a result of the huge reorganisation and brutal cost-cutting ordered by Wes Streeting and the NHS’s new boss.

The scale of looming job losses is so large that NHS leaders have urged the Treasury to cover the costs involved, which they say could top £2bn, because they do not have the money.

Sir Jim Mackey, NHS England’s new chief executive, has told the 215 trusts that provide health care across England to cut the costs of their corporate functions – such as HR, finance and communications – by 50% by the end of the year.

But the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said some trusts believe complying with that edict could force them to shed anywhere between 3% and 11% of their entire workforce.

If replicated across the 215 trusts, that could lead to job losses ranging from 41,100 to 150,700, given they employ 1.37 million people.

Matthew Taylor, the NHS Confederation’s chief executive, said trusts were being asked to make such “staggering” savings that they might not be able to help banish the long delays patients faced for treatment.

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Source: The Guardian, 8 April 2025

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Hospitals in England can relax Covid rules to treat more patients

Hospitals in England have been given the green light to ease some of the Covid infection-control measures that have been in place during the pandemic.

The changes, recommended by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), are aimed at easing pressure on the NHS.

It says testing and isolating patients before planned operations can be dropped and hospitals can return to normal cleaning procedures.

Social distancing can also be reduced from 2m (6ft) to 1m in some areas.

UKHSA chief executive Dr Jenny Harries said the new recommendations would help local hospitals plan more elective care.

"This is a first step to help the NHS treat more patients more quickly, while ensuring their safety and balancing their different needs for care," she said.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said: "As ever more people benefit from the protection of our phenomenal vaccination campaign, we can now safely begin to relieve some of the most stringent infection controls where they are no longer necessary, to benefit patients and ease the burden on hardworking NHS staff."

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Source: BBC News, 28 September 2021

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Hospitals hit by drug shortages for coronavirus victims in intensive care wards

Intensive care units across the country are running out of essentials, including anaesthetics and drugs for anxiety and blood pressure, after a “tripling of demand” sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

Six senior NHS doctors working on the front line, and drugs industry sources, say that the health service is running out of at least eight crucial drugs. Hospitals in London, Birmingham and the northwest of England have been especially badly hit.

Doctors said they were being forced to use alternatives to their “drug of choice”, affecting the quality of care being provided to COVID-19 patients. They also warned that some second-choice drugs might be triggering dangerous side effects such as minor heart attacks.

Ron Daniels, an intensive care consultant in the West Midlands, said the shortages had become “acute” already. “We don’t know what we’re going to run out of next week,” he said. “Safety isn’t so much the issue — it’s quality. It may be that we’re subjecting people to longer periods of ventilation than we would normally because the drugs take longer to wear off.”

Daniels added that some of the “second-line drugs” being used might be challenging to a patient’s heart: “We might be causing small heart attacks or subclinical heart attacks.”

Ravi Mahajan, president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, said work was being carried out to “preserve” key drugs for those most in need.

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Source: The Times, 26 April 2020

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Hospitals have become less safe during the pandemic. So why does the US government want to suppress hospital safety data?

There’s little question that US hospitals—up against COVID, patient surges, and labor and supply shortages—have become less safe for patients during the pandemic, as preventable events and complications have become more common.

Leaders with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said as much, earlier this year, in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine: “Many indicators make it clear that health care safety has declined,” they wrote, noting, “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.”

Despite such frank assessments, CMS is now at odds with public safety advocates about whether to make some of the hospital-specific data behind those trends publicly available. 

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Source: Fortune, 14 June 2022

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Hospitals harm hundreds of patients a year by misidentification

Hundreds of patients are being harmed each year because NHS organisations have incorrectly identified who they are, an HSJ investigation has found.

Responses to Freedom of Information requests from 166 trusts revealed 58,537 cases of patient misidentification logged in Datix or other patient safety systems between 2019 and 2023, including 4,713 causing some sort of harm. This is equivalent to 11,707 incidents a year, with 943 leading to harm.

It includes a wide range of errors, but harm typically happens when patients are given the wrong treatment or medicine, or miss out on the right treatment, as a result of errors in recording and/or miscommunication. A typical example is patients being given a wristband with the wrong name – or ID information resulting in patients not being treated, or the wrong treatment being given.

Some of the worst examples are where the wrong patient, or the wrong part of the body, is operated on.

Patient Safety Learning's CEO Helen Hughes called on NHS England to review cases nationally to identify root causes.

She added: “Where avoidable harm has occurred, it is vital these incidents are investigated, that causes and contributory factors are identified, and steps put in place to prevent their reoccurrence. In some cases, this may require standardisation of approaches to patient identification, while others may highlight contributory factors that are more difficult to address, such as staff fatigue.”

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Source: HSJ, 11 June 2024

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Hospitals grapple with radiologist shortage

Increased reliance on imaging for diagnosis and efficient patient care mixed with higher volumes of patients has left US hospitals scrambling to meet demand with the few radiologists they have.

There are over 1,400 vacant radiologist positions posted on the American College of Radiology's job board, according to a bulletin posted on its website. The total number of active radiology and diagnostic radiology physicians has dropped by 1% between 2007 and 2021, but the number of people in the U.S. per active physician in radiology grew nearly 10%, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. An increase in the Medicare population and a declining number of people with health insurance adds to the problem.

"Demand for imaging services is increasing across the country, creating longer worklists for radiology staff at the same time the healthcare system is experiencing a workforce shortage in radiology," Michigan Hospital Association CEO Brian Peters told The Detroit News in an April 28 report. "The combination of vacancies and increased demand can force imaging delays measured from days to upwards of two weeks."

CMS also cut fees for both diagnostic (3%) and interventional radiology (4%) this year, according to an article published on healthcare technology company XiFin's website. This leaves many hospitals having to use external groups to stay on top of demand.

Mr. Peters told Detroit News, "Hospitals and health systems are also competing with practices offering remote-only positions, which allows Michigan radiologists to work for out-of-state providers at higher rates."

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 29 April 2024

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Hospitals forced to repay millions after falsely claiming their maternity units were safe

NHS hospitals have been forced to pay millions of pounds to regulators after wrongly claiming their maternity units were among the safest in the country.

Seven NHS trusts, including some now at the centre of major care scandals, will have to pay back a total of £8.5m after self-assessments of their maternity services were found to be false.

Families whose babies died as a result of avoidable errors at some of the hospitals told The Independent it was further evidence of poor governance and management failings.

NHS Resolution, which acts as the health service’s insurer for clinical negligence, launched the maternity incentive scheme in 2018 in an effort to focus action on 10 key safety areas in maternity, including ensuring they have systems in place to review deaths, monitor women and plan staffing levels as well as reporting incidents to the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch which investigates maternity incidents in the NHS.

Among the trusts forced to give money back over the first two years of the scheme include Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, which paid back £953,000. An inquiry into its maternity service found a dozen women and more than 40 babies died as a result of poor care in one of the largest maternity scandals in NHS history.

East Kent Hospitals University Trust, which is facing an inquiry into baby deaths and a criminal prosecution by the Care Quality Commission over the death of baby Harry Richford in 2017, face paying back £2.1m over two years.

Derek Richford, who helped expose failings at East Kent after the death of his grandson, told The Independent it was “abhorrent” that the trust claimed “vital NHS funds by falsely claiming that they had achieved 10/10 for maternity safety when the truth was in fact 6/10. East Kent Trust did this two years running and even when asked to check their submission, reconfirmed the erroneous data to NHS Resolution.”

An evaluation of the scheme by NHS Resolution said it was “recognised that recent examples of poor governance from trusts in relation to the certification of submissions require further action”.

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Source: The Independent, 7 March 2021

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Hospitals failing to heed warnings over patient deaths, reveals new study

Thousands of similar errors contributing to patient deaths are being repeated by hospitals despite warnings from coroners, according to new research.

An analysis of four years of official reports by coroners, issued after the conclusion of inquests into patient deaths, has revealed the impact of the NHS struggling with a lack of resources and staff. Coroners found similar mistakes across hundreds of inquests.

Professor Alison Leary, chair of healthcare a workforce modelling at London South Bank University, and who led the study, told The Independent: “We are missing opportunities to prevent deaths. What we are seeing is the hard edge of underinvestment in the workforce and the under resourcing of the service.

“Each of these coroner’s reports are someone’s sorrow. From talking to families, they assume when one of these reports is issued, they are acted on and the system learns from it. But the system doesn’t seem to be learning and people pay for this with their life.”

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Source: The Independent, 3 March 2021

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Hospitals fail people with learning disabilities, says watchdog

The safety of people with learning disabilities in England is being compromised when they are admitted to hospital, a watchdog says.

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) reviewed the care people receive and said there were "persistent and widespread" risks.

It warned staff are not equipped with the skills or support to meet the needs of patients with learning disabilities.

The watchdog launched its review after receiving a report about a 79-year-old who died following a cardiac arrest two weeks after being admitted to hospital.

As part of its investigation, HSSIB also looked at the care provided in other places to people with learning disabilities.

It warned systems in place to share information about them were unreliable, and that there was an inconsistency in the availability of specialist teams - known as learning disability liaison services - that were in place in hospitals to support general staff.

It also said general staff had insufficient training - although it did note a national mandatory training programme is currently being rolled out.

Senior investigator Clare Crowley said: "If needs are not met, it can cause distress and confusion for the patient and their families and carers, and raises the risk of poor health outcomes and, in the worst cases, harm."

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Source: BBC News, 2 November 2023

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Hospitals facing unprecedented flu season, say NHS bosses

The number of flu patients in hospital has hit a record high in England for this time of year with NHS leaders warning the country is facing an unprecedented flu season.

NHS figures show there were an average of 1,700 patients in hospital with flu last week - that is more than 50% higher than the same time last year - and early indications from this week are that hospitalisations have continued climbing sharply since.

It comes as the flu season hit a month earlier than normal this year, with experts warning there appears to be a more severe strain of the virus circulating.

England's chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty has warned the NHS must take diseases like pneumonia and flu in older people much more seriously to save lives.

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Source: BBC News, 4 December 2025

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Hospitals experiencing "perfect storm"

NHS bosses have warned as Covid-19 infections rise, the demand for A&E ha surged, colliding with holiday season. 

According to reports, hospitals are being told to brace themselves as admissions to hospital for patients with Covid have risen by more than 30 per cent over the past week.

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals, chief executive Dame Jackie Daniel has said, “We are going through the ‘perfect storm’ of high numbers of Covid patients in hospital, high Covid infections in the community, which is affecting staff and our families, unprecedented levels of urgent and emergency demand and peak holiday season, all of which comes after 18 months of exhausting work.”

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Source: The Independent, 25 July 2021

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Hospitals defy NHS chiefs by telling patients to keep wearing face masks

A number of hospitals are insisting that patients keep wearing masks despite instructions from NHS chiefs to drop the rules.

National coronavirus guidance which insisted on face coverings has now been scrapped, with health officials leaving it to local organisations to draft their own policies.

However, several hospitals have called on patients and staff to continue to wear masks and face coverings on their sites.

Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has repeatedly called on NHS trusts to drop restrictions in hospitals which are limiting operational capacity. Last month, he threatened to name and shame hospitals that do not lift social distancing measures and restrictions on visitors.

A letter from health chiefs said that patients visiting accident and emergency (A&E) departments, hospital outpatient appointments and GP surgeries no longer needed to wear masks “unless this is a personal preference”.

Hospitals have now begun issuing guidance for their local communities, with a number saying they intend to keep insisting on people wearing masks.

The Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS trust issued a notice to patients and staff saying: “We are still asking patients, visitors, staff and anyone working at one of our hospital or community sites to continue to wear a mask, gel hands and social distance while in our buildings despite the lifting of national restrictions."

“This is to keep vulnerable people as safe as possible.”

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Source: The Telegraph, 8 June 2022

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Hospitals consider ‘risky’ dilution of ICU nursing ratios

NHS trusts in London are looking to dilute their intensive care nurse-to-patient ratios due to workforce shortages, according to a leading critical care nurse.

Nicki Credland, chair of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses, told HSJ’s Patient Safety Congress that trust leaders in London have discussed relaxing the ratios from one nurse per patient, to one nurse per 1.75 patients.

ICU staffing ratios have been intermittently diluted throughout the covid pandemic, but this has previously been used as a temporary measure.

Ms Credland, a keynote speaker at the event on Tuesday, suggested some trusts are now looking at a permanent shift away from one-to-one care. She added: “What we are seeing now is that certain trusts in the country are doing exactly what we were worried about."

“Starting to move away from those [guidelines for the provision of intensive care services] standards that we have, that protect both us as nurses but also protect the patient’s safety as well."

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Source: HSJ, 24 September 2021

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Hospitals bring back masks on wards just weeks after rules relaxed

Hospitals are bringing back requirements for masks on wards just weeks after rules were relaxed as Covid rates spike, The Independent can reveal.

Experts have warned of a surge in cases, believed to be the fifth wave, with one in 40 people in the UK testing positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, latest NHS data shows more than 8,000 Covid-positive patients on wards following a warning of a “deleterious” impact on hospital waiting times.

In response, three major hospital trusts have told staff they must wear masks, with warnings more must follow if the NHS is to handle another wave of Covid.

Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine told The Independent: “Over the past 2 years Covid has highlighted and exacerbated what was an already growing crisis.

“High staff absence levels, burn-out and low morale have dominated staff landscapes during this time and continue to do so. Future waves and potentially large numbers of upcoming flu cases will only serve to deepen these problems making the hopes of patients, clinicians and politicians alike of elective recovery seem somewhat fanciful."

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Source: The Independent, 29 June 2022

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Hospitals at risk if cybersecurity law expires, former FBI leader says

The expiration of a 2015 federal cybersecurity law could put hospitals and health systems at risk for more cyberattacks, a former FBI leader wrote in Fortune.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which lapses 30 September has enabled quick threat-intelligence sharing between government and businesses, including thousands this year alone, preventing “countless” hacks over the past decade, according to the 17 August article by Cynthia Kaiser, former deputy director of the FBI’s cyber department.

“If information sharing degrades after CISA 2015’s sunset, hospitals — and all other critical infrastructure — very likely will lose crucial early warnings about ransomware variants and other attack methods,” she wrote. “When a hospital’s systems are threatened, rapid information sharing matters. Minutes count in medical emergencies, and delays can be fatal.”

Ms. Kaiser pointed to research from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.-based University of Minnesota that estimated ransomware attacks killed between 42 and 67 Medicare patients from 2016 to 2021.

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 18 August 2025

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Hospitals are giving less qualified staff nurses uniforms, conference hears

Hospitals are deploying staff with less training than nurses – wearing the same uniforms – a conference has heard.

Nurses said trusts trying to make “cost savings” were using cheaper nursing associates, and treating student nurses as free labour, to try to plug gaps that should be filled by more qualified staff.

They are trained in similar basic skills to nurses, but have two years of training and a foundation degree qualification, compared to three years studying and a university degree for registered nurses.

Nurses at the RCN annual congress in Brighton said the associate workers are frequently being given equally complex tasks, as pressures mounted.

In some cases, they were even being given the same uniforms, meaning patients cannot distinguish between nurses and less-qualified staff, nurses said.

Meanwhile, student nurses, who should be shadowing trained staff to learn new skills, were increasingly being asked to fill in for healthcare assistants, the conference heard.

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Source: The Telegraph, 16 May 2023

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Hospitals and labs told to prioritise Covid testing for mental health patients

Coronavirus tests for patients in mental health hospitals should be couriered to testing labs and prioritised for results to prevent patients being forced to self-isolate for longer than is necessary, according to new guidance.

NHS England has told mental health hospitals they need to use dedicated couriers for urgent swabs and tests should be specifically labelled for mental health patients so they can be turned around faster.

Health bosses are worried thousands of patients in mental health wards could deteriorate ifare forced to self-isolate in their rooms for longer periods.

More than 14,000 patients were being detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act in January 2021, with patients needing to be tested on admission to wards and if they show symptoms.

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Source: The Independent, 30 March 2021

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Hospitals across US reporting IV shortages after Hurricane Helene led to plant shutdown in NC

Hospitals in the United States are cancelling and postponing elective surgeries amid a nationwide shortage of IV fluid thanks to plant closures caused by Hurricane Helene.

Virginia’s UVA Health University Medical Center told The Independent that it would postpone certain elective surgeries early this week to help conserve its supplies.

The shortage is tied to flooding at healthcare company Baxter International’s western North Carolina plant after a levee breach. The plant produces IV fluid, which is injected into a person’s veins to treat dehydration. It also makes fluids that are used by some patients on home kidney dialysis.

While some products remain at the factory, bridges to access them are mangled. The company has had to begin restricting how much customers can order. Facilities in Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and other states have reported supply problems.

The shortage has already had an impact on Americans, the American Hospitals Association said in a Monday letter to President Joe Biden.

Baxter says delays to dialysis, a treatment for kidney failure, should be considered, and Massachusetts’ Mass General Brigham told The Associated Press that some patients may receive Gatorade or water to hydrate instead of starting an IV. Although, anyone who needs an IV can still get one.

Baxter provides 60% of IV products across the country, or 1.5 million bags, with the plant’s restoration expected to take weeks.

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Source: The Independent, 7 October 2024

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Hospitals across Europe scramble to replace millions of IV kits amid fear of infections

Hospitals across Europe, including Britain, as well as the Middle East and Africa are scrambling to replace millions of pieces of equipment used to treat patients, as fears grow that they could cause infections after a company was discovered to have falsified sterilisation records for more than a decade.

The Independent has learned the problem affects more than 230 different types of infusion lines, connectors and associated kit, along with six infusion pumps used to deliver medicine and fluids into patients’ veins.

Medical devices company Becton Dickinson, or BD, has issued a recall of six of its Alaris infusion pumps as well as related tubing and kit after an investigation found a company it uses was intentionally falsifying sterilisation records, meaning BD could not be certain the tubing and pumps were free from contamination.

Hospitals across the UK have been given until the end of this month to stop using the pumps and quarantine any of the affected equipment. Any NHS trusts struggling with a lack of supply have been told to seek “mutual aid” from neighbouring trusts.

Public Health England told The Independent it had not identified any large scale infections linked to the IV lines but said it could not rule out smaller isolated infections.

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Source: The Independent, 22 March 2021

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Hospitals 70% cent more full than April

There are 70% more people in hospital now as when England was approaching its spring COVID-19 peak, and twice as many non-covid patients, according to official figures leaked to HSJ.

In some regions, the contrast is even sharper. In the North East and Yorkshire, where COVID-19 hospitalisations are still mounting rapidly, there are now twice as many patients in acute hospitals than there were in early April.

The information also shows that there are now 13% more patients than there were on 3 April in mechanical ventilation beds – which are reserved for the most seriously ill patients. These include more than double the number of non-covid patients than there were in the spring.

The information — shared with HSJ and The Independent by NHS sources — also reveals that 1 in 10 hospital beds are now occupied by confirmed covid patients – up from about 6% two weeks ago.

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Source: HSJ, 3 November 2020

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Hospitals ‘must be more curious’ to catch rogue surgeons

Rogue surgeons could be harming patients across England because hospital bosses are unwilling to challenge them, the head of the NHS has warned after the Great Ormond Street scandal.

Sir Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said he was worried hospital trust boards were not “curious enough” about the standards of care in their hospital and too willing to trust unreliable performance data.

He was responding to revelations last week that almost 100 children were harmed by Yaser Jabbar, a paediatric surgeon, at the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The scandal has prompted NHS England to write to medical Royal Colleges warning of “emerging evidence” of more widespread harm from surgical negligence.

Asked directly about the GOSH report at a parliamentary event on Thursday, Mackey said: “Nearly everything that’s gone wrong in my career, from a clinical point of view, lots of people have known about it. But the organisation responsible hasn’t been connected with them [surgeons], curious enough, listening enough, or been acting on it.

“It does come back to the board doing its job, individuals being curious, being willing to challenge, being willing to go to places that they don’t want to go.”

He added: “One of the things we want to really try and do in our work is restore the necessity for boards to have good oversight but also deploy curiosity carefully. Because often behind these things you see a very serious lack of curiosity and acceptance at face value of data, which I’ve learnt in my career you can’t ever do. The data’s poorer now than it’s ever been.”

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Source: The Times, 31 January 2026

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Hospitals ‘falling to bits’ as NHS in England faces record £12bn repair bill

The NHS in England has a record repair bill of almost £12bn, new figures show, with ministers needing to find more than £2bn for urgent maintenance to prevent catastrophic failure.

The annual report on the condition of the health service’s estate said on Thursday that the cost of improving rundown buildings and decrepit equipment was two and a half times larger than in 2011-2012, when it stood at £4.7bn.

The cost of the “high-risk” backlog – situations where the need to repair or replace facilities and equipment must be urgently addressed to prevent serious failure, significant injury or major disruption to clinical services – rose by almost a third to a record £2.4bn. This was £0.3bn in 2011-2012.

However, investment to reduce the backlog fell in the last year from £1.41bn to £1.38bn, a fraction of what is needed to restore the NHS estate back to acceptable levels of risk. The stark figures cover a time prior to the health service becoming embroiled in the crumbling concrete crisis which initially hit school buildings.

Sir Julian Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said that “too many NHS buildings are quite simply falling to bits”, and that we need “a step change in the government’s approach to planning and funding essential capital investment in the NHS”.

He said: “The eye-watering cost of trying to patch up creaking infrastructure and out-of-date facilities is mounting at an alarming rate.

“Mental health, hospital, community and ambulance services are crying out for much-needed funding for critical projects to overhaul ageing estates and to give patients and staff the safe, reliable conditions they need."

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Source: The Guardian, 14 December 2023

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Hospitals ‘desperate’ to discharge patients admit ambulance delays are a ‘threat to life’

Hospitals “desperate” to free up beds could be putting patients in danger, The Independent has been told.

NHS trusts are being forced into “risky behaviours” in the push to free up hospital beds and A&E departments, experts have warned.

It comes as new data reveals that waits for ambulance crews outside hospitals hit 26 hours in September, with more than 4,000 patients likely to have experienced severe harm due to delays.

In documents leaked to The Independent, hospital leaders in Cornwall warned staff that current pressures in its emergency care system combined with ambulance delays have “tragically resulted in deaths”.

Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust and the Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said in the document that ambulance delays and waits in A&E were causing a “risk to life”, and that as a result they were planning to begin discharging patients into the care of the voluntary sector.

The document said: “It is likely that the risk of such support not meeting all the patients’ individual requirements is less than the risk to life currently experienced in the community when there are significant handover delays at the hospital front doors.”

It comes as North West Ambulance Service launched an investigation after a patient died waiting in the back of an ambulance outside A&E, the Manchester Evening News reported.

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Source: The Independent, 24 October 2022

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Hospitals ‘can’t avoid’ using corridors to provide care amid calls to address risks

Some NHS hospitals are adapting corridors and other non-clinical spaces for patient care, installing plug sockets and emergency call bells to minimise safety risks, a new investigation has found.

Senior staff informed the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) that they made these investments because they "could not avoid using these spaces".

A report by the health safety watchdog stated hospitals "may have no choice" but to utilise these areas, urging health leaders and trusts to collaborate and "systematically address" the risks.

The HSSIB called for a "nationally agreed definition" of these temporary care environments, which include corridors, offices, and storerooms, alongside a clearer understanding of their usage across the NHS.

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Source: The Independent,  8 January 2026

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Hospitals 'want to cut PPE requirements to speed surgery return'

Some hospitals have sought to water down PPE requirements in order to “accelerate” the return of planned surgery, senior doctors have said, as they issued new guidance aiming to inform the decision. 

The Royal College of Anaesthetists, along with partners including the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, released a document to members to tackle “marked uncertainty amongst operating theatre team members as to which infection prevention and control precautions should be taken when treating screened patients in planned surgical pathways”.

The document provides recommendations for teams on how to adjust PPE usage, which the college said was “supportive and consistent” with current Public Health England guidance.

Professor William Harrop-Griffiths, consultant anaesthetist and council member of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, told HSJ some hospitals wanted to decrease the amount of PPE used as it might enable them to “accelerate and increase the workload”.

However, the college has argued that there is currently “no clear guidance on when you might consider making that change”.

“You have to balance that to the risk to the staff,” Professor Harrop-Griffiths stressed.

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Source: HSJ, 29 June 2020

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