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Face-to-face GP appointments fall despite plea to ‘restore routine service’

Face-to-face GP appointments have continued to fall, despite a rallying cry for doctors to restore normal services.

The proportion of GP appointments held in person fell for the third month in a row to 60.3% in January, latest data show.

Data published by NHS Digital on Thursday show about 25.6 million appointments were carried out in January. Of these, some 15.4 million were face-to-face. The last time it fell below this level was August 2021, when just 57.6% of appointments were face-to-face. 

Pre-pandemic, the proportion of GP appointments held in person was about 80%.

Dr Nikki Kanani, NHS England’s medical director of primary care, told doctors last month to “restore routine service” following the successful rollout of the booster jab campaign.

Writing to GPs, she said: “It is now important that all services across the NHS, including in primary care, are able to restore routine services where these were paused in line with the Prime Minister’s request to focus all available resource on the omicron national mission.”

But patient groups say the “situation hasn’t improved” and patients are still struggling to see their doctor in person.

Dennis Reed, from patient group Silver Voices, said the figures were “worrying” but not surprising.

“I'm still getting complaints on a daily basis that people are struggling to see their GP,” he said.

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Source: The Telegraph, 24 February 2022

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Face masks and ventilation needed after July 19th

The Royal College of Nursing has written to the Prime Minister demanding continued protective measures after the loosening of restrictions on July 19th.

In a joint letter with the British Medical Association, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, British Dental Association and College of Optometrists, they ask for support and protection for healthcare staff.

The letter says “The need to recognise health and care settings as unique environments for the care and safety of the most vulnerable is paramount. While you state that you would expect the public to continue wearing face coverings in healthcare settings, we ask that this is translated into action".

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Source: RCN, 14 July 2021

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Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised

Surgical face masks provide inadequate protection against flu-like illnesses including Covid, and should be replaced by respirator-level masks – worn every time doctors and nurses are face to face with a patient, according to a group of experts urging changes to World Health Organization guidelines.

There is “no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using” the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their “inadequate protection against airborne pathogens”, they said in a letter to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“There is even less justification for allowing healthcare workers to wear no face covering at all,” they said.

At the height of the Covid pandemic an estimated 129bn disposable face masks were being used around the world every month, by the public and healthcare workers, with surgical masks the most widely available and recommended by most health authorities.

Respirators designed to filter tiny particles – such as masks meeting FFP2/3 standards in the UK or N95 in the US – should instead be standard practice for medical interactions, they said.

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Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2026

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Eye patients pay for private treatment – or risk going blind in NHS backlog

Patients are being forced to pay for urgent eye care or risk going blind because of long NHS waits.

MPs will today hear the scale of the “emergency” with four in five high street optometrists revealing their patients have paid for private procedures in the past six months.

Dame Andrea Leadsom, the former House of Commons leader, business secretary and environment secretary, is being called on to commit to improving NHS eye care in her new role as public health minister.

Four in five optometrists say they have patients waiting more than a year to be referred for an NHS appointment or treatment, according to analysis by the Association of Optometrists (AOP), leaving them at risk of going blind.

About 640,000 people are waiting for an NHS ophthalmology appointment, more than any other speciality – accounting for about one in 11 people on the 7.8 million waiting list.

About half of these people say their sight is deteriorating while they wait to be seen. Tens of thousands have been waiting more than a year, the AOP said.

In a letter to Dame Leadsom, Adam Sampson, the chief executive of the AOP, said that high street optometrists should be used more widely across the NHS for “cataract surgery, help for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration”.

Mr Sampson said: “With the expansion of primary eye care services, more patients will have a better chance of receiving improved treatment, faster and locally, which could prevent avoidable irreversible sight loss.”

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Source: The Telegraph, 23 November 2023

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Eye doctors say private cataract operations have hurt the NHS

The vast majority of eye doctors believe increased outsourcing of cataract operations to private clinics in England in recent years has negatively affected their NHS departments, research has found.

Almost three-quarters of ophthalmologists surveyed said that outsourcing of cataracts to the private sector had a negative impact on their NHS eye care departments, with 54% flagging a large negative impact and 16% a small one.

The survey of 200 eye doctors by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI), shared with the Guardian, came after Wes Streeting, the new health secretary, pledged to divert billions of pounds from hospitals to GPs to “fix the front door to the NHS” and met junior doctors on Tuesday to try to end a long-running pay dispute.

Nearly 60% of the ophthalmologists polled said outsourcing had a negative impact on NHS staffing, 62% said the same for staff training, and 46% said it harmed the ability of public eye care departments to treat patients with more complex conditions. Issues raised about staffing included the loss of consultants, nurses and optometrists to the private sector.

While eye care budgets have increased by only 15% at 43 NHS trusts over the past five years, ophthalmology spending has gone up by 52%, partly due to a surge in the number of cataract operations, research from the CHPI showed. Hundreds of thousands more NHS patients a year are having cataracts removed in England in a boom driven by private clinics but funded by taxpayers.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 July 2024

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Extra funding announced for NHS only half of what is needed, experts warn

The NHS will receive an extra £3.3bn in each of the next two years, the chancellor has announced, but experts warn the cash is probably only half of what is needed to keep the health service afloat.

Jeremy Hunt told the Commons during his autumn statement he had been assured the funding would mean the NHS can hit its “key priorities”. Its chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, later issued a statement welcoming the funding, saying it showed that “the government has been serious about its commitment to prioritise the NHS”.

However, it was only last month that NHS England, the organisation Pritchard leads, had forecast a £7bn shortfall in its funding next year, which it warned it could not plug with efficiency measures alone.

“The NHS warned it needed more money to cope with the impact of inflation on its costs,” said Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the independent thinktank Nuffield Trust. “Today’s autumn statement has provided much-needed extra cash from April over the next two years, but this is only around half of what the NHS had warned last month would likely be needed.”

Hunt pledged to grow the NHS budget in 2023-24 and 2024-25 by £3.3bn in each year.

But Edwards warned that would not account for the £2.5bn worth of inflation and other unexpected cost pressures the NHS has faced in the current financial year.

“The impact of today’s funding announcement is that real terms health spending per head after adjusting for age will increase by less than 1% for the next two years,” Edwards added. “This is compared to the long-term average of 2.6% and comes at a time when the NHS cannot afford to stand still and is desperately trying to increase the work it can do to clear record waiting times.”

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Source: The Guardian, 17 November 2022

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Extra 10,000 dementia deaths in England and Wales in April

There were almost 10,000 unexplained extra deaths among people with dementia in England and Wales in April, according to official figures that have prompted alarm about the severe impact of social isolation on people with the condition.

The data, from the Office for National Statistics, reveals that, beyond deaths directly linked to COVID-19, there were 83% more deaths from dementia than usual in April, with charities warning that a reduction in essential medical care and family visits were taking a devastating toll.

“It’s horrendous that people with dementia have been dying in their thousands,” said Kate Lee, chief executive officer at Alzheimer’s Society. “We’ve already seen the devastating effect of coronavirus on people with dementia who catch it, but our [research] reveals that the threat of the virus extends far beyond that.”

The charity thinks the increased numbers of deaths from dementia are resulting partly from increased cognitive impairment caused by isolation, the reduction in essential care as family carers cannot visit, and the onset of depression as people with dementia do not understand why loved ones are no longer visiting, causing them to lose skills and independence, such as the ability to speak or even stopping eating and drinking.

Another factor may be interruptions to usual health services, with more than three-quarters of care homes reporting that GPs have been reluctant to visit residents.

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Source: The Guardian, 5 June 2020

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External reviews ordered over trust’s baby death rates

Two external reviews are being commissioned into maternity and neonatal care at the trust with the highest perinatal mortality rates.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust has claimed its extended perinatal mortality rate – which measures stillbirths and neonatal deaths – is within the expected range, considering it takes many high-risk pregnancies, including some where babies are not expected to survive, as a specialist centre.

However, a report to its board meeting today reveals it is commissioning an external review of the issue. The review would examine mortality data.

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Source: Health Service Journal, 29 May 2025 

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Experts who warned over Covid risk to care homes were told they were ‘too risk averse’

Ministers and public health officials were warned that stricter proposals were needed to protect care home patients from Covid-19, Wednesday’s high court ruling revealed.

Draft versions of guidance for hospitals and care homes during the first pandemic wave included measures that were challenged by NHS officials.

The government and Public Health England (PHE) were found to have acted unlawfully over a policy that allowed patients to be discharged from hospitals into care homes during the onset of the pandemic.

In their ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that policies in March and early April 2020 failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.

It came after two women took Public Health England, the then health secretary Matt Hancock and NHS England to court over the deaths of their fathers in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic. During the last two years more than 20,000 care home residents have died from Covid-19.

However, court documents show early draft PHE guidance advised against transferring asymptomatic patients into care homes with outbreaks and against admitting Covid positive patients who had not completed their isolation period to care homes. Senior NHS leaders challenged the draft guidance, saying it would make care homes “too risk averse”.

According to documents revealed in the judgment, the then minister for social care Helen Whately raised several concerns about the discharge of Covid-positive patients into care homes.

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Source: The Independent, 28 April 2022

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Experts warn that weight-loss jabs may need to be taken for life

Experts suggest that weight-loss jabs may require long-term use to achieve lasting benefits for both patients and the NHS.

These drugs, marketed under names such as Mounjaro and Wegovy, function by curbing food cravings. Currently, obese patients can access these injections through NHS prescriptions, following referrals to specialist weight loss clinics typically based in hospitals. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of individuals are obtaining the medication privately through pharmacies.

There have been warnings about buying potentially unsafe jabs online from unregulated retailers and potentially missing out on wraparound support.

Experts said the jabs should not be seen as the first option in weight loss and should be used in conjunction with lifestyle changes, such as eating more healthily and increasing exercise.

Professor Graham Easton, a GP who has been using weight loss jabs himself, said: “I think it’s a major issue about the proper funding and resourcing of not only the GPs in the surgeries but also the wraparound care we talked about.

“I think the other issue is that so far, to my knowledge, the NHS and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have talked about this being something you take for two years, and that’s probably related to data from research studies.

“But as we discussed, this is likely to be a lifelong commitment if it is going to be worthwhile to the NHS.

“There’s no point in most people taking it for a couple of years and then have the weight bouncing back.

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Source: The Independent, 8 June 2025

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Experts warn of racial disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of Long Covid

It has long been clear that Black Americans have experienced high rates of coronavirus infection, hospitalisation and death throughout the pandemic.

But those factors are now leading experts to sound the alarm about what will may come next: a prevalence of Long Covid in the Black community and a lack of access to treatment.

Long Covid — with chronic symptoms like fatigue, cognitive problems and others that linger for months after an acute coronavirus infection has cleared up — has perplexed researchers, and many are working hard to find a treatment for people experiencing it. But health experts warn that crucial data is missing: Black Americans have not been sufficiently included in Long-Covid trials, treatment programmes and registries, according to the authors of a new report released on Tuesday.

“We expect there are going to be greater barriers to access the resources and services available for Long Covid,” said one of the authors, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who is the director of Yale University’s health equity office and a former chair of President Biden’s health equity task force.

“The pandemic isn’t over, it isn’t over for anyone,” Dr. Nunez-Smith said. “But the reality is, it’s certainly not over in Black America.”

In the first three months of the pandemic, the average weekly case rate per 100,000 Black Americans was 36.2, compared with 12.5 for white Americans, the authors write. The Black hospitalisation rate was 12.6 per 100,000 people, compared with 4 per 100,000 for white people, and the death rate was also higher: 3.6 per 100,000 compared with 1.8 per 100,000.

“The severity of Covid-19 among Black Americans was the predictable result of structural and societal realities, not differences in genetic predisposition.” 

"Many Black Americans who contracted the coronavirus experienced serious illness because of pre-existing conditions like obesity, hypertension and chronic kidney disease, which themselves were often the result of “differential access to high-quality care and health promoting resources,” the report says.

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Source: New York Times, 29 March 2022

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Experts warn GPs on prescribing antipsychotic drugs for dementia

Doctors are being urged to reduce prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to dementia patients after the largest study of its kind found they were linked to more harmful side-effects than previously thought.

The powerful medications are widely prescribed for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia such as apathy, depression, aggression, anxiety, irritability, delirium and psychosis. Tens of thousands of dementia patients in England are prescribed them every year.

Safety concerns have previously been raised about the drugs, with warnings to medics based on increased risks for stroke and death, but evidence of other dangers was less conclusive.

New research suggests there are a considerably wider range of harms associated with their use than previously acknowledged in regulatory alerts, underscoring the need for increased caution in the early stages of treatment.

Antipsychotic use in dementia patients was associated with elevated risks of a wide range of serious adverse outcomes, including stroke, blood clots, heart attack, heart failure, fracture, pneumonia and acute kidney injury, the study’s authors reported. 

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Source: The Guardian, 18 April 2024

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Experts warn against DIY Botox-like injections available illegally online

People seeking cheap Botox-like injections have been warned by experts against doing it themselves due to the risk of “eyelid droops”, infection and even botulism.

There are growing concerns over the availability of medication called Innotox that is being sold illegally online in the UK. Unlike Botox, which comes as a powder that must be reconstituted for use in an injection, Innotox is a ready-to-use liquid – making it easier to self-administer.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, announced plans this week to introduce legislation cracking down on England’s cosmetic “wild west”, where there is scant regulation of who can deliver treatments such as dermatological filler and Botox.

Experts say Innotox is not licensed for use in the UK, unlike some other liquid Botox-like injections, meaning its quality and safety has not been assessed.

Aenone Harper-Machin, a consultant plastic surgeon and spokesperson for the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), said the online availability of Innotox was frightening and appalling, and she cautioned against DIY jabs.

“People could be giving themselves eyelid droops and all sorts of weird asymmetries by injecting it in the wrong place, too deeply, too superficially. You can inject it into your blood vessel and give yourself botulism,” she said.

Health officials have said 41 recent cases of botulism poisoning in England have been linked to unlicensed jabs.

Harper-Machin has had Botox-like injections but said she would not self-administer them. “I wouldn’t have it done by anybody other than a consultant plastic surgeon who has intimate knowledge of facial anatomy,” she said.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 August 2025

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Experts predict increase in Covid hospital admissions and another wave

Admissions of people to hospital with Covid in England have begun to grow again, new data from the NHS shows, as fears were raised over a new wave.

Analysis by John Roberts of the Covid Actuaries group, set up in response to the pandemic, showed hospital admissions had stopped falling after a period of decline.

Figures on Tuesday showed weekly admissions increased by 4% across England as of 5 June and were up by 33% in the North East and Yorkshire.

When asked if the UK was heading into another wave, Mr Roberts told The Independent: “Yes we could be but...how big that wave and how serious it will be in terms of admissions and deaths is very, very difficult to judge at this stage.”

His comments come after experts in Europe warned there will be a new wave driven by the growth of the BA.5 and BA.4 Covid variants.

The figures, which cover hospitals in England only, show the weekly average of admissions for patients in hospital with Covid stood at 531 as of 5 June.

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Source: The Independent, 9 June 2022

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Experts fear rise in diseases as layoffs halt health research: ‘Incredibly bizarre gaslighting’

Mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) portend a future with more infectious disease outbreaks, chronic conditions, and a widening gulf in health between the most affluent and vulnerable, experts told the Guardian.

Further, they said, the Trump administration’s multipronged attacks on American science represent a generation-defining experience, a new chapter in the “boom and bust” cycle of health funding, and a masterclass in branding, as Donald Trump and the secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, dismantle institutions in the name of improving them.

“I fear for the country,” said Dr Steven Woolf, a population health researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University and a family physician. “Many people not too fond of bureaucracy may feel this big shakeup in Washington DC is well overdue. But I don’t know that people appreciate what’s coming their way – much like a far-off tsunami warning.”

Experts said they see the chaos, confusion and upheaval – from the ideological purge of basic research grants early in Trump’s tenure to more expected layoffs at the National Institutes of Health – as leading to shorter, sicker American lives.

“These are cuts that are not driven by a rational strategy to improve population health,” said Woolf. “This is all being done in the name of ‘making America healthy again’ – that’s the incredibly bizarre gaslighting that’s going on.”

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Source: The Guardian, 9 April 2025

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Experts call for fewer antidepressants to be prescribed in UK

Open letter to government from experts and politicians says rising usage ‘is a clear example of over-medicalisation’.

Medical experts and politicians have called for the amount of antidepressants being prescribed to people across the UK to be reduced in an open letter to the government.

The letter coincides with the launch of the all-party parliamentary group Beyond Pills, which aims to reduce what it calls the UK healthcare system’s over-reliance on prescription medication.

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Source: Guardian, 5 December 2023

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Expert calls for safety review at Scotland's troubled superhospital

A risk assessment should be carried out on Glasgow's entire Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus, a leading safety expert has told BBC Scotland News.

Andrew Poplett, who conducted safety reviews for the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, said it was "incredibly difficult" to say whether the hospital was safe or unsafe for all patients.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has admitted there were failings with the hospital when it opened and now accepts that some patient infections were probably linked to contaminated water.

The board has said the whole hospital is now safe but families and lawyers for the public inquiry say they want to see further evidence to back this up.

The Scottish Hospitals Inquiry was ordered in 2019 after a number of deaths and high levels of infection at the QEUH campus, which had opened just four years earlier.

The inquiry drew to a close in January and Lord Brodie's final report is expected later this year.

Engineer Andrew Poplett was the independent expert who wrote reports on water and ventilation, external for the inquiry.

First Minister John Swinney and the health board have said Poplett's evidence supported the claim that both the QEUH and the Royal Hospital for Children, on the same site, were now safe.

But in an exclusive interview with BBC Scotland News, Poplett said it was "incredibly difficult to give a black and white 'safe or unsafe' answer".

He said this was because of the complexity of assessing risk when caring for vulnerable patients.

Popplett said: "If you want to reassure the public that this building is safe, do a risk assessment.

"You don't need to wait for a final report from the public inquiry."

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Source: BBC News, 12 May 2026

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Expert advisers urge FDA to pull pregnancy drug from market

An expert panel convened by the US Food and Drug Administration voted 14-1 on Wednesday to recommend withdrawing a preterm pregnancy treatment from the market, saying it does not work.

During the sometimes contentious three days of hearings, the drugmaker Covis Pharma, backed by some clinicians and patient groups, had argued there is evidence to suggest the drug, called Makena, might work in a narrower population that includes Black women at high risk of giving birth too soon.

But FDA experts and others said the data does not support such a view. In closing arguments, Peter Stein, director of the Office of New Drugs at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, agreed on the urgent need for a drug to reduce the incidence of preterm birth — a leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. But he said the data indicates that Makena is not that drug.

Stein said, “Hope is a reason to keep looking for options that are effective,” he said. “Hope is not a reason to take a drug that is not shown to be effective, or keep it on the market.”

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Source: The Washington Post, 19 October 2022

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Expectant mothers turn to freebirthing after home births cancelled

When Victoria Gianopoulos-Johnson got a call from her midwife to say her home birth would be cancelled, panic took hold. She says she “lost it” for two days, crying constantly, gripped by uncertainty and then anger. Now she has reached the decision to have a free birth, also known as unassisted childbirth.

Maternity rights groups say there has been a rise in the number of women seeking advice about freebirthing owing to pressures on hospitals and new restrictions around birth partners.

More than a fifth of birthing centres and more than a third of homebirth services have closed due to a shortage of midwives and concerns about ambulance response times.

Alison Edwards, of Doula UK, whose 700 members advocate for expectant mothers, says she has seen a threefold increase in calls about freebirthing in the last fortnight.

“Initially women were concerned about staff shortages,” says Edwards. “Now they don’t want to go to hospital at all, it’s about infection. It is inevitable that some who should not be freebirthing because they are in a high-risk category will give birth at home because they fear the alternative – infection from [coronavirus] or spending time in hospital without their partner’s support.”

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Source: Guardian, 5 April 2020

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Exhausted doctors shun out-of-hours services

The number of GPs seeing patients outside standard surgery hours in Scotland has dropped by almost a quarter in three years.

Nurses and paramedics have had to fill in for doctors in the out-of-hours urgent care centres because GPs could not be found to cover the shifts. Some health boards have had to close their centres and send patients to overstretched A&Es instead because of the GP shortage.

Dr Andrew Buist, chairman of the British Medical Association’s Scottish GP committee, said, “Patient demand is outstripping GP capacity across the whole service, including out-of-hours. We simply do not have enough GPs in Scotland. Those who are working in out-of-hours may be doing more hours now than they perhaps did in 2019 which comes as no surprise if there are fewer GPs to go around but it is unsustainable and puts those working in the service at risk of exhaustion and burnout.”

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Source: The Times, 15 February 2023

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Execs accused of ‘bullying culture and misuse of power’

Former commissioning chiefs have been accused of presiding over a ‘culture of bullying’ at the predecessor organisation to Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board, as part of a legal claim from a former employee.

The accusations, which have been made in an employment tribunal case, relate to former chief executive Melanie Craig and other former executives at what was then Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group. Ms Craig now leads Suffolk Community Foundation, a local voluntary sector organisation.

The claims have been made by a former long-standing assistant director for mental health services, Clive Rennie, who has claimed unfair dismissal. However, the integrated care board said it disputes the claims and is defending the case.

In a witness statement to the tribunal, which began this week, Mr Rennie alleges there was an “authoritarian and dictatorial style of management” and described a “culture of bullying and misuse of power that had emerged under the leadership of Melanie Craig and which included the executive team”.

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Source: HSJ, 6 September 2023

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EXCLUSIVE: Trusts regularly breaching security standards

Twenty one serious security failures at hospital mortuaries were discovered by the Human Tissues Authority between April 2022 and March 2024, HSJ can reveal.

These included seven cases where unauthorised people gained entry to the facilities, 13 other breaches in “mortuary security processes” and one case in which there was unrestricted access to post-mortem images.

Last month, the HTA issued new guidance for mortuaries that carry out post-mortems after what it described as “an increase in both the severity and frequency of reported incidents”.

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Source: HSJ, 7 May 2024

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Exclusive: Lack of surgery capacity adding to risk for babies and mothers

A lack of surgery capacity at dozens of maternity units is adding to risk of serious harm to mothers and newborn babies, HSJ has found.

An investigation established that at least 33 units nationally have no second dedicated obstetric theatre for emergency Caesarean sections and found evidence this was delaying operations beyond the safe period in some cases.

HSJ also found multiple examples of safety incidents linked to C-sections delayed due to a lack of quick access to staffed theatres and regulatory concerns.

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Source: HSJ, 24 July 2024

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Exclusive: Hospital asks patients in corridors to ‘lobby MPs’ for funding

A hospital’s leadership has put up posters in its corridors asking patients to lobby local MPs – who include Wes Streeting – for funding to expand its under-pressure A&E.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust, which serves the Ilford North constituency represented by the health and social care secretary, says one of its two emergency departments is “not fit for purpose”.

The A&E unit at Queen’s Hospital in Romford was designed for 325 daily attendances but saw more than double that one day last month, the trust said.

The posters say: “We’re sorry you may have had a poor experience in our A&E. We want our hospitals to deliver care our staff are proud of and our patients are happy with.

“To achieve this, we need £35m to transform our A&E and improve your care.”

Patients are then urged to scan a QR code taking them to a list of local representatives to “lobby your MP”.

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Source: HSJ, 14 January 2025

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Excess deaths in UK hit highest level in two years amid NHS crisis

Excess deaths in the week before Christmas were the highest in two years amid a crisis in NHS care, new figures show.

Approximately 2,500 more people died than usual in the week ending 23 December in England and Wales, numbers from the Office for National Statistics reveal.

The total death toll of 14,530 is 21% higher than would be expected for this period, compared with averages from the last five years.

The new figures represent the highest excess and overall deaths recorded since February 2021. At that time, the UK recorded 15,943 deaths from Covid as transmission rates remained high. But only 429 of the most recent deaths have been linked to the virus.

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Source: The Independent, 5 January 2023

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