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English hospitals make emergency plans amid winter power loss fears

English hospitals have increased emergency fuel supplies and put staff on standby to postpone operations and switch off X-ray scanners amid heightened concerns over energy provision this winter.

NHS hospital trusts across England have put their power plans under the microscope as they look to protect patients from potential outages for lifesaving equipment.

Responses to freedom of information requests to 63 NHS trusts revealed that 41 are re-examining their plans for a loss of power for this winter. A further 10 trusts said they conducted routine reviews of their business continuity plans this year, while 12 had not revised their strategies.

National Grid warned in October that, in extreme circumstances, it would be forced to enact planned three-hour power cuts with a days’ notice.

Major hospitals are exempt from this system, called rota disconnection, however businesses and the government have studied their plans for a complete power failure on the network.

Despite the pressure on the NHS budgets, the responses show that most hospitals have up-to-date plans and backup generators to ensure lives are not lost due to lack of power.

A quarter of hospital trusts said they were able to run indefinitely on backup diesel generator power, providing they had access to fuel supplies. Just over 10% said they could run on backup power for 10 days.

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Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2022

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English hospitals brace for ‘alarming’ disruption as GPs go on strike

The NHS faces “alarming” and “dangerous” disruption until Christmas and potentially into 2025, health chiefs have said, after GPs began their first industrial action in 60 years amid a major row over funding.

Hospitals, A&E units and mental health services are already under huge pressure. They are now braced for a surge in demand from thousands of patients turning to them for help after family doctors in England launched work-to-rule action on Thursday.

A letter seen by the Guardian that was sent to senior NHS managers from the national primary care director, Dr Amanda Doyle, said the NHS was preparing for a “worst-case scenario” and that 999 services could be affected.

Speaking to the Guardian, Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of NHS Confederation, said the industrial action would probably have an immediate significant effect. “In some areas, it may take longer for patients to get an appointment with their GP, or they may have to go somewhere else for something that was previously provided in general practice.

“This will pile more pressure onto A&E, mental health and other frontline services where waiting times could grow considerably. This is an alarming situation to be in, particularly after everything the NHS has been through over the last few years, and one that health leaders understand GPs will not have entered lightly.”

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Source: The Guardian, 2 August 2024

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English hospitals 'have not learned lessons' of past maternity scandals

Too many English hospitals risk repeating maternity scandals involving avoidable baby deaths and brain injury because staff are too frightened to raise concerns, the chief inspector of hospitals has warned.

Speaking at the opening session of an inquiry into the safety of maternity units by the health select committee, Prof Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals for the Care Quality Commission, said: “There are too many cases when tragedy strikes because services are not not doing their job well enough.”

Baker admitted that 38% of such services were deemed to require improvement for patient safety and some could get even worse. “There is a significant number of services that are not achieving the level of safety they should,” he said.

He said many NHS maternity units were in danger of repeating fatal mistakes made at what became the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust (UHMBT), despite a high profile 2015 report finding that a “lethal mix” of failings at almost every level led to the unnecessary deaths of one mother and 11 babies.

“Five years on from Morecombe Bay we have still not learned all the lessons,” Baker said. “[The] Morecombe Bay [report] did talk about about dysfunctional teams and midwives and obstetricians not working effectively together, and poor investigations without learning taking place. And I think those elements are what we are still finding in other services.”

Baker urged hospital managers to encourage staff to whistleblow about problems without fear of recrimination. He said: “The reason why people are frightened to raise concerns is because of the culture in the units in which they work. A healthy culture would mean that people routinely raise concerns. But raising concerns is regarded as being a difficult member of the team.”

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Source: The Guardian, 29 September 2020

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English dentists ‘walking away’ from NHS work as fees fail to cover costs

A growing “exodus” of dentists willing to provide care on the NHS threatens to exacerbate the crisis in patients’ access to treatment, the profession’s leaders have said.

Dentists are increasingly stopping doing NHS-funded work because their fees for many procedures do not even cover the costs involved, according to the British Dental Association (BDA).

The fact that NHS payments had not kept pace with rising costs was forcing dental surgeries in England to “operate like a charity” when carrying out work for the health service, it said.

The situation was so serious that dentists were in effect subsiding the NHS care they provided from their private work to the tune of about £332m a year, according to BDA analysis.

Dentists lost £42.60 every time they fitted dentures and £7.69 on each examination of a new patient’s dental health when the NHS was paying for the treatment, it said.

The findings come weeks after Wes Streeting, the health secretary, warned MPs that “NHS dentistry is at death’s door” and promised to take steps to save it from extinction.

The inability to get NHS dental care, and the consequent emergence of “DIY dentistry” and “dental deserts” across swaths of England, has become a key public and political concern in recent years.

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Source: The Guardian, 13 February 2025

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English children put into care in Scotland amid lack of capacity

A LACK of capacity is meaning vulnerable kids in England are being put into foster care and children’s homes in Scotland, a new report has revealed. An investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into social care in the UK found that stakeholders are raising concerns about the practice.

They warned that young people are facing disruption at school after being placed into different legal and educational systems – all due to a lack of spaces near their home area. It could mean some kids from as far away as London are being placed into care in Scotland.

The investigation also revealed difficulties in Scotland placing children with disabilities or complex needs. And it found Scottish children in the care system were more likely to be separated from their siblings than their counterparts in England. The CMA reported that in England in 2019/20, 1400 (13% of all siblings in care) siblings were not placed according to their plan. In Scotland, there were 200 sibling groups separated after being placed into foster care - more than 20% of all sibling groups in foster care.

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Original source: The National

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English care bosses say lack of resources cost thousands of lives

Thousands of people lost their lives “prematurely” because care homes in England lacked the protective equipment and financial resources to cope with the coronavirus outbreak, according to council care bosses.

In a highly critical report, social care directors say decisions to rapidly discharge many vulnerable patients from NHS hospitals to care homes without first testing them for COVID-19 had “tragic consequences” for residents and staff.

In many places, vulnerable people were discharged into care facilities where there was a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) or where it was impossible to isolate them safely, sometimes when they could have returned home, the report says.

“Ultimately, thousands have lost their lives prematurely in social care and were not sufficiently considered as part of wider health and community systems. And normality has not yet returned,” James Bullion, the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), said in a foreword to the report.

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Source: The Guardian, 11 June 2020

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England’s worsening care shortages leave older people struggling

Hundreds of thousands of older people in England are having to endure chronic pain, anxiety and unmet support needs owing to the worsening shortage of social care staff and care home beds.

Age UK has said older people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure are increasingly struggling with living in their own homes because of a lack of help with everyday tasks such as getting out of bed, dressing and eating.

The decline in the amount of support and care provided to older people is piling pressure on families and carers and leaving the NHS in constant crisis mode, contributing heavily to ambulance queues outside A&E departments, the charity said in a new report

It warned that there would be a repeat of the NHS crisis this winter – in which rising numbers of elderly people have been unnecessarily stuck in hospital because of an acute lack of social care – without a shift to preventing unnecessary admissions.

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Source: The Guardian, 17 February 2023

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England’s top doctors launch review to make postgraduate medical training ‘best in the world’

Two of England’s leading doctors are to oversee a significant review into postgraduate training for newly qualified medics.

National Medical Director Professor Sir Stephen Powis and Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty will lead the review as part of work to address concerns raised by resident doctors (previously known as junior doctors).

The review will be based on feedback from current resident doctors and students, locally employed doctors and medical educators, with a series of engagement events around the country starting from this month.

The review will cover placement options, the flexibility of training, difficulties with rotas, control and autonomy in training, and the balance between developing specialist knowledge and gaining a broad range of skills.

The national listening events in February and March will be followed by a call for evidence in the spring to ensure the widest possible range of views, experiences and ideas are captured. A report on the review’s findings is due to be published in the summer.

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Source: NHS England, 19 February 2025

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England’s social care system is at ‘breaking point’, government warned

England’s social care system is at “breaking point”, with the number of unpaid carers increasing by 70% over the past two decades, according to a report.

Research for the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) found rising demand, shrinking supply, and a growing reliance on unpaid carers.

Analysis for the report, conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), revealed the number of people providing 35 hours or more a week of care increased from 1.1 million in 2003/04 to 1.9 million in 2023/24.

The report says unpaid care – whether by parents, spouses or adult children, and most frequently women – is relied on too heavily to fill in the gaps of the “inadequate and expensive” adult social care system.

Abby Jitendra, author of the IPPR discussion paper and principal policy adviser at JRF, said: “Millions of us are carers or need care, and this number will surge in the future, but families are being left to navigate a neglected system – paying sky-high costs, sacrificing work to care, and too often going without the support they need.

“We need to build a care system that works like a public service: universal, affordable, reliable and fair. That means bold reform now – not another decade of drift.”

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Source: The Independent, 19 September 2025

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England’s NHS crews ‘watching patients die in back of ambulances’ due to A&E delays

Paramedics across England are watching patients die in the back of ambulances because of delays outside emergency departments, according to a survey by Unison.

The gridlock of patients in some of the country’s hospitals has led to queues of up to 20 ambulances outside casualty departments in certain areas. In a number of cases, crews have been forced to wait more than 12 hours before handing over patients.

The survey of nearly 600 ambulance workers reveals the toll of the waits on patients and the crews looking after them. Unison warns that “car park care” is increasingly becoming the norm, with hospital medical staff tending to patients in the back of ambulances.

More than three-quarters (77%) of paramedics and emergency medical technicians said they have had to look after people in the back of ambulances in the past year while stuck outside emergency departments. Two-thirds (68%) have waited in hospital corridors, or in other locations, with one paramedic often caring for several patients to allow colleagues to respond to other calls.

More than two-thirds also reported patients’ health deteriorating during long waits, and one in 20 (5%) said people have died in their care because of long delays in being admitted.

Gavin Taylor, 58, a Unison representative and ambulance worker in the north-west of England, said it was now a regular occurrence to be waiting several hours to hand over a patient. He said: “It’s heartbreaking because we are here as a caring profession and the delays have an impact on the care and wellbeing of patients.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 April 2025

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England’s Covid test and trace relying on inexperienced and poorly trained staff

England’s test and trace service is being sub-contracted to a myriad of private companies employing inexperienced contact tracers under pressure to meet targets, a Guardian investigation has found.

Under a complex system, firms are being paid to carry out work under the government’s £22bn test and trace programme. Serco, the outsourcing firm, is being paid up to £400m for its work on test and trace, but it has subcontracted a bulk of contact tracing to 21 other companies.

Contact tracers working for these companies told the Guardian they had received little training, with one saying they were doing sensitive work while sitting beside colleagues making sales calls for gambling websites.

One contact-tracer, earning £8.72 an hour, said he was having to interview extremely vulnerable people in a “target driven” office that encouraged staff to make 20 calls a day, despite NHS guidance saying each call should take 45 to 60 minutes.

Another call centre worker, who had no experience in healthcare or emotional support, said she suffered a nervous breakdown during an online tutorial about phoning the loved ones of coronavirus victims in order to trace their final movements.

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Source: The Guardian, 14 December 2020

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England’s CNO says 50,000 more NHS nurses ‘no longer enough’

The chief nursing officer for England has spoken about the ongoing shortages of nurses across the country and how the government’s previous pledge for 50,000 more nurses is now “not enough”.

At one of her first in-person speeches since the start of the pandemic, Ruth May also revealed that she thought the removal of the student nurse bursary in England was “fundamentally the wrong decision”.

Ms May was speaking at an event organised by the League of St Bartholomew’s Nurses in honour of pioneering nurse Pam Hibbs, who died following a Covid-19 infection last year.

During her keynote address, Ms May said workforce remained a “big focus” for her team due to the “shortage” of nursing staff nationally.

She said work to address the gaps was centred on the three areas of international recruitment, domestic training, and retention.

She said numbers of nurses being recruited from overseas annually had risen from around 5,000 to 6,000 before the pandemic, to an expected 20,000 in this financial year.

“I’m very, very glad that the NHS has had a diverse workforce from its very inception. We have welcomed colleagues from across all countries of the world, and we will continue to do that,” Ms May said.

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Source: The Nursing Times, 22 March 2022

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England’s ‘complex’ health and care system harming patients, report says

Navigating England’s “complex” health and care system is “extremely difficult” and carers and patients are experiencing burnout, distress and harm as a result, a damning report says.

There were frequent failures by NHS and care organisations in coordinating care for people with long-term health conditions, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) found. Figures show 41% of adults and 17% of children have at least one long-term health issue.

The report said patients unable to navigate the health and care system were getting sicker as a result, missing vital appointments, and their care could be delayed or forgotten about, meaning they may need more intensive and expensive treatment in future or longer stays in hospital.

Patients and carers had to retell their health history to different health and care providers, the research showed. The system was not joined up and information did not flow well across health and care organisations, patients and carers told the investigators.

This was making people exhausted and feeling burned out, frustrated, angry and guilty, the report says. Some patients’ and carers’ physical and mental health was deteriorating because of the extra burden of navigating the health and care system.

Neil Alexander, a senior safety investigator at HSSIB, said: “Long-term care is complex and we acknowledge the challenges faced by providers, especially at a time of extreme pressure on resources. However, our investigation emphasises that if care is not properly coordinated, those with long-term conditions and their carers can suffer mental and physical deterioration and harm. Patients can need more intensive treatment or longer stays in hospital, placing further pressure on services.

“The stories and experiences shared with us provided powerful testimony as to the impact on people. Patients and carers were open about their feelings of anguish and exhaustion, their anger, sadness and loss of trust in a system they felt sometimes was fighting against them. Many told of the frustration at not being able to speak to the specialist and dedicated staff who would be able to help them.”

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Source: The Guardian, 10 April 2025

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England's sexual health services 'at breaking point'

Sexual health services in England are at breaking point, according to local councils who are responsible for running the clinics.

They say that soaring rates of infections are threatening to overwhelm services and the government needs to provide extra funding.

Since 2017, more than two-thirds of council areas saw infection climb.

The Department of Health said more than £3.5bn has been allocated to local public health services this year.

The Local Government Association (LGA) - representing the councils that provide sexual health clinics - is warning that demand is soaring and services are struggling to keep up.

It is calling on the government to provide extra funding, as well as to publish a long-term plan to help prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections.

Nearly three-quarters of councils have seen a rise in rates of syphilis cases, and chlamydia infections are up in more than a third of areas.

Many of the new cases are younger people, and involve gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, but rates have also increased in heterosexual people.

Experts believe there has been a rebound effect after the restrictions connected to Covid, but infections were rising well before the pandemic hit.

There has also been a greater effort to test more people and improve access to services which may have led to more cases being identified.

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Source: BBC News, 20 January 2024

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England's poorest 'get worse NHS care' than wealthiest citizens

England’s poorest people get worse NHS care than its wealthiest citizens, including longer waiting for A&E treatment and worse experience of GP services, a new study has shown.

Those from the most deprived areas have fewer hip replacements and are admitted to hospital with bed sores more often than people from the least deprived areas. With regard to emergency care, 14.3% of the most deprived had to wait more than the supposed maximum of four hours to be dealt with in A&E in 2017-18, compared with 12.8% of the wealthiest. Similarly, just 64% of the former had a good experience making a GP appointment, compared with 72% of those from the richest areas.

Research by the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation thinktanks found that the poorest people were less likely to recover from mental ill-health after receiving psychological therapy and be readmitted to hospital as a medical emergency soon after undergoing treatment.

The findings sparked concern because they show that poorer people’s health risks being compounded by poorer access to NHS care.

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Source: The Guardian, 23 January 2020

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England's new ambulance numbers not 800 promised, figures show

The number of new ambulances in England will be far less than the hundreds promised by the government, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

In January, 800 new ambulances were announced, with a 10% fleet increase. But vehicles being ordered by trusts are mostly replacements they were prevented from purchasing because of procurement changes and the pandemic.

In response to a written question in February, DHSC said the "over 800 new ambulances" advertised equated to about 350 extra vehicles, plus 100 mental health ambulances. However, the FOI responses from England's ambulance trusts suggest the number of extra vehicles will be far fewer.

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Source: BBC News, 4 April 2023

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England's 'fragile' care sector needs immediate reform, says regulator

The government must immediately deliver a new deal for social care with major investment and better terms for workers, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said, as it warned that the sector is “fragile” heading into a second wave of coronavirus infections.

In a challenge to ministers, the regulator’s chief executive, Ian Trenholm, said overdue reform of the care sector “needs to happen now – not at some point in the future”.

Boris Johnson said in his first speech as prime minister, in July 2019: “We will fix the crisis in social care once and for all.” But no reform has yet been proposed, and more than 15,000 people have died from COVID-19 in England’s care homes.

Trenholm said Covid risked turning inequalities in England’s health services from “faultlines into chasms” as the CQC published its annual State of Care report on hospitals, GPs and care services.

The report reveals serious problems with mental health, maternity services and emergency care before the pandemic, and says these areas must not be allowed to fall further behind.

The regulator argued that the health system’s response to the pandemic needs to change. After focusing on protecting NHS services from being overwhelmed, health leaders must now adapt to prevent people who need help for non-Covid reasons from being left behind, it said.

These include people whose operations were cancelled and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities, and people living in deprived areas who have suffered more severely from the impact of Covid.

“Covid is magnifying inequalities across the health and care system – a seismic upheaval which has disproportionately affected some more than others,” said Trenholm.

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Source: The Guardian, 16 October 2020

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England to offer Covid jab to five to 11-year-olds

Children aged between five and 11 in England will be offered a low-dose Covid vaccine, the government says.

Official scientific advice concludes the move would help protect the "very small" number of children who become seriously ill with Covid.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid says the rollout will be "non-urgent", with an emphasis on parental choice.

Northern Ireland also said on Wednesday it will be following Wales and Scotland in offering young children the vaccine.

Children are at a much lower risk of becoming severely ill from a Covid infection, so the health benefits of vaccinating them are smaller than in other age-groups. Also, many will have some protection from already having caught the virus.

So the scientists on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises governments across the UK, have been weighing up the evidence for immunising five to 11-year-olds.

It concluded vaccination should go ahead to prevent a "very small number of children from serious illness and hospitalisation" in a future wave of Covid.

Prof Wei Shen Lim, from the JCVI, said: "We're offering this to five to 11-year-olds now in order to future-proof their defences against a future wave of infection."

He suggested parents consider getting their children vaccinated during school holidays to minimise disruption to their education from any flu-like side effects of the jab.

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Source: BBC News, 16 February 2022

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England test-and-trace glitch blamed for spread of India Covid variant

A glitch in the government’s £37bn test-and-trace system may have helped fuel the spread of a highly-transmissible Covid variant in one of the UK’s worst-hit towns, it has emerged.

The software error meant that more than 700 infected people and their close contacts were not promptly passed on to local health teams, allowing them to potentially spread the disease further.

The number of missing cases was highest in Blackburn with Darwen, where about 300 people are believed to have been lost in the system during a faulty IT upgrade. The Lancashire town is battling one of the UK’s largest outbreaks of the fast-spreading variant first identified in India. Labour has described the news as “jaw-dropping”.

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Source: The Guardian, 20 May 2021

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England skin and breast cancer patients have worst waiting time to see specialist

Patients with suspected skin and breast cancer have experienced the largest increase in waiting times of everyone urgently referred to a cancer specialist, with 1 in 20 patients now facing the longest waits, analysis of NHS England data shows.

Almost 10,000 patients referred by a GP to a cancer specialist had to wait for more than 28 days in July – double the supposed maximum 14-day waiting time. Three-quarters of them were suspected of having skin, breast or lower gastrointestinal cancer, a Guardian analysis has revealed.

In total, 53,000 people in England waited more than two weeks to see a cancer specialist. That is 22% of all the patients urgently referred for a cancer appointment by their GPs.

Minesh Patel, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said people were waiting “far too long for diagnosis or vital treatment”. Patients “are worried about the impact of these delays on their prognosis and quality of care”.

“The NHS has never worked harder,” said Matt Sample, the policy manager at Cancer Research UK, but patients dealing with long waits “reflects a broader picture of some of the worst waits for tests and treatments on record”.

“When just a matter of weeks can be enough for some cancers to progress, this is unacceptable.”

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Source: The Guardian, 2 October 2022

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England set to open specialist surgical mesh removal centres in April

A network of specialist surgical mesh removal centres is to be set up around England, with a launch planned for April 2021.

The move implements a recommendation of the review, chaired by the Conservative peer and former health minister Julia Cumberlege, into three treatments which caused avoidable harm. These included the use of transvaginal tape and pelvic mesh to treat pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence.

The review, which published its report in July, heard “harrowing” stories about women left with serious complications. The mesh is hard to remove and only a few surgeons in the UK are able to carry out the procedure.

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Source: BMJ, 25 November 2020

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England sees 'worst summer on record' for A&E waits

This summer was the worst for A&E waiting times in England since the four-hour target was introduced.

Analysis by BBC Newsnight and the Nuffield Trust found an average of 86% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged from A&E within four hours in the six months to September.

This is the worst performance in that period since the 95% target was brought in in 2004.

Doctors warned that the system was "running out of resilience" and that winter in A&Es was going to be "really difficult".

In September, there were 41,000 more people treated in A&Es within four hours, but there were 64,921 patients waiting more than four hours from decision to their actual admission to further care. Of these patients, 455 waited more than 12 hours. This is a 195.5% increase from the previous year. These are known as trolley waits, because patients are left on trolleys in temporary waiting areas while a bed is found.

"Lying on a trolley is not good for you in any way," said Dr Katherine Henderson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. "We know these patients can suffer harm because they're in the department for so long."

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Source: BBC News, 10 October 2019

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England mental health referrals at 4.3 million high

The number of referrals for specialist NHS mental health care reached a record high in England by the end of 2021, an analysis suggests.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says the pandemic has led to unprecedented demand and backlogs and services are struggling to keep up.

There were 4.3 million referrals, for conditions such as anxiety and depression, in 2021, NHS Digital says. Just under a quarter - 1.025 million - were for children or adolescents.

The college said the NHS had delivered 1.8 million mental health consultations in December 2021, but an estimated 1.4 million people were still waiting for treatment.

And hundreds of adults were being sent far from home for treatment because of a lack of beds in their area.

President Dr Adrian James said: "As the pressure on services continues to ratchet up, the silence from government continues to be of grave concern for the college, the wider mental health workforce and, most importantly, our patients.

"The warning of the long tail of mental ill health caused by the pandemic has not been heeded.

"Many thousands of people will be left waiting far too long for the treatment they need unless the government wakes up to the crisis that is engulfing the country.

"Staff are working flat out to give their patients the support they need but the lack of resources and lack of staff mean it's becoming an impossible situation to manage...

"...We need a fully funded plan for mental-health services, backed by a long-term workforce plan, as the country comes to terms with the biggest hit to its mental health in generations."

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Source: BBC News, 15 March 2022

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England hospital units may close as staff revolt over jab mandate, says NHS leader

Entire hospital units could be forced to shut because of staff quitting in protest at the government’s order that they must all be vaccinated against COVID-19, a senior NHS leader has warned.

Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said that at one hospital trust in England, 40 midwives were refusing to get jabbed, raising fears that the maternity unit may have to close.

“Trust leaders are acutely aware that, from April onwards, when Covid vaccinations will become mandatory, decisions by staff to remain unvaccinated could – in extreme circumstances – lead to patient services being put at risk,” said Hopson.

“If sufficient numbers of unvaccinated staff in a particular service in a particular location choose not to get vaccinated, the viability and/or safety of that service could be at risk.”

Hopson did not name the trust. But he cautioned that its maternity unit is “one representative example” of potential closures on grounds of patient safety that the government’s decision to compel NHS staff in England to be vaccinated or risk losing their job could lead to.

Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace."

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Source: The Guardian, 20 December 2021

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England has highest death rates of older patients in western world, study finds

England has the highest death rates of frail and older hospitalised patients in the western world, a landmark global study has found.

Harvard University, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the thinktank Health Foundation, all part of the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (Icconic), a global network of healthcare researchers, used thousands of official medical records to compare the cost and quality of care in 10 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.

Patient deaths are commonly used measures of performance in healthcare systems but until now there have been few sources of comparable death rates across countries.

In order to assess outcomes in frail and older patients, researchers focused on two groups that represent priority areas for the NHS and other healthcare systems: those in hospital with a hip fracture and those admitted with heart failure who have diabetes.

On both measures, England had higher mortality rates than all the other countries, which included the US, Germany, France, Sweden and Spain.

Dr Jennifer Dixon, the chief executive of the Health Foundation, said: “The findings of the Icconic study warrant urgent further investigation, particularly the finding of higher mortality among patients with hip fracture in the year after their admission for emergency treatment."

“That patients in England with hip fracture spend far longer in hospital after surgery than they would in other countries also highlights an opportunity to improve efficiency by reducing the avoidable use of hospital care. Less avoidably long stays would mean existing capacity could be better used to address the backlogs in hospital care as a result of the pandemic. This could contribute to both better outcomes for patients and, as hip fracture is the most common reason for emergency surgery, significantly improved productivity for hospitals across the country.”

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Source: The Guardian, 10 November 2021

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