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‘Exploited’ foreign doctors worry about risk to UK patients

Doctors recruited from some of the world's poorest countries to work in UK hospitals say they're being exploited - and believe they're so overworked they fear putting patients' health at risk.

A BBC investigation has found evidence that doctors from Nigeria are being recruited by a British healthcare company and expected to work in private hospitals under conditions not allowed in the National Health Service.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has described the situation as "shocking" and says the sector needs to be brought in line with NHS working practices.

Dr Jenny Vaughan of the Doctors Association UK said, "This is a slave-type work with… excess hours, the like of which we thought had been gone 30 years ago. It is not acceptable for patients for patient-safety reasons. It is not acceptable for doctors. "

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Source: BBC News, 11 October 2022

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‘Excess deaths’ due to A&E delays rise by nearly a third in one year

Long waits in A&E departments may have caused around 30,000 ‘excess deaths’ last year, according to new estimates.

Using a methodology backed by experts, HSJ analysis of official data has produced an estimate of 29,145 ‘excess deaths’ related to long accident and emergency delays in 2022-23, up from 22,175 in 2021-22, and 9,783 related deaths in 2020-21.

For the first time, the analysis has also produced estimates of excess mortality related to long A&E delays for every acute trust.

The data suggests the rate of excess deaths from 2022-23 has so far continued into 2023-24.

The analysis followed a methodology used in a peer-reviewed study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, which found delays to hospital admission for patients of more than five hours from time of arrival at A&E were associated with an increase in all-cause mortality within 30 days.

Data scientist Steve Black, one of the authors of the EMJ study, said: “Long waits in A&E should never happen and 12-hour waits should be something like a never event. They should be intolerable anywhere. If we want to fix them it’s helpful to know which trusts have the worst problems with long waits.”

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Source: HSJ, 7 November 2023

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‘Exceptionally urgent’ to secure kit used to treat critically ill covid patients

The availability of dialysis equipment used to treat more than a quarter of ventilated COVID-19 patients has reached “critical” levels, HSJ has learned.

Concerns are growing over an “exceptional shortage” of specialist dialysis machines used to treat intensive care patients with acute kidney failure.

Although hospitals are able to deploy alternative machines which are not typically used in intensive care, this is logistically challenging and can carry increased risks for patients.

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Source: HSJ, 22 April 2020

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‘Everything is either anxiety or your period’: Readers share experiences of being dismissed by NHS GPs

Too often, young people with serious illnesses are dismissed or told they’re “too young” to be sick – and Independent readers have been sharing their own experiences of being ignored by the NHS.

Readers shared experiences of being dismissed by healthcare professionals, and speculated whether that was down to age, gender, or assumptions about their symptoms.

One reader’s story mirrored the challenges faced by patients like 19-year-old Milli Tanner, who went to 13 GP appointments and A&E visits over two years before being diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. She was initially told her symptoms were caused by piles, IBS, or her age, and faced long waits for urgent testing before finally receiving a diagnosis.

Readers highlighted the emotional and physical toll of such dismissal, with one sharing being misdiagnosed for three years despite a private MRI showing multiple active MS lesions.

Another described how a family’s Lynch Syndrome history was overlooked, contributing to preventable deaths from bowel and uterine cancer.

Overall, Independent readers stressed that listening, taking symptoms seriously, and empowering patients are crucial to prevent young people from being failed by the system.

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Source: The Independent, 2 November 2025

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‘Every chemist has a backroom’: the rise of secret FGM in Kenya

In Kisii town, south-west Kenya, a rundown roadside building houses a pharmacy. Like many others in the area, the pharmacy doubles as a clinic.

Lilian Kemunto (not her real name), a former surgical nurse, set it up after she retired in 2018. She mainly does health check-ups but has also offered female genital mutilation (FGM) services on request.

Kemunto has performed cuts since the 90s, after receiving training in basic surgical techniques from male colleagues in the local hospital where she worked. She would do the cuts in the hospital at night, but it was risky, she says, because management didn’t approve. “They would tell us: ‘Just do it, but if you’re caught, you’re on your own.’”

She preferred cutting girls in a private home, in the middle of the night, saying it was much easier: “By 6am, the girls are back in their own homes, like nothing happened.”

In Kisii county, medicalisation is standard. Two out of three cases of cutting are performed by health practitioners, in contrast to much of the country, where 70% of FGM cases are performed by traditional practitioners.

Kemunto says she tries to avoid mishaps, and at a minimum requires some anaesthesia, a surgical blade, sterile towels, and cleaning solution to proceed.

She also claims to use a non-invasive procedure: a small incision of the clitoris that practitioners call a “signature”. Kisii’s FGM practice is considered less severe than other areas, and anti-FGM campaigners are concerned that there’s a growing acceptance of the practice as more safe, hygienic and cosmetic.

FGM rates in Kenya have gone down significantly over the past decade. The country passed strong laws in 2011, imposed hefty fines on practitioners, and stepped up surveillance and enforcement. But medicalisation is posing a new challenge for the east African nation, which has a 15% medicalisation rate: one of the highest in Africa.

Earlier this month, Kenyan president William Ruto backed the country’s chief justice who said that FGM “should not be a conversation we are having in Kenya in the 21st century”, and reiterated his administration’s commitment to eradicating the practice.

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Source: The Guardian, 15 December 2022

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‘Enough is enough’: Open letter calls for end to Covid-related abuse against health workers

An open letter has been published calling for the end of Covid-related abuse against healthcare staff, with leading health organisations coming together to unite against the rising tide of violence against nurses and other NHS staff.

The letter was signed by nine representatives including the Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives and warned of the “unacceptable behaviours”, a move that comes after he chief executive and general secretary of the RCM, Gill Walton, received online threats after she supported a national appeal for pregnant women to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

“To those who issue death threats or incite violence against us, we say enough is enough”, Ms Walton has said. 

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Source: The Nursing Times, 4 August 2021

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‘Endometriosis almost killed me – but it still took years for me to get the diagnosis I needed’

At just 12 years old, a terrified Zaynah Ahmed lost so much blood during her period that she was left in a life-threatening condition and needed an urgent blood transfusion.

Doctors and nurses rushed around her, using words like the pill and haemoglobin levels – all things that, as a child, she could not understand.

One medic even joked, “imagine you'd been shot in your leg and you just like bled out” in a bid to explain how serious her blood loss had been.

“The doctor... basically said that if you hadn't come within that week, it would have had a life-threatening impact on my life,” Ms Ahmed, now aged 19, told The Independent.

Years later, in 2023, she was finally diagnosed with endometriosis, which affects millions of women in the UK.

Figures from the charity Endometriosis UK show that it takes an average of eight years to get a diagnosis.

After her frightening admission at age 12, Ms Ahmed’s severe symptoms resurfaced again when she was in Year 11 at school.

She suffered periods so painful and frequent that they would leave her crying in her teacher’s office, and she was forced to miss school weekly.

“I had really bad pain. But it wasn't just when I was on my period; it was all the time now.

“I thought period cramps were normal, but when I was on my period. So if I was getting them all the time, then that wasn’t normal. It was hard to understand.”

While she had been referred to gynaecology services previously, she received no appointment, but she was finally referred again after a second A&E visit.

To help others in a similar situation, Ms Ahmed is now taking part in a research project that aims to improve care for young people living with period pain.

However, the long waiting list, worsened by delays caused by the Covid pandemic, meant it took four years for her to be seen by a specialist.

She is calling for more young people, aged 18 to 24, to join by signing up to Be Part of Research, as part of a national recruitment campaign from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

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Source: The Independent, 11 October 2025

“I think that a lot of young girls shouldn’t have to go through that on their own because, regardless of whether they have supportive parents or teachers, or friends around them, if you don’t know what they are dealing with, there’s not much that you can do.”

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‘Dysfunctional’ culture at UK nursing regulator is safety threat, review warns

A “dysfunctional” culture at the UK nursing regulator is threatening public safety, according to a damning report that found the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) took seven years to strike off a nurse who had been accused of rape and sexual assault.

Staff at the regulator broke down in tears “as they recounted their frustrations over safeguarding decisions that put the public at risk”, according to the authors of an independent review of the regulator.

The review team highlighted a “toxic culture” at the NMC, with one former employee describing their section of the organisation as a “hotbed of bullying, racism and toxic behaviour”.

The report also shone a spotlight on suicides by nurses caught up in long drawn-out fitness to practise investigations, highlighting how some nurses had been under investigation for nearly 10 years.

The authors commented on the NMC’s backlog of 6,000 cases, which meant some nurses were forced to wait four or five years for their investigation to be completed, even though some cases were “baseless complaints where no further action is required”.

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Source: The Guardian, 9 July 2024

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‘Drug-resistant typhoid is the final warning sign’: disease spreads in Pakistan as antibiotics fail

From his sickbed, eight-year-old Ukasha could see his siblings play with a ball in the courtyard. His head hurt and his body felt too heavy to move. Ukasha had typhoid fever – an illness he should have recovered from in days. It had been a month.

At its worst, typhoid can kill. Ukasha’s family were anxious, even moving his bed outside to give him fresh air and sunlight.

Children across the village – on the outskirts of Peshawar, northern Pakistan – had been falling ill.

Typhoid, also known as enteric fever, is an infection caused by contaminated food or water. If left untreated, it kills one in five. But the cure is a simple course of antibiotics. Most people, if they get the drugs promptly, should start recovering within a few days.

But the antibiotics used to cure typhoid are now failing. The bacteria, Salmonella typhi, have developed resistance to the antibiotics meant to kill them. It’s a pattern repeated across the world; the problem of resistant infections is global and borderless.

“Typhoid was once treatable with a set of pills and now ends up with patients in hospital,” says Jehan Zeb Khan, a clinical pharmacist at Hayatabad Medical Complex, a hospital in Peshawar.

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Source: The Guardian, 24 September 2024

 

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‘Drug policy isn’t working... we need to try a completely different approach’

In a recent interview in The Times, former Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Harry Burns considers the symptoms of the country’s drug deaths epidemic. The total of 1,187 fatalities in 2018 represents 218 drug deaths per million of the population and a 27% year-on-year rise. The death rate is three times higher than in the UK as a whole and worse than that of the United States. Politicians should listen to people working on the front line to tackle rising deaths, according to Sir Harry. The trouble is, he says, “public policy tends to be made because someone has a clever idea which then gets picked up by a politician. Very few outcomes in society are determined by one thing.” He believes that health and social benefit on a national scale comes with incremental change over an extended period of time. 

When asked what one thing would you do to improve the health of the nation, Sir Harry said "Scotland has made enormous strides in improving patient safety using the concepts of improvement science in which front line staff have tested many different ideas and applied at scale the changes which they have seen work. It’s the principle of marginal gains that has been successful in sport. I would use this approach to improve wellbeing across society."

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Source: The Times, 20 July 2019

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‘Dr. Checklist’ Peter Pronovost gets chance to transform University Hospitals

The ghosts of medical errors haunt Dr. Peter Pronovost. Two deaths, both caused by mistakes. First, his father’s, who died as the result of a cancer misdiagnosis. Then a little girl, a burn victim who succumbed to infection and diagnostic missteps at the hospital where Pronovost worked early in his career.

Those deaths led Pronovost to pursue a medical career dedicated to patient safety, and to create the medical checklist he has become known for worldwide.

Now, he’s implementing his second act, at University Hospitals in the USA, as its Chief Transformation Officer, a job he has held since late 2018. His goal: To transform a $4 billion health care system by reducing shortcomings in medical care and increasing the quality of treatment.

The challenge fits Pronovost, says one of his former Johns Hopkins University professors, Dr. Albert Wu. “He’s one of the few people for whom the title might be appropriate, because his work has led to significant changes and innovations in how we deliver health care in the United States.

“He’s a once-in-a-generation guy.”

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Source: Cleveland.com, 9 February 2020

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‘Don’t overwork staff’, says trust with just one 52-week waiter

Allowing staff enough rest has been ‘the key’ to elective recovery for an acute trust which has the lowest number of 52-week waiters in England, it has said.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells (MTW) Trust currently has just one patient who has waited 52 weeks or more on its lists, compared with a high of 976 at one point in April 2021.

MTW is one of a handful of trusts with very few long waiters. All are relatively small trusts – and are not regional centres for specialist/tertiary patients – but their 52-week-waiters also represent less than 1% of their total list.

MTW chief of service for the surgery division Greg Lawton told HSJ its success in tackling long waiters was down to “attention to detail” in tracking each patient, and not expecting staff to run too many extra sessions.

“Any problems patients are having getting through their pathways are identified early and addressed,” he said. "Treatment had been prioritised on the grounds of clinical need, he added, with cancer treatments still going ahead and cancer targets being met."

The trust, in the South East, has put on extra operating sessions to clear some of its backlog of patients but these had been limited in number, Dr Lawton said.

“What we have never done is try to run too many and I think that may be the key. If you try to do too much you will burn staff out,” he said. The trust had “been mindful that staff need a break,” he added. “Morale is very important.”

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Source: HSJ, 16 February 2022

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‘Don’t buy Epic’ unless it integrates with NHS App, says government adviser

The NHS should no longer do business with leading tech supplier Epic unless future iterations of its technology work with the NHS App, a senior government adviser has warned.

Professor Paul Corrigan was appointed by the Department of Health and Social Care in the summer to help shape its 10-year health plan. Speaking at an event organised by HSJ and IBM on Tuesday, he praised Epic’s ’My Chart’ App which is supplied alongside its electronic patient record system and provides patients with a wide range of useful information.

However, he expressed concern that it did not integrate with the NHS App, and said: ”The NHS, in my view, should not buy the next generation of Epic if it doesn’t talk to the NHS App”.

Professor Corrigan gave a detailed analysis of how the NHS needed to work better with technology businesses.

As part of this he said: “The ability to have interoperability [between IT] is greater and greater almost every year, but we are still constructing bits of pathways which are not interoperable. The main thing I would say is that we need to ensure that whatever kit is being bought talks to other kit and that you’re not allowed… to construct bits of pathways that don’t talk to others.”

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Source: HSJ, 6 December 2024

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‘Do not resuscitate’ orders caused potentially avoidable deaths, regulator finds

Do-not-resuscitate orders were wrongly allocated to some care home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing potentially avoidable deaths, the first phase of a review by England’s Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found.

The regulator warned that some of the “inappropriate” do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) notices applied in the spring may still be in place and called on all care providers to check with the person concerned that they consent.

The review was prompted by concerns about the blanket application of the orders in care homes in the early part of the pandemic, amid then prevalent fears that NHS hospitals would be overwhelmed.

The CQC received 40 submissions from the public, mostly about DNACPR orders that had been put in place without consulting with the person or their family. These included reports of all the residents of one care home being given a DNACPR notice, and of the notices routinely being applied to anyone infected with Covid.

Some people reported that they did not even know a DNACPR order had been placed on their relative until they were quite unwell.

“There is evidence of unacceptable and inappropriate DNACPRs being made at the start of the pandemic,” the interim report found, adding that the practice may have caused “potentially avoidable death”.

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Source: The Guardian, 3 December 2020

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‘Distressing’ rise in maternal deaths as progress stalls

More women are dying during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth compared to over a decade ago – despite a pledge by the last government to halve maternal mortality rates, new data shows.

The research by MBBRACE-UK suggests the national rate of maternal deaths is now 20% higher than it was in 2009-11.

It found there were 252 maternal deaths between 2022 and 2024, with most women dying due to blood clots and heart disease, while around a third died by suicide.

The investigation, led by Oxford Population Health’s national perinatal epidemiology unit, examined the deaths of women between January 2022 and December 2024 during pregnancy or within six weeks after their pregnancy had ended.

It found the rate of direct maternal deaths, due to conditions occurring as a result of pregnancy, such as blood clots, bleeding and pre-eclampsia, increased by 52%, while indirect deaths caused by pre-existing conditions were largely unchanged.

Inequalities remained, with black women dying at a rate three times higher than those from a white ethnic background.

Donna Ockenden, who is currently leading the Nottingham University Hospitals Foundation Trust maternity review, said: “It is so distressing to read of the issues outlined in the latest MBRRACE report… but unfortunately it is not unexpected.

“We have known about the inequalities within maternity care provision in excess of a decade, yet the same issues still persist despite stated ambitions to reduce harm.

“Nowhere near enough has been done to fix the chronic problems, and sadly, it appears that progress has stalled. Suicide has been known to be a leading cause of death for years. This highlights once again that maternity services are not ‘an island’ and that families deserve better support before, during, and after the birth of their baby.”

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Source: HSJ, 13 January 2026

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‘Disproportionate’ infection control holding back electives, say NHS bosses

Infection control rules in hospitals are ‘now disproportionate to the risks’ posed by covid and should be relaxed, some of the NHS’s most senior leaders have warned.

The government rules – such as not allowing covid-positive staff to work, and separating out services for covid, non-covid and covid-contact patients – make a big dent in hospital capacity and slows down services.

Glen Burley, who is chief executive of three Midlands trusts and involved in national-level discussions on elective matters, told HSJ: “Pretty much every pathway has a covid and non-covid route, which slows down flow and staff productivity.

“There is a growing argument that these rules are now disproportionate to the risks. With covid cases in the community also rising now, we may have to question again the relative risks of continuing to isolate staff.”

NHS Confederation director of policy Layla McCay told HSJ: “Healthcare leaders are concerned the current [IPC] measures are having a serious knock-on effect on capacity and that the measures in their current form are reducing efficiency and capacity within healthcare settings.

“We need more clarity on if and how current measures can be safely adjusted so [the NHS] can further increase bed capacity and patient throughput, as well as the ability to transport patients more quickly and efficiently.”

But NHS Providers, which has previously said relaxing the IPC guidance would not enable a “rapid” increase in the NHS’ capacity to tackle the elective care backlog and could pose significant “risks”, remains more cautious.

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Source: HSJ, 21 March 2022

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‘Disingenuous’ wait times on NHS App will be half those patients have to face

Next week’s launch of the ‘Wayfinder’ waiting time information service on the NHS App will give patients “disingenuous” and “misleading” information about how long they can expect to wait for care, senior figures close to the project have warned.

Briefing documents seen by HSJ show the figure displayed to patients will be a mean average of wait times taken from the Waiting List Minimum Data Set and the My Planned Care site.

However, it was originally intended that the metric displayed would be the time waited by 92% of relevant patients. This is more commonly known as the “9 out of 10” measure.

Mean waits are likely to be about “half the typical waiting time” measured under the 9 out of 10 metric, according to the waiting list experts consulted by HSJ.

Ahead of The Wayfinder service’s launch on Tuesday, NHS trusts and integrated care boards have been sent comprehensive information on how to publicise it, including a “lines to take” briefing in case of media inquiries. This mentions the use of an “average” time but does not provider any justification for this approach.

HSJ’s source said the mean average metric was “the worst one to choose” as it would be providing patients with “disingenuous” information that will leave them disappointed. They added that the 92nd percentile metric would be a “far more realistic” measure “for a greater number of people”.

They concluded that “using an average” would create false expectations “because in reality nobody will be seen in the amount of time it is saying on the app.”

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Source: HSJ, 26 January 2024

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‘Disgraceful’ regulator’s 10-year case delay

A regulator overseeing 340,000 professionals breached a psychologist’s human rights by letting their fitness-to-practise case go on for a decade, amid widespread very long delays, it has emerged.

A judgment from the Health and Care Professions Tribunal said the “lamentable” situation for the registrant was down to the “disgraceful… manner in which the Healthcare Professions Council dealt with their case”.

The HCPC oversees professional standards for several groups including radiographers, paramedics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and operating department practitioners.

If a complaint is made about a registrant, it can investigate and refer them to the tribunal, which can strike them off.

The Society of Radiographers said the current speed of cases was “simply unacceptable” and its director of industrial strategy Dean Rogers added: “Our members spend too long working — and living — under the intense scrutiny of their regulator, often under the control of an interim order restricting or even preventing their practise while investigations drag on.”

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Source: HSJ, 17 April 2024

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‘Discrimination’ claim as ‘40 new hospitals’ snubs mental health

A chief executive has compared a lack of investment into mental health estate to ‘institutionalised discrimination’, after no new schemes were accepted on to the ‘40 new hospitals’ programme.

HSJ revealed that almost 50 capital projects from mental health trusts attempted to win one of the final places on the “new hospitals programme”, but all were taken by new acute schemes.

Some of the trusts that submitted unsuccessful bids are using buildings which are more than 100 years old and were constructed without modern care practices in mind. Many of the bids raised safety concerns about the current estates.

Joe Rafferty, chief executive of Mersey Care Foundation Trust, told HSJ: “If there’s been a priority order, mental health has been at the back of the queue.

“It’s almost a sort of institutionalised discrimination in a way… there is a risk that the system itself is stigmatised or discriminated against mental health patients.

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Source: HSJ, 31 May 2023

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‘Disappointing’ failure to boost community care revealed by internal data

A ‘disappointingly slow’ transformation of community services means thousands of mental health patients are still presenting at emergency departments within weeks of being discharged from an inpatient facility.

Experts said an NHS England-led community transformation programme, launched in 2019 as part of a £2.3bn investment in mental health services, should have helped reduce readmission rates, but internal data seen by HSJ suggests the rates have actually increased since then.

The data reveals for the first time the proportion of patients discharged from inpatient care who then present to accident and emergency within two months.

The proportion of adult patients was 11 per cent in 2018-19, when the investment programme was launched, and had increased to 12 per cent by 2022-23, representing around 6,000 adult cases.

The situation appears worse for children, with an 18 per cent readmission rate within two months, up from 17 per cent in 2018-19.

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Source: HSJ, 8 August 2023

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‘Difficult’ state of NHS maternity care is due to Tory inaction, inquiry head says

One of the UK’s most senior midwives has said inaction by the previous government over maternity care failures has led to the “difficult” situation in wards across England and a rise in reports of birth trauma.

Donna Ockenden, who is leading the biggest inquiry in NHS history into maternity failures in Nottingham, said the Conservatives had been given a “blueprint” for how to improve maternity services but that it had not been implemented.

“I think the current government has inherited a really, really difficult picture around perinatal care, birth care and increasing reports of birth trauma. If only the previous government had done what it said it would do, that inheritance would have been very different,” she said.

Ockenden is leading a review into maternity services at the Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, the largest inquiry into a single service in the history of the NHS, with 2,406 affected families taking part. The findings will be published in June 2026.

She expressed frustration over the slow pace of change after her report on the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal, which found that 300 babies had died or been left brain-damaged as a result of inadequate care.

“We published [that report] in March 2022 and there were 22 immediately essential actions, as well as hundreds of actions for the NHS trust,” she said. “But with the chaos that followed in the year before the general election, things got lost and we are not as far ahead with those immediately essential actions as we should be.”

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Source: The Guardian, 21 July 2025

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‘Difficult discussions’ as NHS faces shortage of childbirth pain relief

The NHS has been hit by a shortage of epidural kits to give mothers-to-be, a key form of pain relief during childbirth, as well as the drug that women are offered as an alternative.

Supplies of epidural kits and the painkiller Remifentanil are now under such pressure that some hospitals cannot offer pregnant women their usual right to choose which one they want to reduce labour pains.

Anaesthetists have told the Guardian that the simultaneous shortage of both forms of pain management has led to “difficult discussions” with women who had been told during their antenatal care that they would have that choice but were upset to learn that it was not available.

The disruption to supplies of epidural kits is so acute that NHS Supply Chain (NHSSC), the health service body that ensures hospitals in England and Wales receive regular supplies of drugs and equipment, to ration deliveries to just one week’s worth of stock.

Childbirth organisations voiced their concern and warned that the disruption to supplies meant some women in labour were already facing long delays before they received pain relief.

“Offering a choice of options during birth is an integral element of good maternity care, and this includes pain relief. It is concerning that the shortage of epidural kits and Remifentanil could be denying many that right”, said Jo Corfield, the NCT’s head of communications and campaigns.

“We don’t yet fully understand the impact this shortage is having but we have heard of long waiting times to receive pain relief and epidurals.”

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Source: The Guardian, 7 August 2022

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‘Difficult choices’: aid cuts threaten effort to reduce maternal deaths in Nigeria

At a UN-run antenatal clinic in a camp for people displaced by Boko Haram, the colours stand out like the bellies of the pregnant women. Abayas in neon green, dark brown and shades of yellow graze against the purple and white uniforms of nurses attending to them in the beige-orange halls of the maternal healthcare facility.

Within the clinic in Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria, midwives and nurses are handing out free emergency home delivery kits, “dignity kits” for sexual abuse survivors and reusable sanitary pads to curb exploitation of young girls who cannot afford them.

A dozen women sit on a mat in the corridor, awaiting the start of a session on reproductive health and doing their best to stay focused in the unwavering 42C heat. Among them is Yangana Mohammed, a smiling 32-year-old mother of seven who knits bama caps for a living.

“I like that the services are free,” she said, holding a yellow medical card while waiting to change her birth control implant. “I’m really glad for this clinic.”

Experts say more resources are needed to sustain these services in a region struggling with high maternal mortality, child marriage and female genital mutilation rates. UN global data for 2023, the most recent available, shows that Nigeria recorded 75,000 maternal deaths that year – nearly a third of the total worldwide.

Many of those cases are among north-east Nigeria’s estimated 45 million people. Ritgak Tilley-Gyado, an Abuja-based senior health specialist at the World Bank, said disparities were fuelled by inequities in health systems and socioeconomic and sociocultural status across the country.

“As a result, a woman in the north-east of the country is 10 times more likely to die from childbirth than her counterpart in the south-west … [with] a systems approach that tugs on the right levers, we can turn these abysmal numbers around and improve the wellbeing of mothers,” she said.

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Source: The Guardian, 21 May 2025

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‘Devastating’ delays to new hospitals revealed

Eighteen of the 40 ‘new hospital’ schemes which were originally due to open in 2030 will now not even start construction until then – with some potentially facing a wait of until 2039 to even get spades in the ground.

NHS Providers said the announcement was a “major blow to trusts, their staff, patients, and communities, many of whom now face even longer delays getting desperately needed new hospitals”.

Interim CEO Saffron Cordery added: “Trusts who are part of the new hospital programme account for more than 40 per cent (£5.7bn) of the total bill for backlog repairs and maintenance. Today’s announcement will make a difficult situation even more challenging.

“While today’s announcement finally gives trusts some certainty and clarity over their long-awaited building projects, this is still a bitter pill to swallow.”

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Source: HSJ, 20 January 2025

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