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Trump officials ask CDC, FDA to use gender notice on restored websites

The Trump administration has directed the nation’s premier health agencies to place a notice harshly condemning “gender ideology” on agency webpages that a federal judge ordered be restored online this week.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were asked to place a notice on “any restored pages that were taken down due to their content promoting gender ideology,” according to an email sent from an official at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday evening. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email.

As of Friday morning, the notice is included on the two webpages the FDA was directed to restore, which provide guidance for researchers on how to increase enrollment of females in clinical trials and interpret sex-specific data, as well as improving participation of underrepresented populations in such trials.

“Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female,” the notice reads. “The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.”

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Source: The Washington Post, 14 February 2025

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FDA warns of potential to miss notifications on smartphone-compatible diabetes devices

The Food and Drug Administration released an alert notifying patients of a safety concern using diabetes devices such as continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps and automated insulin dosing systems that rely on a smartphone for delivering alerts.

The agency said it received medical device reports in which users reported alerts were not being delivered or heard in situations where the users thought they configured the alerts to be delivered. Some instances may have contributed to serious harm, including severe hypoglycaemia, severe hyperglycaemia, diabetic ketoacidosis and death.   

The FDA issued recommendations for users and said it is working with diabetes-related medical device manufacturers to ensure that smartphone alert configurations are evaluated prior to use. It is also working with manufacturers to ensure settings for smartphones and mobile medical applications are continuously tested and that updates are communicated quickly and clearly to users.

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Source: US Food and Drug Administration, 5 February 2025

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Letby trust chair resigns after damning tribunal verdict

The chair of a foundation trust has resigned after a tribunal found he unfairly forced out its former CEO, because she raised concerns about his bullying behaviour.

Susan Gilby was CEO of the Countess of Chester Hospital Trust from 2018 until she was suspended and excluded from the premises in December 2022.

The events unfolded at a hugely consequential time for the hospital. Dr Gilby, a former intensive care consultant, joined as medical director in August 2018. But she was made acting CEO shortly after, when her predecessor Tony Chambers was forced to leave, amid a rift with paediatricians and others over the Lucy Letby case.

As she approached four years as CEO, the tribunal found Dr Gilby was the subject of a coordinated campaign instigated by chair Ian Haythornthwaite and carried out by chief people officer Nicola Price and two non-executives. The campaign was dubbed “Project Countess” and was “designed to protect the [chair] and manoeuvre [Dr Gilby] out of the trust”.

It was launched after Dr Gilby began raising concerns with directors in spring 2022 about Mr Haythornthwaite’s “confrontational and aggressive behaviour”.

The tribunal commented on Mr Haythornthwaite becoming angry with junior staff about the refurbishment of the trust offices while the “struggling organisation” faced “an erosion of public faith” in the trust against the backdrop of “a multiple murder inquiry”. This, it said, was “indicative of a chair prioritising his own self-interest above that of the trust and failing to work collaboratively with the CEO and staff”.

Mr Haythornwaite joined the trust in 2021. COCH this evening said he had ”taken the decision to step down with immediate effect”.

He said in a statement: “I have made this decision in the best interests of the trust so that the focus of the organisation can continue to be on delivering the best possible care to patients.”

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Source: HSJ, 14 February 2025

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USA: Striking nurses, Providence have yet to meet or schedule talks since vote to reject contract

Negotiators for Providence and its striking nurses have not met since the two sides reached an ill-fated agreement a week ago, and they have no meetings on the books.

Nearly 5,000 nurses at all eight Providence hospitals in Oregon last week rejected a tentative agreement reached between the health system and their labor union, the Oregon Nurses Association, extending a strike that began 10 January 2025 and is now in its fifth week.

The rejected deal included wage increases, a one-hour penalty pay for missed meals and breaks, and provisions intended to codify language from a state hospital staffing law. It also offered a ratification bonus based on hours worked since a nurse’s last contract expired instead of retroactive pay raises.

Nurses had criticized the deal, arguing that it failed to adequately address chronic understaffing, patient safety concerns and demands for fair wages and benefits. Nurses also raised frustrations over their health benefits, citing difficulties accessing regular providers after Providence switched to Aetna for employee health plans this year.

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Source: The Oregonian, 12 February 2025

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New York rejects Louisiana request to extradite doctor who prescribed abortion pills

New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite a doctor who was charged there with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.

'I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana,' Hochul said at a news conference in Manhattan. "Not now, not ever".

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Source: The Guardian, 14 February 2025

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Letby trust CEO was forced out by ‘self-interested’ chair, tribunal finds

A foundation trust CEO was unfairly forced out of her role, after whistle blowing about the bullying behaviour of its chair, a tribunal has ruled.

Susan Gilby was CEO of the Countess of Chester Hospital Trust from 2018 until she was suspended and excluded from the premises in December 2022.

The events unfolded at a hugely consequential time for the hospital. Dr Gilby, a former intensive care consultant, joined as medical director in August 2018. But she was made acting CEO shortly after, when her predecessor Tony Chambers was forced to leave, amid a rift with paediatricians and others over the Lucy Letby case.

As she approached four years as CEO, the tribunal found Dr Gilby was the subject of a coordinated campaign instigated by chair Ian Haythornthwaite and carried out by chief people officer Nicola Price and two non-executives. The campaign was dubbed “Project Countess” and was “designed to protect the [chair] and manoeuvre [Dr Gilby] out of the trust”.

It was launched after Dr Gilby began raising concerns with directors in spring 2022 about Mr Haythornthwaite’s “confrontational and aggressive behaviour”.

The tribunal commented on Mr Haythornthwaite becoming angry with junior staff about the refurbishment of the trust offices while the “struggling organisation” faced “an erosion of public faith” in the trust against the backdrop of “a multiple murder inquiry”. This, it said, was “indicative of a chair prioritising his own self-interest above that of the trust and failing to work collaboratively with the CEO and staff”.

In summer 2022, Dr Gilby raised her concerns directly with Mr Haythornthwaite, who refused suggestions of mediation, and reacted angrily, banging his desk.

In September of that year, Dr Gilby “was subjected to concerted, aggressive and unjustified verbal attacks at the private board meeting [which] were not ’shut down’ by the [chair] when he could have and should have done so” according to the tribunal.

The tribunal found “on the balance of probabilities” the chair and two NEDs “had agreed before the meeting that [Dr Gilby] would be personally criticised and held accountable for [the trust’s] financial position and steps taken to remedy it”.

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Source: HSJ, 14 February 2025

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RFK Jr sworn in as US Health and Human Services chief

Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of President Donald Trump's most controversial cabinet picks, has been sworn in as the next US Health and Human Services Secretary.

The former presidential candidate will now oversee key health agencies with about 80,000 employees and a trillion-dollar budget. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had questioned his baseless health claims and vaccine scepticism.

Kennedy is the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, which gained prominence in the US for casting doubt on the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccinations and making the discredited claim that the shots are linked to autism.

Kennedy, the nephew of former President John F Kennedy, has denied that he is anti-vaccination, pointing out his own children are immunised. He insisted during his confirmation hearings that he merely supports more stringent studies and safety tests for injections.

During the hearings, lawmakers also grilled Kennedy on his promotion of health misinformation and knowledge of the US healthcare system.

He was asked to explain his stance on abortion, as he previously indicated that he was in favour of abortion rights. He responded by telling lawmakers he agreed with Trump that access to abortion should be controlled by individual states and that "every abortion is a tragedy".

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Source: BBC News, 13 February 2025

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'My mum lost her dignity in 60 hour A&E wait'

The son of an 88-year-old woman who has been stuck in A&E for more than 60 hours said she had been stripped of her dignity.

Maureen Harman was taken to Wigan Infirmary in Greater Manchester on Monday evening, but as of Thursday afternoon had still not been admitted to a ward.

Her son, Nick Harman, told the BBC that for most of that time his mother had been lying on a trolley in a corridor along with many other patients.

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) apologised for the long waits and said it had been "extremely busy".

Mr Harman, 56, said: "She's sat on her bed, she's getting uncomfortable, there's people in corridors, there's people coming in escorted by police, drug addicts and things.

"Your dignity is just gone. You're doing things in the corridor, with people who are strangers."

Mr Harman stressed the staff "have been brilliant" but that the scene in A&E had resembled a "warzone".

On Wednesday BBC North West reported nearly 39,000 patients spent more than a day in the region's emergency departments because there were no hospital beds for them.

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Source: BBC News, 14 February 2025

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Sharp rise in cancer patients in England waiting months for treatment

The proportion of cancer patients in England experiencing long waits for treatment has almost trebled, figures show.

Analysis by Cancer Research UK exclusively for the Guardian shows there has been a nearly fourfold increase in the number of patients in England waiting more than 104 days for urgent cancer treatment, from just over 6,000 patients in 2016 to 22,000 last year.

In 2024, more than 11% of cancer patients waited longer than 104 days to start treatment, which was nearly triple the rate of 4.4% in 2016.

The latest figures from NHS England show a slight improvement in the number of patients treated on time. In December, 66.4% of patients were treated within 62 days of urgent referral, up marginally from 64.5% in November.

The target is to treat 85% of cancer patients within 62 days but this has not been met in any month since December 2015. Even if patients referred via screening or from their consultant are included, just under one-third of patients are still not treated on time.

According to Cancer Research UK, the last time the NHS consistently met the target to treat 85% of cancer patients within two months of urgent referral was in 2013.

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Source: The Guardian, 13 February 2025

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Student died from sepsis after antibiotics error in London hospital, inquest hears

A consultant paediatrician warned medical colleagues treating her son that they had failed to give him life-saving antibiotics hours before he died from sepsis, an inquest has heard.

William Hewes, 22, a history and politics student, died on 21 January 2023 of meningococcal septicaemia at east London’s Homerton hospital, where his mother, Dr Deborah Burns, worked.

Burns brought her “very ill” son into the A&E at the hospital just after midnight and told her colleagues he was seriously ill and needed treating for meningitis, the inquest into his death heard on Thursday.

A doctor prescribed 2 grams of the antibiotic ceftriaxone within minutes of Hewes’s arrival and the medical team knew the drug had to be given as soon as possible. But due to a communication mix-up between the duty emergency registrar, Dr Rebecca McMillan, and nurses, the “life-saving” drug was not administered within the vital first hour of treatment, the inquest heard.

Burns said her son only got the antibiotics after she warned Dr Luke Lake, the acting medical registrar on duty at the time, about the failure to administer the drug. In written evidence read to the court, she said: “I told him I didn’t think William had the antibiotics. Luke reassured me, that they had been written up earlier. I replied: ‘Yes, but they have not been given.’”

Earlier, Dr McMillan recounted her distress when she realised at about 1.17am that the drug had not been administered by nurses as she requested.

She said: “I do recall standing outside the resus room with [nurse Marianela Balatico] where she asked if I was OK and said that I looked really upset when I realised that antibiotics had not been given.

“We had a conversation along the lines of we didn’t understand how this had happened. We were both upset when we realised that this hadn’t happened.”

Fighting back tears, McMillan said one of the “learning points” from Hewes’s death was the need “to be clearer who I’m giving instruction to”. She added: “I obviously thought that my instructions had been clear enough. I have thought about that moment over and over.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 February 2025

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Ambulance services underprepared for ‘mass casualty incidents’

Ambulance services would still struggle to respond effectively to a mass-casualty event like the Manchester Arena bombing, HSJ has learned, as nearly all have been denied the funding needed to bolster preparedness.

The public inquiry report on the May 2017 attack, which killed 22, was sharply critical of the emergency services’ response, including North West Ambulance Service Trust. The inquiry’s November 2022 report made nearly 150 recommendations to prepare for future attacks.

Crucially, ambulance trusts were told to review their capacity to respond to a mass-casualty incident – including whether they had enough trained specialist staff – then tell commissioners what extra funding they need to ”respond effectively”.

Gaps identified included the availability of 24/7 “critical care cars”, specialist practitioners in hazardous area response teams, and tactical commanders in operations centres.

But eight out of England’s 10 ambulance trusts have confirmed to HSJ – through Freedom of Information requests and follow-up enquiries – that they have not received funding from commissioners to cover what they found was needed.

HSJ understands that, while some trusts have strengthened specialist teams using other income, they have not received funding for the majority of what the reviews said was needed, and there are therefore still significant gaps in readiness.

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Source: 14 February 2025

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Four in ten who took their lives in prison were denied adequate healthcare

Four in ten prisoners who took their own lives in custody were denied adequate healthcare before their deaths, according to damning new figures exposing the scale of neglect inside Britain’s overcrowded prisons.

Inmates are legally entitled to receive the same standard of healthcare as someone living in the community. However, official findings uncovered by The Independent show in 101 out of 233 self-inflicted deaths investigated by the prisons watchdog between 2020 and 2023, the mental or physical healthcare did not meet this requirement.

In each case a clinical reviewer assessed whether the care was equivalent to what they would expect outside of jail as part of investigations into the deaths by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO). In many of the self-inflicted deaths, failings related to mental healthcare.

The chairman of the justice committee, Andy Slaughter, said “we are failing people in custody” after the figures came to light, while the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, warned “without any doubt” there will be more potentially preventable deaths if action is not taken to drive up standards.

“We see it frequently in prisons that we inspect that there are people who just aren’t getting the support that they need,” he told The Independent. “If someone needs treatment, they need treatment.”

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Source: The Independent, 14 February 2025

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Advertising regulator launches nine investigations into weight loss jab ads

Nine investigations into weight loss jab adverts have been launched by the UK advertising regulator, which has raised concerns about the sheer volume of law-breaking involved in targeting the public with the drugs.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told The Independent it now has nine high-priority investigations underway into whether ads in various online media are promoting prescription-only medicines (POMs) in breach of its rules and the law.

Issues being probed include the use of unbranded injection or pen images, as well as claims such as “weight loss injections” and “Obesity Treatment Jab".

The ASA described the number of investigations running in parallel on the same topic as “significant” and said that tackling the issue is a “priority”.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has warned that the drugs “should not be taken to help get a body beautiful picture for Instagram” and must be treated as “serious medicines”. Drugs for weight management “should only be used by those tackling obesity,” he added.

The pharmacy regulator has now tightened prescription rules to prevent weight-loss medicines from being supplied “inappropriately”, with people now no longer able to get the drugs after completing a simple online questionnaire.

Groups including the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) had been calling for tougher rules after they learnt of people being wrongly prescribed the drugs without thorough checks, including some who already had a low body weight or who previously had eating disorders.

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Source: The Independent, 12 February 2025

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BMA challenge to GMC on 'medical professionals' term goes to court

A legal challenge brought by leading doctors against the medical regulator amid rising concerns over the use of physician associates is due to reach court. 

The British Medical Association (BMA) is bringing a case at the High Court in London against the General Medical Council (GMC), accusing the regulator of abandoning its responsibilities to patients' safety by blurring the lines between doctors and non-doctors.

The BMA claims the GMC has been using the term "medical professionals" to describe all those it regulates – doctors as well as physician and anaesthesia associates (PAs and AAs). The association says the term should only be used to refer to qualified doctors. The BMA maintains that PAs and AAs are neither doctors nor medically qualified, with the distinction crucial to patient safety.

It says there is evidence of widespread confusion in the public as to the roles of associates.

The GMC has stated that each profession type is prominently labelled on its public-facing registers, and in search functions, meaning that when patients search its registers it will be clear whether someone is a doctor, a PA, or an AA.

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Source: Medscape, 12 February 2025

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'We are absolutely full': This hospital is outperforming most - but it is still on its knees

Marina Strange is 90 and lives alone. She had a heart attack last week, her third in two years. It took two hours for an ambulance to reach her. Marina was impressed.

"I was surprised the ambulance came within two hours. I thought that was very good," she told Sky News.

Marina was one of 8,449 patients to arrive at the care of Royal Berkshire NHS Trust by ambulance so far this winter, where Sky News has spent the past few months speaking to patients, consultants and those responsible for running the hospital.

Chief Executive Steve McManus said:

"Our ward occupancy at the moment is running around 99% of our beds, so we are absolutely full," he said.

"Almost half of [our respiratory unit] has been given over for patients with flu - and we’ve got a lot of very unwell patients at the moment. Each morning over the last few days we’ve been starting the day with another 20-30 patients in the emergency department waiting for beds, so the pressures are really significant."

Dr Omar Mafousi, the clinical lead at the hospital explains how a lack of beds in the main hospital affects the emergency care his team can provide.

“We say every year it gets a little worse. This year has felt worse than any other year that I remember and I’ve been a consultant for 15 years in emergency medicine.

“We can’t [have patients in A&E long term]. We’ve only got 20 major cubicles but 25 waiting for a bed. Some are on chairs, some are in the waiting room, but we have no space to bring patients off an ambulance to see and examine them.”

“Almost every single bay is full, there’s just one free at the moment. There are patients waiting to be transferred to the wards, and while we’ve been here in the last couple of minutes two more patients have been brought in by ambulance. Things in the emergency department change very very quickly”.

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Source: Sky News, 13 February 2025

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Mental health patients with nowhere to go cost NHS £71m in England, report finds

A lack of supported housing was the biggest reason for delayed discharges from mental health hospitals in England last year, costing the NHS about £71m, according to a report.

Analysis from the National Housing Federation (NHF) found that in 2023-24 there were 109,029 days of delayed discharge because mental health patients were waiting for supported housing, and the number of people stuck in hospital as a result of housing-related issues had more than tripled since 2021.

In September 2024, waiting for supported housing was the single biggest reason mental health patients, fit for discharge, were unable to leave, accounting for 17% of all delays. This lack led to a strain on NHS capacity and a rise in patients being sent out of area for hospital admission, the report found.

Rhys Moore, director of public impact at the NHF, said: “Not only are tens of thousands of people, who deserve the opportunity to live a healthy, happy and independent life, being failed, but the shortage of these homes is increasing pressure on public services, increasing homelessness, and costing the NHS and ultimately the taxpayer more in the long run.”

A man in his 30s, who asked to remain anonymous, had struggled with drug addiction issues and was evicted shortly before he was admitted to a mental health hospital ward where he spent a number of weeks.

“I feel like I’m much better off in here than in hospital,” he said. “[The hospital] felt like I was all right. The way we were talking, I could tell they thought, you’re wasting my bed, you don’t need to be here. But I had been evicted, I had nowhere to go.

“I was really struggling in there, it was noisy and stressful at times. Living here, I feel like I can breathe and start getting myself back together again.”

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Source: The Guardian, 11 February 2025

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ICBs ‘detached’ from patient safety risks

A new reporting system has left integrated care boards “detached” from patient safety incidents, a watchdog has found.

The Health Service Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) said some ICBs first heard of an incident when they were asked to provide a media statement.

In a report published today it highlighted views that a new reporting framework had “eroded assurance activities and patient safety oversight.”

The NHS has largely moved from the serious incident framework – where incidents were investigated locally but ICBs played a key role – to the patient safety incident response framework (PSIRF), which is less prescriptive about how trusts need to react to incidents and is not based on the level of harm involved.

But the HSSIB report revealed widespread dissatisfaction among ICBs about the new model, with commissioners saying many PSIRF responses did not trigger a report, leading to them having less visibility of risks from incidents.

This was a particular concern when risks arose when patients moved between providers. ICBs were also often uncertain how risks were being mitigated and what providers had done as a result of incidents.

The safety body was also critical of the Learn from Patient Safety Events database, highlighting problems with “the useability and utility of the data”, with one ICB saying it had “3,000 incidents downloaded but no way of understanding them.” Multiple ICBs had escalated issues with this to NHSE as the data was not useful for identifying hazards and risks.

Helen Hughes, chief executive of the charity Patient Safety Learning, said issues with database were “not simply a technical problem with a new digital service.”

“They will result in missed opportunities to identify patient safety risks, learn from them and ultimately prevent avoidable harm to patients,” she said.

“With greater clarity around the roles, ICBs and ICSs have the potential to drive systemic improvements in patient safety. However, to do so effectively, they require enhanced tools, capacity, and a more integrated approach to digital solutions, such as LfPSE, that support patient safety.”

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Source: HSJ, 13 February 2025

You can read Patient Safety Learning’s response to this report here.

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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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Trust fined £1.7m for maternity care failures

An acute trust has been fined £1.7m — one of the largest penalties to date — after multiple failings in connection with the deaths of three babies under its care.

Nottingham University Hospital Trust admitted failings in the care of the babies and their mothers on Monday, in the prosecution brought by the Care Quality Commission.

Adele O’Sullivan, Kahlani Rawson and Quinn Parker all died shortly after being born in 2021 within the same short period of time.

It is the largest fine for a trust from a CQC prosecution over maternity failings, although similar penalties have been issued for other care failures.

According to BBC reporting, Nottingham Magistrates’ Court heard the fine was reduced from an initial £5.5m, and district judge Grace Leong accepted the defence’s request that the fine be payable in two halves, one half by 31 March 2026 and the second half by 31 March 2027.

NUH has already been fined £800,000 after admitting failings in the care of Wynter Andrews, who died in 2019, which was only the second time the regulator has brought a case against an NHS maternity service, and the highest fine ever given for failings of this nature.

The trust is also at the centre of the NHS’s largest ever maternity investigation, which is ongoing and expected to cover around 2,500 cases.

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Source: HSJ, 12 February 2025

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USA: Judge orders CDC, FDA, HHS webpages to be restored

A judge has granted Public Citizen’s motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in a lawsuit brought on behalf of Doctors for America against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). The lawsuit challenges the agencies’ removal from publicly accessible government websites of vital health-related data and other information used by physicians, researchers, and other health professionals.

The TRO orders the agencies to restore the webpages and datasets.

Dr. Christine Petrin, president of the board of directors for Doctors for America, “In the short time that important web pages were removed from the websites of major public health agencies, our members have seen firsthand how dangerous it can be to practice medicine without critical clinical information. For the safety of our patients, we applaud the decision to restore this information, placing it back in the hands of providers around the country to keep their patients and communities safe and healthy.”

Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, a member of the board of directors for Doctors for America, added: “Today’s victory recognizes just how important these webpages are for us as physicians and researchers as we work to care for patients and improve public health. When these pages went dark, leaving us without access to crucial clinical information and public health data, many of my colleagues and I faced challenges in providing evidence-based care to patients, sometimes even leading to delays in doing so. We will continue to fight to reinstate these pages permanently so that no other patients face any harm.”

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Source: Doctors for America, 11 February 2025

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Scandal of the women harmed by medical implants who are banned from seeking compensation

Last September Emma-Louise Lucas, a mother of one from Manchester, at just 31 received the shocking news that she had a rare type of cancer, caused by her breast implants. 

Called breast-implant associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), it’s a form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which affects immune cells.

The disease has been linked to implants manufactured by Allergan. While the US medical company has made no admission of liability, in 2019 it issued a voluntary global recall of these types of implants.

Now Emma, a manager of a civil-engineering company, is facing not just a shocking diagnosis, but learning she is the latest victim of a vast legal injustice.

Emma had her implants inserted in March 2014. That time gap, of just over a decade, means that under UK rules she is barred from taking a legal case against the makers. 

This is because there is a ten-year limit on making medical-device injury claims, even though it often takes more than ten years for patients to start suffering symptoms of harm.

It is a different situation in Europe, where the legal limit for such claims is being raised to 25 years.

This unfairness is highlighted by the fact that last August, in a landmark case, 140 women in the UK won an undisclosed sum from three companies, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific and Bard after suffering years of misery caused by mesh, or transvaginal tape (TVT). 

The total sum is expected to run into millions of pounds. But thanks to the ten-year legal snare, thousands of other UK women such as Gail McCourt, who have the exact same type of injuries caused by the same mesh, aren’t allowed to pursue the same claims.

In a similar scenario, hundreds of British women are now pursuing compensation for harm they say was caused by a contraceptive implant called Essure. 

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Source: The Daily Mail, 11 February 2025

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Thousands wait more than a day in A&E, data shows

Nearly 39,000 patients spent more than a day in North-West England's A&Es because there were no hospital beds for them, BBC North West has discovered.

Statistics show of those patients, more than 1,000 patients waited longer than three days, often spending much of that time on a trolley in the corridor.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has warned that nationally, the situation could be costing thousands of lives.

NHS England said they were dealing with rising demand and staff were working extremely hard but they understood how long waits impacted on patients.

Colin Gray was one of those patients. The 80-year-old spent 40 hours in A&E at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral after arriving by ambulance on 30 December with heart problems.

"I was in corridors from Monday until Thursday evening in the same clothes that I'd arrived in and probably in the same bedding on the trolley," he said

"It was just a mass of trolleys… the queue seemed to go on forever."

At the time, the trust which runs the site said the department, like most, was extremely busy.

"To maintain patient safety, we prioritise the patients in most urgent need of emergency care and unfortunately this may have meant a longer than expected wait for other patients especially those awaiting hospital admission," they said.

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Source: BBC News, 12 February 2025

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The seven-year wait for a dentist: why Linda Colla pulled out her own teeth

In chronic pain, unable to find an NHS practice and priced out of private care, Colla – like millions of Britons – felt she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands.

Linda Colla holds an imaginary tooth between her forefinger and thumb and pulls it. Then she adds some rotation. Extracting her own teeth required wiggling and twisting, she explains. “It took me a couple of weeks to get each one out, because they just loosened and loosened and loosened. I used a tissue to get a better grip.”

She points to a front incisor. It was the first to come out. Then a canine and finally a big molar. “It sounds very dramatic, pulling them out. But actually they were already loose,” she says. There was some pain on extraction, but they had been causing her constant pain before that. “It was too painful to eat. They just had to come out.”

In 2018, Colla moved to east Devon. She contacted various dental surgeries and was told either that they didn’t take NHS patients or that they didn’t have the capacity to take any more. 

She went on a waiting list. “I got an email once – or was it a text? – asking if I still wanted to be on the list. I said yes, but I haven’t heard anything since.” She presumes, seven years on, she is still on that list.

To have a tooth removed privately costs at least £150. Colla couldn’t afford that. When her three remaining real teeth became too painful to live with, about three years ago, she felt she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands.

Thirteen million people in England – 28% of the adult population – have an unmet need for dentistry, according to an analysis in July by the British Dental Association (BDA). The number of people on waiting lists for an NHS dentist is estimated to be about 780,000.

When the BDA and the Daily Mirror called up 100 practices listed on nhs.uk as “accepting new patients when availability allows”, they found that 86 were not accepting new patients. Some practices reported a waiting list of up to 10 years. In March 2023, YouGov found that 10% of Britons had carried out their own dental work; 34% of those had pulled out – or tried to pull out – their teeth.

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Source: The Guardian, 12 February 2025

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Hospital warned over 'significant' safety gaps

An acute trust has been served a warning notice due to “significant concerns” over patient safety in one of its emergency departments.

The Care Quality Commission said there was a lack of oversight of patients in the ED at Basildon Hospital, one of three main sites run by Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust (MSEFT), and that the absence of a robust booking system was putting them at risk of harm.

MSEFT has published the warning notice in the papers ahead of its board meeting this week. The notice followed an unannounced inspection in December and a follow-up visit last month.

The CQC said: “We have taken this urgent action as we believe a person will or may be exposed to the risk of harm if we do not do so.”

Ms Roberts said there was a lack of clinical oversight in the waiting room during the follow-up visit on 8 January. She said the only clinical staff in the large and busy waiting area were navigation nurses who were going in and out of rooms to assess patients.

MSEFT had said a nurse and health care assistant would be added to the waiting room team after the first visit, but inspectors did not see any during the follow-up, according to the letter. Ms Roberts said: “This puts patients at risk of unmonitored deterioration and harm.”

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Source: HSJ, 12 February 2025

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Beware ill-fitting menstrual cups, warn doctors

Doctors are advising women to take care using menstrual cups, after one user developed temporary kidney problems because the cup was misaligned.

The patient, in her 30s, had been experiencing intermittent pelvic pain and blood in her urine for months, but had not linked the symptoms to the menstrual cup, which is used to catch monthly blood flow.

Although exceedingly rare, a poorly positioned cup inside the vaginal passage can press on other nearby structures, such as ureters - tubes carrying urine to the bladder, according to Danish doctors quoted in the British Medical Journal, external.

Selecting the appropriate size cup is important, as well as inserting it properly, doctors have stressed.

The patient made a complete recovery, but doctors have warned: "Correct positioning, along with choosing the correct cup shape and size, is important to prevent negative effects on the upper urinary tract.

"Menstrual cups can be bought and used without clinical advice from a health professional, which emphasises the importance of detailed and clear patient information material."

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Source: BBC News, 11 February 2025

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