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Keep up to date with the latest news, research and activity in patient safety.

GPs ‘force the elderly to book online in breach of NHS rules’

GP surgeries are forcing elderly patients to book appointments online, against NHS rules, a survey suggests.
As many as one in three people aged 75 or over surveyed by a charity said they were made to submit online forms to see a doctor.
This is despite the GP contract requiring all practices to allow patients to book over the phone or in person if they prefer.
The NHS says all practices should offer a range of booking methods. There is no evidence that any surgeries have been punished for not following the NHS rules.
Critics warned that practices were operating with impunity and “should lose funding” if they were found to be flouting contract requirements.
The results are part of a report by Re-engage, a charity fighting loneliness in old age, which said older people were being “dehumanised” and “excluded” by the digital-first approach.
The charity’s report, Care On Hold, revealed findings from a survey of 926 older people based on their real-world experiences of accessing GP services. The authors warned that forcing elderly people to book online left them without healthcare appointments.
The report also warned that some patients were instead getting help from emergency services, self-treating, or going untreated.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Telegraph, 4 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

No. 10 sets new GP access target

A new target for improving patients’ experience of making GP appointments is among three top NHS priorities identified by the prime minister for this year, HSJ has learned. 
Samantha Jones, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, identified the three main objectives for 10 Downing Street for 2026-27 at a recent staff briefing.
Two of them match existing commitments: For 70% of patients to be seen within 18 weeks for elective treatment by March 2027; and to begin delivering the “NHS Online” digital health service in 2027.
However, the third is new: For at least 80% per cent of patients to report being satisfied with their experience of contacting their GP practice by March 2027.
No target was set for this measure in last year’s medium term planning framework, nor in priorities for this year set out by NHS England last month – although it did call for a focus on urgent GP appointments.
The measure comes from a monthly Office for National Statistics survey funded by NHSE. Performance has increased over the past 18 months – as most practices have upgraded phone and web booking systems – but the gains have slowed.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 6 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

NHSE locks down ‘open source’ code over Mythos AI fears

NHS England is restricting access to open source code after researchers found the Mythos AI model could expose “pretty severe” vulnerabilities in commonly used software.
NHSE issued guidance on 29 April stating that all open source repositories be made private by default by 11 May due to security concerns.
HSJ understands the guidance was issued after NHS England was informed by a group of researchers with access to Mythos that the AI model could detect and expose vulnerabilities in open source software used across the NHS.
However, one of the researchers who discovered the vulnerabilities said restricting access to open-source code “will not improve security”.
Vlad-Stefan Harbuz is the executive director of the Software Stewardship Lab, a non-profit organisation that aims to protect open source technology by identifying threats and producing software and research to mitigate them.
Mr Harbuz alerted NHSE after the Software Stewardship Lab was given advance access to the Mythos software and found vulnerabilities in open source NHS software.
He said the vulnerabilities were “not unique to the NHS” but that “NHS services used by the public could be seriously affected” if they were exploited.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 6 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

‘It’s scary’: Epilepsy patients fear for their lives amid UK medicine supply issues

Epilepsy patients are living with the risk of having “life-threatening” seizures as drug supply problems are forcing some to skip their medication.
There are hundreds of drugs, including those for epilepsy, blood pressure, blood thinning and some cancer medicines, that patients are finding harder to get hold of in England.
For the 630,000 people with epilepsy living in the UK, these medicines help them safely live their lives and skipping a dose can have potentially deadly consequences.
“It’s really scary to think that through no fault of my own, this could be the reason I don’t wake up in the morning,” Beth Baker-Carey told the Independent.
The 28-year-old from Doncaster, who has suffered from seizures since she was two, once had ten seizures a day, but medication keeps her stable.
Although medicine shortages are common, she explained it has worsened since the start of the war in Iran. The department of health and social care is aware of supply issues with some epilepsy medications, but has said these are not directly linked to the war.
Ms Baker-Carey has been notified several times by pharmacies that they have no stock in recent months.
“I’ve had to jump through hoops and go to different pharmacies to get medication,” she said.
“A couple of times it has been quite late at night and I’ve not been able to get it. I’ve been told to just skip it for the night, which is not really wise for a person with epilepsy, skipping can be really dangerous and sometimes fatal."
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 6 May 2026
Further reading on the hub:
Creon shortages: “It’s just another thing patients with cystic fibrosis could do without” Medication supply issues: Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)
Patient Safety Learning

Rare pregnancy complication has put UK women into ‘emergency surgery’

Women have had to undergo major emergency surgery, including a hysterectomy, when medical staff failed to detect they had a rare but potentially fatal complication of pregnancy.
Scores of women have come forward to tell their stories of how they were affected by placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) since the launch in February of a campaign to raise awareness among NHS staff and mothers-to-be of the dangers it poses.
One of them lost so much blood while giving birth that she has had to give up working as an NHS operating theatre nurse and suffers from PTSD.
Another lost six litres of blood and blames her daughter’s cerebral palsy on the stroke the child had while hospital personnel were battling to save her life after an emergency caesarean section. Others have suffered permanent damage to their bladder or bowels.
PAS is associated with a history of C-section birth while assisted fertility using in vitro fertilisation also increases the risk.
It occurs when the placenta, which gives the foetus nutrients and oxygen, grows too deeply into the wall of the woman’s uterus and blocks some or all of the cervix. This makes the usual separation of the placenta from the uterus during birth difficult.
One hundred women who are concerned about how medical teams dealt with their PAS have contacted Amisha and Nik Adhia, who set up the Action for Accreta campaign. The couple have collated the women’s experiences into a dossier of stories that vividly illustrate how often the condition goes undetected and the appalling physical consequences for those involved.
The 100 cases reveal “a dangerous gap in maternity care” and “systemic failures” that should prompt UK hospitals to do much more to train staff how to spot and treat PAS once it is diagnosed, say campaigners. Politicians from all the main parties at Westminster are supporting their call for a major overhaul in how the NHS manages the condition.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 6 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Black people in England twice as likely to suffer stroke as white counterparts

People from black backgrounds in England are twice as likely to experience strokes as their white counterparts, while also being less likely to receive timely care, according to the largest study of its kind.
The study, conducted by researchers at King’s College London and presented at the European Stroke Organisation conference, analysed 30 years of stroke incidents from the South London Stroke Register, one of the longest-running population-based stroke registers in the world.
Within a population of 333,000 people, according to the analysis, 7,726 strokes occurred. And while stroke incidence fell by 34% between 1995-99 and 2010-14, the rate rose again by 13% between 2020 and 2024.
The analysis also found that during this period where stroke incidents were on the rise, people from black African and Caribbean backgrounds were more than twice as likely to experience a stroke compared with their white counterparts.
More specifically, stroke incidence was 131% higher in black African and 100% higher in black Caribbean populations in comparison with their white counterparts.
People from black backgrounds are up to 47% more likely to have high blood pressure, and are also up to twice as likely to have diabetes than their white counterparts, even after adjusting for other risk factors including socioeconomic background.
Dr Camila Pantoja-Ruiz, of King’s College London, the lead author of the study, said: “This trend may partly reflect the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which reduced access to primary care, blood pressure monitoring and prescribing, particularly affecting black and deprived communities.”
She added: “These patterns of increased stroke risk in these communities may also be influenced by broader factors, including racism, unconscious bias and socioeconomic circumstances, which can impact access to and quality of care."
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 6 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Trusts see surge in AI-generated complaints

Trusts’ complaints teams are facing a wave of AI-generated complaints letters which can run to dozens of pages, deploying inaccurate legal arguments and containing hallucinated information, HSJ has learned.
Multiple senior NHS figures have told HSJ they are seeing a marked increase in formal complaints drafted with the help of large language models such as ChatGPT.
The correspondence is becoming more legally complex, more detailed and harder to engage with than traditional patient complaint letters.
One chief executive said the rise in AI-generated complaints was increasing the overall volume of complaints and putting a strain on complaints and patient advice and liaison service (PALS) teams.
For example, AI tools are referencing and interpreting trust policies and the law with a precision that requires significantly more resource to address.
James Biggin-Lamming, director of strategy and transformation at London North West Healthcare Trust, said doctors had received complaint letters “clearly using AI that has hallucinated treatment options patients then feel they have been denied”.
He wrote on LinkedIn that this was impacting trust with patients and families, but was also draining for teams and “risks diverting time and energy from helping care for people”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 5 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Leaked review warns CDCs a ‘burden’ on trusts

Community diagnostic centres could become a financial “burden” on providers without extra funding and changes to how tests are paid for, the programme’s architect has warned in an internal review obtained by HSJ.
The NHS England review, led by Sir Mike Richards, follows ministers making community diagnostic centres a central plank of their elective recovery plan and mission to shift care into the community.
The review concluded prices for some imaging tests are making significant amounts of CDC work loss-making – and says additional central funding over “multiple years” is required.
It also called for CDCs to be rebranded and a major publicity campaign to address “low level[s] of awareness and understanding” among clinicians and the public about what they do. It also highlighted substantial digital challenges.
The report declared the programme has “successfully” established 170 operational CDCs “delivering more than 20 million tests, primarily in new community settings”. But it also warned more funding and national directives are needed to “fully utilise” the centres.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 5 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

US appeals court blocks mail-order access to abortion drugs

Access to mifepristone, the FDA-approved medication used to end pregnancy, could become severely limited following a ruling from a US appeals court on Friday, which temporarily blocked the drug from being dispensed through the mail.
The decision is for now the most sweeping threat to abortion access since the supreme court rolled back abortion rights in 2022, said Kelly Baden, vice-president at the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.
“If allowed to stand, it would severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state, including those where abortion is broadly legal and where voters have acted to protect abortion rights,” she said.
The so-called “abortion pill” is part of a two-drug regimen backed by decades of evidence for its efficacy and safety, and is used in the majority of abortions in the US.
Usage has risen in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the 2022 ruling from the supreme court that overturned federal protections for the right to an abortion. In the year after that decision, the FDA formally modified its regulations to allow the drug to be prescribed online, expanding its use even in states where abortion care was being constricted.
The drug has become a key target for the anti-abortion movement, and a series of lawsuits have challenged the drug’s initial approval in 2000 and the subsequent rules making it easier to obtain.
Meanwhile, with the FDA now under Trump, the agency has opened a review of the medication. Once this analysis is completed, officials at the agency said, they will determine if changes to its regulations are warranted.
Reproductive rights advocates have voiced concerns that the review could further limit mifepristone’s use, despite the evidence supporting its safety.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 4 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Thousands of cancer patients in England to benefit from new immunotherapy jab

Thousands of patients across England each year will benefit from a new immunotherapy treatment that can be used for several types of cancer, the NHS has announced.
The injectable form of pembrolizumab, which can be administered in under two minutes, kills cancer cells by blocking a protein called PD-1, which acts as a brake on immune responses, allowing the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells.
This new form of immunotherapy will replace pembrolizumab, which is administered via an intravenous drip in a specialist clean room. Preparing and administering it can be time-consuming and expensive for NHS staff to maintain, taking about two hours per session for patient.
Most of the 14,000 patients already taking pembrolizumab are expected to benefit from the new injectable version.
It is estimated the treatment, which will be given every three weeks as a one-minute injection or every six weeks as a two-minute injection, will save the NHS more than 100,000 hours of preparation and treatment time each year.
Up to 15,000 cancer patients became eligible last year for nivolumab, an immunotherapy injection that takes three to five minutes to administer. With the addition of this treatment, there are now two immunotherapies available for almost 30 types of cancer on the NHS.
Prof Peter Johnson, the NHS national clinical director for cancer, said: “This immunotherapy offers a lifeline for thousands of patients and it’s fantastic that this new rapid jab can now take just a minute to deliver – meaning patients can get back to living their lives rather than spending hours in a hospital chair.
“Managing cancer treatment and regular hospital trips can be really exhausting, and not only will this innovation make therapy much quicker and more convenient for patients, it will help free up vital appointments for NHS teams to treat more people and continue to bring down waiting times.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 4 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Trust criticised over child death

The care of a five-year-old boy who died at a specialist hospital “did not meet the standards expected”, an external review has said.
A report by consultancy Niche raises concerns about the treatment of Ayaan Haroon, who died at Sheffield Children’s Hospital in March 2023 after being admitted with a lower respiratory tract infection eight days earlier.
He had a history of breathing difficulties and had been hospitalised five times throughout his life for respiratory illnesses. He died in paediatric intensive care (PICU) from overwhelming disseminated adenovirus bronchopneumonia.
Concerns include a 12-hour delay in starting specialist oxygen therapy; delays in escalation to PICU, which may have “marginally” increased chances of survival; failure to respond to blood results showing significant deterioration; “weak” governance structures; and “substantially inadequate” bereavement support. However, the report suggests these were unlikely to change the outcome.
The review team also said: ”[The child’s] end of life care and the family’s experience did not meet the standards expected, or aspired to, by the trust.”
And they criticised record-keeping, warning the “practice of not recording names, dates and times… would not stand up to legal and professional scrutiny”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 1 May 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Watchdog uncovers £1.8m illegal medicines and steroids network

A large-scale criminal network supplying illegal steroids and prescription-only medication worth £1.8 million has been uncovered by the medicines watchdog, leading to seven men being sentenced.
The investigation by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) Criminal Enforcement Unit discovered more than 130,000 doses of steroids and unauthorised medicines, including products such as tamoxifen, finasteride and modafinil.
The illegal supply was traced after a website linked to the Bolton area was suspected of selling performance-enhancing steroids and other illegal medicines by the UK Anti-Doping (UKAD).
MHRA investigators traced the activity to a flat above commercial premises on St Helens Road in Bolton, which was being used to store, package, and distribute the drugs.
Seven men were charged with offences including conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, supplying unauthorised medicines, and money laundering to the value of over £1.8 million and received combined sentences totalling more than 21 years’ imprisonment.
“This was a well-organised operation that put people at real risk. Medicines bought outside regulated channels can be unsafe, ineffective or fake,” Tim Duffield, MHRA Head of Intelligence said.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 30 April 2026
Patient Safety Learning

The ability to afford healthcare is at ‘crisis point’ doctors warn - and will consume 20% of America’s GDP in next decade

Fewer and fewer Americans can afford healthcare and the situation has reached a “crisis point,” according to an urgent warning from the American Heart Association.
And with total healthcare spending expected to account for 20 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product over the coming decade, people could feel even more financial pain, medical experts cautioned Thursday.
Total healthcare spending by U.S. adults currently sits at $5 trillion annually, driven largely by chronic disease, the association’s advisory said.
Rising costs often mean that people will forgo initial care, increasing the likelihood for more serious problems and therefore greater costs down the road.
The American Heart Association identified some causes behind people’s rising healthcare costs as complex administration at facilities, and a lack of investment in prevention and public health across the U.S. The doctors called on lawmakers and the healthcare industry to address the crisis.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 30 April 2026
Patient Safety Learning

‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.
Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. 
David had first gone to his GP more than a month earlier complaining of extreme breathlessness, and over the following weeks he had become increasingly thin and weak with suspected heart failure. But it had taken repeated visits to the accident and emergency ward, being sent home each time, before he was finally given a bed in a specialist cardiac unit last July.
“Every day we saw him he got worse,” says Karen, a teacher from Aynho, in West Northamptonshire. “My mum kept saying: ‘Please, my husband is not right, this is not David. He is so unbelievably poorly.’ He couldn’t walk, he didn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat. Even the other gentlemen in the bay were saying to the nurses: ‘Can you not see this man is extremely unwell?’”
“He was on the edge of the bed, rocking, and he could barely speak. He was so yellow, so gaunt. I just walked to the desk and I said: ‘You will get a consultant here now. I am invoking Martha’s rule. I want somebody to see my dad right now.’”
Within minutes, says his daughter, the room was full of doctors. “He was very close to death. His lungs were filled with fluid. He had multi-organ failure. Within the hour he was in intensive care, fighting for his life.” A senior consultant told Karen her father was “the sickest person in the hospital”.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS foundation trust (OUH), which oversees the hospital, has apologised to the family and admitted it made mistakes in treating David’s cardiac failure. While some of the delays in assessing him were “unfortunately due to service pressures and staffing limitations”, the hospital said after a review of his case, clinicians also failed to spot that he was getting worse, and by the time they did, he was too unwell to have the recommended surgical valve repair. In addition, a “lapse in communication” meant there was confusion between two different teams over which was responsible for his care.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 1 May 2026
Further reading on the hub:
The formative evaluation of the implementation of Martha’s Rule: Interim Report (NIHR Policy Research Unit, March 2026) Embedding Martha's Rule into practice—Lessons from the national pilot Martha's Rule - Merope Mills (Martha’s mother) explains Martha’s story (31 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

AI outperforms doctors in Harvard trial of emergency triage diagnoses

A groundbreaking Harvard study has found that AI systems outperformed human doctors in high-pressure emergency medicine triage, diagnosing more accurately in the potentially life and death moments when people are first rushed to hospital.
The results were described by independent experts as showing “a genuine step forward” in the clinical reasoning of AIs and came as part of trials that tested the responses of hundreds of doctors against an AI.
The authors said the results, published in the journal Science, showed large language models (LLMs) “have eclipsed most benchmarks of clinical reasoning”.
One experiment focused on 76 patients who arrived at the emergency room of a Boston hospital. An AI and a pair of human doctors were each given the same standard electronic health record to read – typically including vital sign data, demographic information and a few sentences from a nurse about why the patient was there. The AI identified the exact or very close diagnosis in 67% of cases, beating the human doctors, who were right only 50%-55% of the time.
It showed the AIs’ advantage was particularly pronounced in triage circumstances requiring rapid decisions with minimal information. The diagnosis accuracy of the AI – OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model – rose to 82% when more detail was available, compared with the 70-79% accuracy achieved by the expert humans, though this difference was not statistically significant.
But it is not curtains for emergency doctors yet, the researchers said. The study only tested humans against AIs looking at patient data that can be communicated via text. The AI’s reading of signals, such as the patient’s level of distress and their visual appearance, were not tested. That means the AI was performing more like a clinician producing a second opinion based on paperwork.
“I don’t think our findings mean that AI replaces doctors,” said Arjun Manrai, one of the lead authors of the study who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School. “I think it does mean that we’re witnessing a really profound change in technology that will reshape medicine.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 30 April 2026
Patient Safety Learning

The struggle to get hold of medication in England is set to get worse

"It's just terrifying," Chloe says. "I get panic attacks." The 29-year-old has epilepsy and is struggling to get the drugs she needs to prevent life-threatening seizures.
Her Lamotrigine-based medication is one of hundreds of everyday drugs that are now extremely hard to get hold of in England.
She has other medications that she can easily get, but the one that helps her to safely live her life and go to work is the one that she struggles to get access to.
"In the last few weeks I haven't been able to get the right medications and my seizures came back. I fell and hit my head and have a big scar across my back now from it," Chloe says.
Access to medicines in England is at its most fragile point in years. People living with heart conditions, stroke risks, eye infections, bipolar and ADHD - to name just a few - are among those unable to get the medications they depend on.
Shortages are caused in part by surging global prices. However, the problem is also being exacerbated by a complicated process of funding medicines in the UK.
For patients, it often means rounds of phone calls and anxiety. Chloe says she sometimes sits on the bus for several hours "going on patrol" hunting for the medication she needs.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 1 May 2026
Related reading on the hub:
Creon shortages: “It’s just another thing patients with cystic fibrosis could do without” Medication supply issues: Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) Medication supply issues: A pharmacist’s perspective Medicines shortages: minimising the impact on patients (a blog by Catherine Picton)
Patient Safety Learning
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