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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Experts have disputed Wes Streeting’s claim that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is overdiagnosed in the UK, saying that if anything, the condition is actually likely to be underdiagnosed.
    In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, 32 experts including clinicians, academics, and patients warned the main challenge surrounding ADHD is that services “cannot adequately support”.
    “Alarmist” rhetoric around a fear of overdiagnosis of ADHD could work to “deny” people the care they need, the team said.
    It comes after health secretary Wes Streeting ordered a review into the diagnosis of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions including ADHD.
    Mr Streeting reportedly tasked leading experts with investigating whether common human emotions have become “over-pathologised”.
    Professor Chris Hollis, co-author of the study from the University of Nottingham, said: “While the incidence of ADHD diagnosis has increased significantly since 2020—particularly in women and young adults—NHS administrative data in England shows no evidence of overdiagnosis with the rate of ADHD diagnosis remaining below the expected levels of ADHD in the population."
    He described the recent rise in ADHD diagnosis as a “catch-up” of “many years of under recognition and under diagnosis”.
    “Hence, rather than ‘overdiagnosis’ the real concern should be the unacceptably long waiting times, sometimes over years, that people experience in the NHS for diagnosis, support and treatment,” he continued.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 6 March 2026
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    Circumcision has been classed as a potentially harmful practice in new official guidance for criminal prosecutors in England and Wales, but controversial plans to class it as possible child abuse have been dropped.
    The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided against including circumcision alongside dowry abuse, witchcraft and female genital mutilation in its new guidance on honour-based abuse, after objections from Jewish and Muslim groups when the plans were revealed by the Guardian.
    Instead it has included a similar section on circumcision in updated guidance on offences against the person. It says: “In certain circumstances, such as the procedure being carried out by those falsely claiming to be suitably qualified practitioners or carried out in non-sterile conditions, it can cross the line into a harmful practice.”
    Romain, the convener of Reform Beit Din, Progressive Judaism’s religious court, said he approved of the altered wording. “I very much welcome the change of attitude by the CPS not to castigate circumcision, as it is an important practice for so many people of different faiths and cultures,” he told the Guardian.
    He added: “Circumcision can be safe and meaningful if done by experts, but rogue operators can both bring it into disrepute and endanger children.”
    Since 2001, circumcision has been a factor in the deaths of seven boys, including three babies who bled to death. Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS trust admitted 29 babies between 2022 and 2024 with serious complications from circumcision, including sepsis and haemorrhage, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws.
    Last December, a coroner issued warnings about insufficient regulation over who can perform a circumcision, after the death of a six-month-old boy, Mohamed Abdisamad, from a streptococcus infection in 2023.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 5 March 2026
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has intervened to delay the roll-out of electronic patient record systems at two trusts, due to major concerns over the operational impact.
    A major go-live of a Nervecentre EPR at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals, due last week, was suspended.
    And roll-out of elements of Nervecentre systems at Sherwood Forest Hospitals has also been delayed, HSJ understands.
    Several sources said the delays were ordered by NHSE due to the likely disruption to elective activity and emergency care. National leaders are trying to hit annual recovery targets for the end of this month.
    Concerns about accident and emergency disruption heightened when Nottingham University Hospitals Trust had to declare a critical incident after it went live with Nervecentre in November. 
    In the autumn, NHSE chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told trust bosses he would be making the final call on whether EPR launches would go ahead, adding a further layer of scrutiny.
    At the time, a national source told HSJ: “While electronic records can have huge benefits, the reality is we as a system need to pull our fingers out, invest in the training, job planning and process re-engineering, and make sure we’re really seeing and feeling the benefit, not a productivity loss. And suppliers need to help make that true.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 6 March 2026
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS has “hollowed out” community and primary care and become a “national hospital service”, according to the influential lead of a government review of social care.
    Baroness Louise Casey, who is chairing an independent commission on reforming social care reporting to the prime minister, made her comments during a speech at the Nuffield Trust’s annual summit today. 
    During her address she also criticised integrated care boards for paying private firms “to find ways to cut how they pay out Continuing Healthcare budgets” and allowing them to take a profit if they were successful. She said this was “quite astonishing”.
    The respected Whitehall trouble-shooter warned ministers she would be “watching” them to make sure Continuing Healthcare funding was not “sucked up into the world of acute hospitals”.
    She said: “It is my belief that we really have a national hospital service, not a national health service, and that may feel tough and may feel unfair, but that’s what it looks like to me…
    “As the NHS has evolved, it has withdrawn from the community, reducing the number of beds they offer other than for acute or specialised care, putting many more staff into hospitals whilst hollowing out the staff numbers in community and primary care provision.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 5 March 2026
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    A leading trust CEO and former national director has warned the mental health sector feels “abandoned”, with no long-term plan and its “share of spend falling like a stone”.
    Claire Murdoch, who was NHS England’s mental health and learning disabilities lead until she resigned in September, said leaders in the sector were “geared up wanting to go further, faster”, but were being held back as “there is no overarching long-term national plan”.
    She said the service was being “overshadow[ed]” by the current weight put by government and NHSE leadership on “electives, A&E and money”.
    In a comment responding to an HSJ leader column  last week, Ms Murdoch said there were signs that staffing was “faltering”,  while many MH services required investment. She pointed in particular to the need to improve “assertive outreach” to high-risk patients in the community, and tackle widespread long waiting lists, particularly for young people.
    Ms Murdoch, who is also a registered mental health nurse, said “ending the awful practice” of out-of-area placements – where people are sent a long way from their home area in order to get an inpatient mental health bed – should be “an imperative for all systems”.
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ, 4 March 2026
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    Joanna was a model prisoner who followed the rules. She had been convicted for a non-violent drugs offence and was not deemed to be at high risk of escape, particularly not in the throes of an agonising labour. She hoped to use hypnobirthing, breathing and relaxation techniques to make the birth calmer and more comfortable. Thanks to information provided by the charity Birth Companions she knew it was her right not to be handcuffed during labour. She had highlighted the handcuffing points in the booklet.
    When Joanna went into labour on 30 December 2022, she was taken to hospital, handcuffed and chained to a prison officer. She remained so for the 36 hours of a long, difficult birth. Any thoughts of hypnobirthing went out of the window. “I was crying so much that my nose was too blocked to use any of the breathing techniques,” Joanna says. “I’m the kind of person who is good at researching my rights. So many people had told me during my pregnancy that I wouldn’t have to give birth in handcuffs. I was taken to hospital chained to an officer with handcuffs but assumed they would be removed at the entrance to the hospital.
    “I was so shocked when the cuffs weren’t removed. When I told the prison guards who had brought me to hospital about what the Birth Companions booklet said, they replied: ‘We don’t know what that book is, we’re not going to abide by it.’ I felt so scared. It was my first baby, I didn’t know what to expect from birth and I wasn’t a risk to anyone.”
    Joanna gave an anonymous interview to Channel 4 News in 2025 about her ordeal. The prisons minister, Lord Timpson, subsequently announced last June that an independent investigation would be commissioned and carried out by the prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) into the practice in England of handcuffing pregnant prisoners during antenatal appointments, intimate examinations and labour. Timpson said reports of pregnant women being handcuffed during labour were “deeply concerning”. However, information on the number of prisoners handcuffed during labour and birth is not routinely collected by officials.
    The Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have called for an investigation into the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 4 March 2026
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    Trust boards can “virtually eliminate” corridor care with “the right leadership ambition and focus”, including more walking wards and corridors, NHS England has said.
    National leaders held a meeting last week with execs from the 30 trusts with the biggest corridor care problem. 
    In a letter to all trusts CEOs and chairs today, NHSE said those at the meeting had agreed that a concerted approach, and several actions in particular, could allow the practice to be largely wiped out.
    This includes boards taking “formal ownership” of corridor care as an organisational risk, requiring approval by executive directors, reporting it as an “incident”, and discussing it at each board meeting. NHSE plans to revise its escalation and reporting rules accordingly. 
    NHSE’s letter stressed that “the right leadership ambition and focus” could avoid the practice, which has risen steeply in the past two years, as hospitals have been pressured to off-load ambulances more quickly even when they are very busy. Twelve-hour A&E waits hit a record high in January.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 4 March 2026
    Related reading on the hub:
    Corridor care guidance needs to move beyond what “should” happen and grapple honestly with why it isn’t A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift The crisis of corridor care in the NHS: patient safety concerns and incident reporting
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    A nine-year-old boy suffered "fatal physical harm" after he was operated on by a suspended surgeon at Addenbrooke's hospital.
    Jack Moate died two months after Kuldeep Stohr performed surgery on him in 2015.
    Jack suffered "significant blood loss" during the operation and was left in continuous pain.
    His mother, Elizabeth Moate said: "They sent my boy home, and he died in agony."
    She said she "felt pressured" to give consent for the operation, fearing it might be too much for her son, who had complex medical needs.
    Independent experts recently assessed Jack's case as part of a wider investigation into Ms Stohr's practice.
    They said they had "significant concerns" about his operation, which "carried significant risks" given his condition.
    The reviewers also found no imaging was carried out before he was discharged after his surgery.
    A later scan found his operation had not worked, leaving the procedure "unhealed and unstable".
    Jack's mother said her son was "crying and screaming" with pain when he arrived home.
    "I can't believe that Ms Stohr was unaware of the damage she had done… I'll never be able to forgive the hospital for what happened," she said.
    Read full story
    Source: Sky News, 5 March 2026
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Dentists in England are returning hundreds of millions of pounds a year to the government for unfulfilled NHS care, the BBC has learnt.
    Over the last two years, more than £900m has been handed back - £1 out of every £7 they have been paid - as dentists instead prioritise private work.
    The findings help explain why despite record sums being set aside for NHS dentistry, so many patients are struggling to get one - more than a fifth of people report not being able to access care when they need it.
    The government said improvements were being made this year and any money returned was reinvested into services.
    Nikita Jenkins, 27, from Cornwall, is one of millions of people who has struggled to access NHS dental care.
    She has not seen one for 14 years and has been forced to pay privately for her two young daughters to get treatment as she was told waiting lists locally were seven years long.
    "I tried every dentist in and around my area, but it was near impossible.
    "We were waiting and, in the end, I felt like we had no choice but to take the jump and pay to go private, to ensure that our children had the right health care."
    "Dentistry feels like a luxury, not a necessity, because it's just so inaccessible, which shouldn't be the case - especially for children," she told the BBC.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 5 March 2026
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    MPs have written to health secretary Wes Streeting asking him to stop a “forced merger” between two patient safety bodies.
    The all party parliamentary group (APPG) on patient safety says that the Health Services Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB) should be kept separate, rather than becoming part of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
    APPG co-chair Jeremy Hunt told The BMJ, “At a time when families want honesty and real change, we should be strengthening the HSSIB’s role and ensuring evidence based safety recommendations are properly tracked and implemented, not weakening the very independence that makes it credible.”
    Hunt, a former Conservative health secretary, said, however, that the APPG supported the need to simplify the patient safety landscape which had “become too diffuse and complicated.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: BMJ, 3 March 2026
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Just 6% of surgeons in private hospitals are women, says a report warning that a “private boys’ club” culture stops talented female doctors from getting work.
    Research by the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) found that for some specialties, such as orthopaedics, independent hospitals employ more male doctors than they do women.
    Overall, only 488 of 7,934 surgeons at the country’s biggest private hospital chains are women — substantially lower than the proportion of female surgeons in the NHS.
    More than half of the UK’s doctors are women, but surgery has traditionally been male-dominated and a series of reports in recent years warned of a culture of sexism and harassment.
    Professor Felicity Meyer, a consultant vascular surgeon and chair of the Women in Surgery forum at RCS England, said: “The independent sector now delivers a growing share of surgical care, yet women remain strikingly underrepresented within its surgical workforce.
    “RCS England’s own work has repeatedly shown that this is not just an issue of fairness, but one that affects the resilience, safety and sustainability of the profession as a whole and ultimately impacts patient safety."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 1 March 2026
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    Ten-week-old Carson was struggling to breathe. He was born premature, at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, he was tiny.
    It was suspected that he had picked up an infection which his young lungs could not cope with.
    The team of doctors and nurses had stabilised him but Carson needed an extra level of care. So they called in the experts, and after a short time in intensive care he recovered.
    Southampton Oxford Retrieval Team, external (SORT) are a team of specialists on call 24 hours a day to collect the most poorly children and babies and take them to intensive care, supporting 27 hospitals across the south of England.
    But there is a problem. There are no beds in the paediatric intensive care unit, but the team get on the road anyway.
    They are lead by Michael Griksaitis, a consultant paediatric intensivist at University Hospital Southampton: "We dispatch to go and help the child whether there is a bed or not because actually it is irrelevant.
    "The child still needs critical care, so bed or not the transport team would go out."
    The BBC has learned that despite rising demand on these services, this year SORT will be expected to collect potentially hundreds more children who do not need critical care, but still require transport by ambulance to hospitals.
    This will involve picking up potentially hundreds more children who are less sick, known as level 2 – those who need a high-dependency hospital bed – but with no more resources.
    All 13 retrieval teams UK-wide will be asked to increase their workload despite already being at capacity and without extra funding.
    Most hospitals don't have a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), so the SORT team supports the 27 regional hospitals that call for help when they have done all they can to care for a child.
    "Nowhere in our business case, in our funding, in our set up, were we ever planned to deal with that extra workload," Griksaitis says.
    "When that happens, because it is happening, the demand on the service will increase because we'll have to move even more children to a high dependency unit."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 4 March 2026
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    The government has appointed an MP who has campaigned on patient safety to be the new public health and prevention minister.
    MP Sharon Hodgson will replace Ashley Dalton, who has metastatic breast cancer and yesterday announced she is stepping down. Ms Dalton will continue as MP for West Lancashire.
    The new minister has campaigned for compensation for women injured by pelvic mesh, telling MPs that her mother was one of those who experienced “life-limiting complications” as a result of the implants.
    She chairs a cross-party group of MPs set up to raise awareness of the 2020 Cumberlege review, which called for the appointment of a patient safety commissioner and an overhaul of existing arrangements for redress.
    Earlier this year, Ms Hodgson said it was “frankly insulting” that the government had not issued an official response to a 2024 report into the mesh scandal. Government has failed to decide on compensation for the victims.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 3 March 2026
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    Illegal weight-loss medication has been seized from a farm and home in Lincolnshire suspected of being involved in a criminal network making and selling fake jabs.
    Almost 2,000 doses of the dangerous “skinny jabs” were seized in two raids by officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Lincolnshire Police.
    Manufacturing equipment, suspected pharmaceutical ingredients, packaging and commercial vehicles were also found in the raids. The street value of the finished weight-loss products alone was estimated to be more than £250,000.
    The raids were in response to reports of people “becoming unwell” or finding the products were “ineffective” after using the unregulated drugs, Lincolnshire Police said.
    Health officials warned the unlicensed products are potentially deadly and are often made with “no regard for safety, sterility, or quality”.
    Dr Zubir Ahmed, health innovation and patient safety minister, said: “We will not allow criminals to profit by exploiting people looking for help with their weight.
    “Do not buy weight-loss medicines from unregulated sources. Safe, effective, licensed treatments can make a real difference for those who need them – but they must come from a registered pharmacy, with a valid prescription.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 2 March 2026
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    Dying Australians approved for government-funded aged care home support are struggling to access it, with carers describing a system plagued by delays and lack of control around how funding is spent.
    The accounts of carers and aged care assessors spoken to by Guardian Australia show that beyond the controversial, algorithm-driven assessment process for home care funding, many are left without adequate and timely support even after funding has been approved.
    Emma Nicolle was caring for her dad, Alan, in his Canberra home for several months until he died on Wednesday with cancer. She said “the negligence is staggering”.
    “My dad was clearly dying, so the need was urgent and acute,” Nicolle said.
    “From late October I was begging Aged Care at Home to allow me to order the mechanised bed and wheelchair Dad desperately needed, as he was developing bed sores due to the unsuitable bed and chairs he had no choice [but] to use.
    “He couldn’t shower without the modifications to his bathroom, and getting him in and out of bed, on and off the toilet, and into the car for hospital trips was exhausting, painful and inhumane for both of us.”
    But Nicolle was told there was a mandatory waiting period to spend any budget on certain items.
    Four months after funding was approved, a mechanised bed was delivered. Alan died less than two weeks later.
    Moving her father in and out of bed has left her with injuries. “I have herniated discs myself so this has destroyed my health and caused Dad and I intolerable pain, discomfort, grief and shame.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 28 February 2026
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Four in five adults do not know menopause can trigger a new mental illness, a poll has revealed.
    A YouGov poll, commissioned by the Royal College of Psychiatrists to highlight the lack of awareness and stigma associated with the menopause, also revealed that only 21% of adult women in the UK know a new mental illness can be linked to the menopause.
    That’s in comparison to 81% of people associating the menopause with hot flushes, 74% with mood changes and 64% with a reduced sex drive.
    Just over one in four women (28%) said they feel comfortable speaking to a male boss about menopause.
    This lack of knowledge has meant many women are not seeking or receiving the vital help they need.
    Royal College of Psychiatrists president Dr Lade Smith said: “Menopause can have a significant yet often overlooked impact on women’s mental health and wellbeing. Women account for 51 per cent of the population, and all will experience menopause at some point. This is a societal issue for everyone. Simply put, we must do better.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 2 March 2026
    Further reading on the hub:
    Menopause and mental health: Implications for clinical practice, services and policy (RCPYSCH, March 2026) “It’s not menopause, you’re too young and don’t have the right symptoms"—the difficulties accessing menopause support and treatment Raising awareness of surgical menopause
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    A doctor who gave crucial expert evidence about insulin poisoning for the prosecution of the nurse Lucy Letby was under investigation by the medical regulator at the time due to serious concerns about his fitness to practise.
    The General Medical Council (GMC) opened an investigation into concerns about Prof Peter Hindmarsh, including that he had harmed patients, on the first day he gave evidence at Letby’s trial in late 2022.
    The GMC investigation was still continuing when Hindmarsh gave evidence for a second time at the Letby trial three months later. Great Ormond Street hospital reported Hindmarsh to the GMC after a formal investigation led by his main employer, University College London hospitals trust (UCLH).
    The jury in the trial of the nurse, who was convicted of murdering babies in the Countess of Chester hospital’s neonatal unit, was never informed about any investigation into Hindmarsh, one of the prosecution’s key witnesses.
    While the GMC conducted its investigation, and during some of the period when Hindmarsh gave evidence, a medical tribunal ordered severe restrictions on his work, saying that he “may pose a real risk” to members of the public. The tribunal also considered the allegations about Hindmarsh “may have the potential to impact on his ability to act as an expert witness”.
    Nevertheless, the tribunal permitted him to continue giving expert evidence for the prosecution of Letby. The Crown Prosecution Service told the defence it would oppose any attempt to inform the jury of the GMC investigation, on the basis that the allegations had not reached a final adjudication.
    Ultimately the GMC investigation was never concluded, because Hindmarsh removed himself from the GMC register, a process known as “voluntary erasure”. That effectively ended the investigation, and there was no regulatory finding against him.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 3 March 2026
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    A trust has admitted it was aware of misconduct allegations against a doctor when it hired him – a development described as “deeply troubling” by lawyers arguing that the consultant has since harmed other patients.
    Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust hired Ali Shokouh-Amiri in 2022.
    Dr Shokouh-Amiri, who continues to be employed as a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at MSE, was given a formal warning by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service last year over actions in 2017-18 in a past role. These included removing ovaries from two patients without consent.
    The General Medical Council is currently seeking further action against the doctor, after the MPTS decided against striking him off or suspending him. 
    Following a seven-month Freedom of Information request battle, MSE has confirmed to HSJ that it was aware of misconduct allegations against Dr Shokouh-Amiri at the time of his appointment in 2022.
    Francesca Paul, a partner and medical negligence solicitor at Fletchers Solicitors, said it was “deeply troubling” to discover MSEFT was aware of allegations at the time of employment.
    She said: “For those affected, including a number of patients we are representing, the news that Dr Shokouh-Amiri could have been prevented from harming them will be unimaginably distressing.
    “It raises serious and legitimate questions about the trust’s recruitment and governance processes, particularly why it was considered appropriate to employ a clinician while such allegations were pending.
    “These are not minor failings; they reflect a fundamental disregard for patient dignity and safety.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 3 March 2026
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    A former NHS inspector said a hospital's maternity services may not have had to close if she had been listened to.
    Maternity services at Yeovil District Hospital shut in May 2025 due to safety concerns and are set to reopen in April.
    Amanda Ford, a registered nurse and midwife, said her concerns were not listened to after she witnessed "appalling care" and a baby death that should not have occurred while working for the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB).
    Yeovil District Hospital said it strived to have an open, safe culture and acknowledged it did not always get this right. The HSIB no longer exists and its successor organisations declined to comment.
    Ford, 56, worked for the HSIB in the South West from 2019 to 2020.
    "Yeovil was one of my first units I was asked to go and investigate some incidents," said Ford.
    "Within a month… I just was appalled. One was a baby death. That's a death that shouldn't have occurred - of a very healthy baby.
    "One was a lady who was put through labour, who basically shouldn't have been labouring, and she was lucky to have survived that and her baby survived. It was just appalling care."
    Ford has not provided the BBC with identifying details of either case.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 26 February 2026
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    An NHS England programme designed to improve leadership behaviours and culture in maternity departments following high-profile scandals failed to achieve its aims, an external review has concluded.
    NHSE’s perinatal culture and leadership programme launched in 2022 as part of the three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, with five intakes covering all 120 trusts by mid-2025.
    It followed reviews by Donna Ockenden at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust and Bill Kirkup at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, which identified common challenges, including flaws in leadership, culture, and teamworking.
    The PCLP sought to address these by bringing together senior leaders in maternity and neonatal services as a perinatal quadrumvirate (quad).
    But an external review by academics at the University of Birmingham, shared exclusively with HSJ, has found “limited” evidence of change and that improvements “did not often ripple up/across and down throughout services”.
    The report said: “This was due to an entrenched culture of siloed working within different staff groups, which the PCLP did not create the conditions to overcome, in large part due to quads and staff not having sufficient time to work on this alongside day-to-day operational pressures and a lack of sustained support for quads… from the wider trust.”
    It added: “These challenges were exacerbated in trusts where divisional structures did not lend themselves to collective perinatal working.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 2 March 2026
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    After pulling out of the World Health Organization, the Trump administration is proposing spending $2 billion a year to replicate the global disease surveillance and outbreak functions the United States once helped build and accessed at a fraction of the cost, according to three administration officials briefed on the proposal.
    The effort to build a U.S.-run alternative would re-create systems such as laboratories, data-sharing networks and rapid-response systems the U.S. abandoned when it announced its withdrawal from the WHO last year and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations.
    While President Donald Trump accused the WHO of demanding “unfairly onerous payments,” the alternative his administration is considering carries a price tag about three times what the U.S. contributed annually to the U.N. health agency. The U.S. would build on bilateral agreements with countries and expand the presence of its health agencies to dozens of additional nations, the officials said.
    “This $2 billion in funding to HHS is to build the systems and capacities to do what the WHO did for us,” one official said.
    Public health experts said the effort would be costly and unlikely to match the WHO’s reach.
    “Spending two to three times the cost to create what we already had access to makes absolutely no sense in terms of fiscal stewardship,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who served as a senior covid-19 adviser during the Biden administration. “We’re not going to get the same quality or breadth of information we would have by being in the WHO, or have anywhere the influence we had.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: Washington Post, 19 February 2026
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    A mum-of-three left in "constant, disabling pain" after an operation says women like her should not suffer in silence.
    Kerry Watson, 40, uses a walking stick and takes more than 100 tablets a week to deal with the agony caused by having a vaginal mesh implant to treat a prolapsed bladder in 2014.
    She is 1 of 25 women who have received compensation following operations carried out by a single surgeon in north Wales.
    The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has apologised, admitting Kerry was not fully informed of the risks and side effects or of the alternatives to the mesh surgery.
    Kerry, from Kinmel Bay in Conwy county, said she woke up from the operation in pain which never went away, and got gradually worse.
    "It felt like I had a needle through my back, and it was coming out my front, and I couldn't twist past it," she said.
    "Your mental health is affected. You get brain fog, you're tired, you're fatigued. You can't function as a woman – and that's every day for 10 years," she said.
    "I'm a mum to three boys, but I felt like I was failing. As they were getting older, I couldn't even stand to watch them play football.
    The NHS announced it would pause using vaginal mesh in 2018 following patient safety concerns.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 27 February 2026
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    More than 52,000 patients waited longer than 24 hours to be admitted to hospitals across north-west England last year, a BBC investigation has revealed.
    Known as "corridor care", patients are lining up on trolleys or sitting on chairs, stuck in A&E because there are no beds for them in the wards.
    The Royal College of Nursing has described the situation as a "national emergency" and called on the government to end the practice.
    NHS England said the NHS was currently experiencing its busiest winter on record and hospitals around the country had been "experiencing rising demand for a number of years".
    Dr Michael Gregory, regional medical director for NHS England in the North West, said: "Providing care in corridors is not what we want for our patients, and we are working hard to reduce the use of corridor care and tackle long waits."
    Aside from the misery facing patients, the pressure on medical staff is huge.
    The Royal College of Nursing has been campaigning on the issue for several years.
    "We're hearing from members who are going to work, feeling anxious and upset. We've had members saying they're sitting in their car crying before they go into work," said Simon Browes, the college's North West regional director.
    "It's because they can't do the job they want to do and they're faced with this distressing, relentless situation".
    The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has described the situation countrywide as "a national shame", while the Royal College of Nursing has called it "a national emergency". Both are demanding an end to the practice.
    Browes, who worked as a nurse before taking on his role at the RCN, said the health risks to patients of corridor care are well known.
    "We're going to see people dying who should not die. We're going to see people leaving the profession because they can't work under those conditions any more," he said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 March 2026
    Read our blogs on corridor care:
    How corridor care in the NHS is affecting safety culture The crisis of corridor care in the NHS: patient safety concerns and incident reporting Corridor care: are the health and safety risks being addressed? Corridor care guidance needs to move beyond what “should” happen and grapple honestly with why it isn’t
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    The early detection of brain inflammation could be life-saving, experts have warned, following the tragic death of a 12-year-old girl who died by suicide while suffering from an undiagnosed form of the condition. Mia Lucas developed severe psychosis and was sectioned, ultimately taking her own life in a specialist psychiatric unit, weeks after the onset of her symptoms.
    In the wake of her death, Sheffield coroner Tanyka Rawden has urged for national guidelines to be established for the recognition and diagnosis of autoimmune encephalitis. Campaigners and medical specialists concur, highlighting the urgent need for greater awareness of a condition often missed in various healthcare settings due to its diverse symptoms.
    While the coroner's report was issued earlier this year, some of the world’s foremost experts on encephalitis were already developing crucial national guidelines for doctors. These are anticipated to be published in late 2026.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 2 March 2026
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    The government has admitted that a manifesto pledge was badly designed and is on course to be missed, a year after telling integrated care boards to deliver it.
    Labour’s 2024 manifesto said it “will tackle the immediate [dental] crisis with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments”. A year ago, integrated care boards were told to commission their share of the “additional urgent appointments”  to take place during 2025-26.
    But this week, NHS England wrote to ICBs saying: “The government has now confirmed that the 700,000 commitment will be broadened with immediate effect to all dental appointments measured through courses of treatment.”
    Several sector sources confirmed to HSJ  that the original target was effectively being scrapped.
    Speaking at a conference last week, the former NHSE chief dental officer Sara Hurley said: “It’s lovely that [the government] are going to be able to fiddle with, sorry, amend the definition to what the new appointment offering is.”
    There has been widespread outcry in recent years because in many areas it is extremely difficult to get NHS dental appointments.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 2 March 2026

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