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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Steve Barclay has been named as the new health secretary following the resignation of Sajid Javid, who stepped down after saying he had lost faith in Boris Johnson's leadership.
    He starts as secretary of state at a time when the NHS and social care in England are under serious pressure.
    Amanda Pritchard, the head of NHS England, has warned that the next two years could be even tougher for the health service than the two years since the start of the pandemic.
    NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, described the problems Mr Barclay faces on his first day in the job as "big and pressing".
    At the very top of that list is a record backlog for planned operations.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 6 July 2022
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    The controversial ‘SIM’ mental healthcare model sometimes ‘blurred’ the role of police with healthcare staff, according to results of local reviews seen by HSJ.
    Following a whirlwind of concerns last summer, national clinical director Professor Tim Kendall wrote to mental health trust medical directors urging them to review use of the controversial Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) programme.
    Pressure to investigate the model, which has been used by at least 22 NHS trusts in recent years, came from patient groups and clinicians alike. 
    One year on and results of local reviews, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, have revealed a varying picture of SIM’s use across English mental health trusts.
    Professor Kendall’s letters, seen by HSJ, asked trusts to investigate five key areas of concern. These included: a lack of patient reported outcomes; adherence to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on self-harm and personality disorders; the principle of police involvement in case management; the legal basis for sharing patient records; and human rights/equalities implications.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 7 July 2022
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    An acute trust has had to stand down a new service which led to a ‘marked improvement’ in ambulance handover times, due to a lack of permanent funding to support it.
    In recent months, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust has deployed additional staff to receive and care for patients arriving by ambulance, meaning ambulance crews could be released more quickly.
    A report to the trust board last month said of the scheme: “Data shows a marked improvement in ambulance release times when deployed.”
    However, it would cost £1m per year to fully implement the service and the report said commissioners had confirmed there is “no external funding to support this cost”.
    There have been mounting concerns in recent months over the handover delays experienced by paramedics when taking patients to hospital, which have severely affected their response times for new incidents.
    In a statement, the trust said it was discussing with system partners how the service, which was introduced on a “short-term basis”, could be supported in future. It was delivered by independent ambulance and healthcare provider CIPHER Medical and used at peak times such as bank holiday weekends.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 6 July 2022
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    A two-day old baby died just days after his mother begged doctors to assess her ahead of a c-section despite her pregnancy being deemed high risk. Davi Heer-Do Naschimento was born via emergency caesarean section during the early hours of 29 September 2021, after doctors at Royal London Hospital failed to communicate crucial details during handover meetings.
    An inquest at Poplar Coroners Court heard that his parents, Ruth Heer and Tiago Do Naschimento, had asked numerous times for assistance and were not seen by the obstetrics team the day before her planned caesarean. Tragically, after becoming "feverish" during the night, she was rushed into theatre with Devi sadly dying two days later.
    Speaking on behalf of the family, Francesca Kohler said that there had been “multiple occasions” throughout the day when Ms Heer and her partner had called for assistance and had raised concerns, but were not attended. She had also not been seen by the obstetrics team and had not been spoken to about the upcoming caesarean section.
    Read full story
    Source: My London, 4 July 2022
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    Sajid Javid has resigned and been replaced by Steve Barclay as health and social care secretary. 
    Mr Barclay, previously chief of staff to the prime minister, was reported as having been given the role on Tuesday evening.
    Mr Barclay said: “It is an honour to take up the position of Health and Social Care Secretary. Our NHS and social care staff have showed us time and again - throughout the pandemic and beyond - what it means to work with compassion and dedication to transform lives.  This government is investing more than ever before in our NHS and care services to beat the Covid backlogs, recruit 50,000 more nurses, reform social care and ensure patients across the country can access the care they need.” 
    Mr Barclay’s appointment came hours after Mr Javid — health secretary since June last year — announced his resignation, saying in a letter to Boris Johnson that he “can no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government” and that Mr Johnson has lost his confidence.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 6 July 2022
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has set trusts and systems a ‘100-day challenge’ to discharge more patients from hospital and free up beds before winter.
    David Sloman, chief operating officer of NHSE, has asked leaders of integrated care boards, acute and community trusts in a letter sent last week to adopt 10 “best practice initiatives” which he said “can make a significant difference in facilitating discharge and improving care for patients”.
    Trusts and systems have been given until 30 September to have a “full understanding” of the initiatives (listed below) and “infrastructure in place” to implement them.
    The initiatives include setting expected dates of discharge for patients within 48 hours of admission, “apply seven-day working” to discharge more patients at weekends, treat delayed discharge as “a potential harm event” and to manage workforces in community and social care services “to better match predicted patterns in demand”.
    Sir David has told regional and local leaders that a dedicated national NHSE team will set up “launch meetings” in each system, which will ensure there is “a focus on improving processes and performance around discharge”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 5 July 2022
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    A doctor who killed a mother-of-three when he botched a procedure during a routine appointment has been jailed.
    Dr Isyaka Mamman, now thought to be 85, admitted gross negligence manslaughter over the death of Shahida Parveen, 48, at the Royal Oldham Hospital in 2018.
    He used the wrong needle and inserted it in the wrong place, piercing the sac holding Mrs Parveen's heart.
    Mrs Justice Yip at Manchester Crown Court said Mrs Parveen's death was his fault and sentenced him to three years.
    She also criticised the NHS trust, pointing to the fact that Mamman had both lied about his age and had been involved in two critical incidents similar to that which led to Mrs Parveen's death.
    The court heard Mrs Parveen attended Royal Oldham Hospital on 3 September, 2018, to give a bone marrow sample.
    This is usually taken from the hip bone but, after failing in his first attempt, Mamman tried to instead take it from her sternum.
    This was a "highly dangerous" procedure, the court was told, and one which had led to another of Mamman's patients being permanently disabled three years earlier.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 5 July 2022
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    There are plans for a major overhaul of how people are rescued from car wrecks amid growing evidence that current methods where people wait to be cut free may be harmful.
    Last year there were 127,967 casualties and 1,560 deaths in England caused by motor vehicle collisions. During the same period, more than 7,000 patients needed to helped out of the vehicle through a process known as extrication, where rescue crews use “Jaws of Life” and other tools to pry apart the wreckage, and then carefully lift people out.
    “Since at least the 1980s, firefighters have been trained with movement minimisation as the absolute paradigm,” said Dr Tim Nutbeam, an NHS emergency medicine consultant, and medical lead for the Devon air ambulance. “They’ve been told that one millimetre of movement could turn someone into a wheelchair user, so will often disassemble the car around the patient, to avoid movement of the neck.”
    Yet, doing so takes time – 30 minutes on average – and if that person has another serious injury, such as a head, chest, or abdominal injury, every minute counts.
    Nutbeam began researching the issue and discovered that trapped patients were almost twice as likely to die as those who were rapidly freed from the wreckage. Further, that the prevalence of spinal injuries among such patients was, in fact, extremely low – just 0.7% – and in around half of these cases, they had other serious injuries needing urgent medical attention.
    “Our absolute focus on movement minimisation works for maybe 0.3% of patients, but it extends the entrapment time for 99.7% of them,” Nutbeam said. “Potentially hundreds of people in this country have died as a result of extended entrapment times, and if you multiply that worldwide, it’s many, many people.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 6 July 2022
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    A woman was kept in police custody for 36 hours after having a stillbirth because of suspicions she had an abortion after the legal cut-off point, it has been claimed.
    UK abortion providers, who supported the woman, denied she had flouted the legal deadline and warned the treatment she endured “should be unthinkable in a civilised society”, with “no conceivable” public interest in holding her.
    They added that the woman has been under investigation for a year and a half, but still not charged with any crime.
    Jonathan Lord, medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the UK’s leading abortion providers, told The Independent the woman unexpectedly delivered a stillborn foetus at home that was about 24 weeks old.
    Dr Lord, the co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, who shared the woman’s story with The Independent, said: “She was shocked to give birth due to not knowing how far along pregnant she was. She was admitted to hospital.
    “Because healthcare colleagues were suspicious, and knew she had been in touch with us, an abortion provider, as she told them, they suspected her of having an illegal abortion and called the police. But she wasn’t over the limit for a legal abortion.
    Dr Lord said the experience of having an “extraordinarily unexpected” stillbirth before being taken into police custody during lockdown was “traumatic” and “distressing” for the woman.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 5 July 2022
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS plans to use drones to fly chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients in England to avoid the need for long journeys to collect them.
    The devices will transport doses from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight in a trial that, if successful, will lead to drones being used for similar drops elsewhere.
    They will take 30 minutes to travel acrss the Solent, which will save patients on the island a three to four-hour round trip by ferry or hovercraft.
    On Tuesday, Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive, unveiled the move to help mark the 74th anniversary of the health service’s creation by the postwar Labour government.
    “Delivering chemo by drone is another extraordinary development for cancer patients and shows how the NHS will stop at nothing to ensure people get the treatment they need as promptly as possible, while also cutting costs and carbon emissions,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 5 July 2022
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    It would be “sensible” for hospitals to reintroduce mandatory mask-wearing, the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has said, as several trusts in England and Wales announced the move.
    When NHS rules on wearing masks in England were dropped on 10 June, local health bodies were given the power to draft their own policies. Their guidance, however, is no longer legally enforceable.
    Figures from NHS England show there were about 10,658 patients hospitalised with coronavirus on Monday. Infections have doubled in a fortnight across England – with about 1,000 patients being admitted with the virus each day.
    Prof Andrew Pollard, who is also the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which developed the AstraZeneca jab, said there were an “extraordinary” number of cases at the moment. “I certainly know more people now who have had Covid than at any time in the past,” he told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
    “Because there’s so much in the community, anything we can do in our hospitals to reduce the potential outbreaks make sense and so the mandatory mask wearing in hospitals is very sensible policy,” he added.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 5 July 2022
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    More than 10,000 people are waiting three months or longer following an urgent referral for suspected cancer, internal NHS data seen by HSJ reveals.
    Patients with suspected cancer are not supposed to wait more than two months from a referral. However, information shared with HSJ shows that of the 313,000 people on the national cancer waiting list, just over 10,000 had waited 104 days or more.
    Information about three-month cancer waits is not made public on a regular basis. NHS England publishes data for the total backlog of patients waiting over 62 days, but does not make public the regional or trust-level results, or reveal how many patients are waiting three months or more.
    One senior figure in cancer policy told HSJ the backlog position was “awful” and “a reflection of a worsening trajectory overwhelming diagnostic capacity in particular”. Breast, skin and lower gastro-intestinal cancers saw the biggest increases in long waiters.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 5 July 2022
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) which supplies blood to hospitals is reporting severe supply shortages for the first time since 2018, HSJ has learned.
    Well-placed senior sources said it is close to issuing a formal “amber alert”, which would mean it could not guarantee blood supplies to hospitals, they said. NHSBT acknowledged to HSJ that it was “expecting a difficult few months”.
    NHS trusts would have to start cancelling elective operations if they cannot ensure that necessary bloods are available. NHSBT has already written to trusts asking them not to over-order supplies, and to ensure management plans are in place should the situation escalate.
    Supplies of the common O blood types are thought to be down to less than three days’ worth. If they were to drop to two days, this would trigger an amber alert.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 5 July 2022
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    A mother was killed at her hospital appointment by a doctor who botched a routine procedure, a court has heard.
    Dr Isyaka Mamman, 85, was responsible for a series of critical incidents before the fatal appointment, Manchester Crown Court heard.
    Mamman, who admitted gross negligence manslaughter, had already been sacked by medical watchdogs for lying about his age but was re-employed by the Royal Oldham Hospital.
    He is due to be sentenced on Tuesday.
    Mother-of-three Shahida Parveen, 48, had gone to hospital with her husband for investigations into possible myeloproliferative disorder on 3 September 2018 and a bone marrow biopsy had been advised, Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, told the hearing.
    Normally, bone marrow samples are taken from the hip bone but Mamman, of Cumberland Drive, Royton, Oldham, failed to obtain a sample at the first attempt, he said.
    Instead, he attempted a rare and "highly dangerous" procedure of getting a sample from Ms Parveen's sternum - despite objections from the patient and her husband, the court heard.
    Mamman, using the wrong biopsy needle, missed the bone and pierced her pericardium, the sac containing the heart, causing massive internal bleeding.
    Ms Parveen lost consciousness as soon as the needle was inserted. She died later that day.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 4 July 2022
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    Thalidomide survivors living in Scotland will receive lifelong financial support, the Scottish government has announced.
    Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said he hoped the commitment to provide grants would reassure those affected.
    There are 50 known survivors of the banned pregnancy drug living in Scotland, most now in their 60s. They are among thousands born with limb deformities after their mothers took thalidomide while pregnant.
    The drug was commonly used to treat morning sickness from 1958 to 1961.
    In 2013 the Scottish government committed £14.2m to help survivors over a 10-year period, with the money going on health and living costs.
    Ministers have now extended that agreement, with grants to be allocated to survivors on a needs basis, as assessed by the Thalidomide Trust.
    Mr Yousaf said: "This funding is used to give thalidomide survivors as much assistance as they need to maintain their independence. It has been a vital support in helping people adapt their homes and manage their pain.
    "I hope this lifelong commitment to continue this support will reassure recipients and help them deal with any challenges they face."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 4 July 2022
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Paramedics have begun looking after patients inside an A&E unit, in an initiative by the health service to stop ambulances queueing outside hospitals and ease the strain on overstretched casualty staff.
    The scheme has led to patients being handed over much more quickly at a hospital that was one of the worst in England for sick people being stuck, sometimes for many hours, in the back of an ambulance.
    Queen’s hospital in Romford, in east London, has set up an ambulance receiving centre (ARC) near its main casualty unit in which two London Ambulance Service paramedics are on duty round the clock to help look after patients who would otherwise be trapped outside or in a corridor, waiting to be seen.
    Patients who end up in the new six-cubicle unit behind the A&E nurses’ station have a better experience while they wait and are more comfortable – and safer – because they can have their relatives with them, eat and drink and use the toilet more easily.
    Almost 2,000 patients have passed through the ARC since it opened last November, saving nearly 13,000 hours of ambulance crews’ time and enabling them to respond to emergency calls more quickly.
    However, some A&E doctors regard the scheme as merely “a sticking plaster”, given that queues of ambulances have become common outside many hospitals and that casualty units are treating the lowest percentage of patients within four hours on record.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 3 July 2022
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    An 18-year-old woman suffering a mental health crisis was forced to wait eight-and-a-half days in A&E before getting a bed in a psychiatric hospital – believed to be the longest such wait seen in the NHS.
    Louise (not her real name) had to be looked after by the police and security guards and sleep in a chair and on a mattress of the floor in the A&E at St Helier hospital in Sutton, south London, because no bed was available in a mental health facility.
    She became increasingly “dejected, despairing and desperate” as her ordeal continued and, her mental health worsening while she waited, self-harmed by banging her head off a wall. She absconded twice because she did not know when she would finally start inpatient treatment.
    Louise arrived at St Helier on the evening of  Thursday 16 June and did not get a bed in an NHS psychiatric unit until the early hours of Saturday 25 June, more than eight days later. She was diagnosed last year with emotionally unstable personality disorder and ADHD.
    The mental health charity Mind said it believed it to be the longest wait in A&E ever endured by someone experiencing a mental health crisis, and described it as “unacceptable, disgraceful and dangerous”. It called for urgent action to tackle the inadequacy of NHS mental health provision and bed numbers.
    “An eight-and-a-half day wait in A&E for a mental health bed is both unacceptable and disgraceful. Mind has never heard of a patient in crisis waiting this long to receive the care they need, and serious questions need to be raised as to how anyone – let alone an 18-year-old – was left to suffer for so long without the care she needs,” said Rheian Davies, the head of Mind’s legal unit.
    “This is dangerous for staff, who are not trained to give the acute care the patient needs, and dangerous for the patient, who needs that care immediately – not over a week later."
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 4 July 2022
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    The government is to cut special sick pay for NHS staff off work with Covid from next week – even as cases soar – The Independent has learnt.
    The Department of Health and Social Care is set to announce an end to the enhanced pay arrangements provided during the pandemic, meaning that staff who go off sick with either Covid or Long Covid will be subject to normal sick-pay rules.
    In response to the pandemic, the government announced special arrangements for staff to be paid if they were isolating because of Covid, and to receive a full 12 months’ pay if they were suffering from Long Covid.
    Arrangements will now revert to the normal NHS sick-pay rules, which give workers six months’ full pay and six months’ half pay.
    A senior healthcare source said: “They have agreed to end the arrangement for new people from next week, and then have an implementation period where people who are currently off on this sort of scheme revert back to normal sick-pay entitlement from September.”
    The Royal College of Nursing’s director for England, Patricia Marquis, speaking about the cut in sick pay, said: “This decision is hugely disappointing, given that Covid-19 clearly hasn’t gone away, and nursing staff continue to be disproportionately affected by the virus as they face a higher risk of exposure."
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 2 July 2022
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Elective activity levels are still significantly below those achieved before the pandemic, despite the high profile and government-led drive to recover services.
    HSJ has seen internal data which suggests raw elective activity levels from the start of April to mid-June have averaged around 88% of that recorded in the same period during 2019-20.
    This is despite the NHS aiming to deliver activity levels of at least 110% above the pre-covid benchmark in 2022-23, in its attempt to make inroads into record elective care waiting lists.
    According to senior and well-placed sources, the continued low activity levels have sparked discussions within NHSE about easing or resetting the expectations for the year.
    It had been hoped that increased activity from May onwards would start to drive down the waiting list – or at least slow its growth. However, the data obtained by HSJ suggests activity levels continue to disappoint.
    Sources pointed to repeated covid waves and related pressures through the spring, saying this has hampered efforts to ramp up activity. 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 4 July 2022
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    A struggling mental health trust is being prosecuted over accusations it failed to protect a teenager at a children’s inpatient unit.
    Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Foundation Trust ran the former West Lane Hospital in Middlesbrough until the Care Quality Commission (CQC) closed it in 2019. 
    The CQC is now prosecuting the trust, alleging it breached the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in relation to the death of Christie Harnett, who took her own life at the facility in June 2019.
    In a statement, the regulator claimed TEWV “failed to provide safe care and treatment” by exposing the patient to a “significant risk of avoidable harm”.
    A CQC spokeswoman added: “Our main priority is always the safety of people using health and social care services, and if we have concerns we will not hesitate to take action in line with our regulatory powers. We will report further as soon as we are able to do so.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 30 June 2022
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    A baby suffered brain damage and died due to failings at a hospital where her mother spent hours alone in pain and suffered crucial delays, according to her family.
    Dominic and Ewelina Clyde-Smith told The Independent their daughter, Amelia, was otherwise healthy and poor care led to her being starved of oxygen at birth.
    The couple said they experienced a series of failings at Jersey General Hospital in 2018, including a lack of a doctor during a difficult labour and staff taking “too long” to resuscitate their child.
    They believe Amelia suffered further harm when a ventilator was not plugged in properly during a transfer.
    Amelia was left with brain damage and died aged one month after being put into palliative care.
    Her parents said they have spent years trying to get justice through official channels but are now speaking out for the first time as they believe the standard of care received should be public knowledge.
    “It happened nearly four years ago,” Ms Clyde-Smith says, adding: “But the whole maternity unit just failed us completely.”
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 1 July 2022
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS is facing a shortage of laundry supplies that could have a “knock-on effect” on bed numbers, an industry leader has warned, with staff at one trust recently told to “only change linen if essential”.
    The Textile Services Association (TSA), which represents multiple laundry businesses that provide supplies to the NHS, said Brexit and the pandemic had caused large labour shortages which were making it difficult to meet demand across the healthcare and hospitality sectors.
    David Stevens, chief executive of TSA, told The Independent that “shortages of linen and laundry will have a knock-on effect on the provision of beds in trusts”, adding that the “bounce back post-Covid created a high demand for product and the supply chain was not able to deliver”.
    In an internal email circulated to staff last month at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, one senior official said both the trust and the NHS were “currently experiencing severe issues with the supply chain for linen deliveries,” adding that the situation is “currently very serious”.
    The email reads: “Please follow good Infection Prevention and Control practices, but only change linen if essential. For example, always change bed linen between patients, but do not change inpatients’ bed linen daily if at all possible.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 30 June 2022
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    Trust boards should start scrutinising performance against new indicators set out by NHS England this month as part of a national push to iron out unwarranted variation in performance on key sepsis blood tests, according to an NHSE report.
    Blood cultures are the primary test for detecting blood stream infections, determining what causes them, and directing the best antimicrobial treatment to deal with them. However, it is too often seen as part of a box-ticking exercise, according to a report published by NHSE yesterday.
    Improving performance on this important pathway should be integrated into existing trust governance structures for sepsis, antimicrobial stewardship, and infection control “to help secure a ‘board to ward’ focus on improvement,” the report says.
    It says there is too much variation in how blood cultures are taken prior to analysis and sets out two targets for trusts to use to standardise their collection.
    The first is ensuring clinicians collect two bottles of blood, each containing at least 20ml for culturing. The more blood collected, the higher the rate of detecting bloodstream infections. Blood culture bottles “are frequently underfilled”.
    The second is ensuring blood cultures are loaded into an analyser as fast as possible, within a maximum of four hours, because delaying analysis reduces the volume of viable microorganisms that can be detected.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 1 July 2022
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS is wasting time and money due to a ‘culture of overtreatment’ in cancer care, a report has revealed.
    An All-Party Parliamentary Group paper released on Tuesday on minimally invasive cancer treatments (MICTs) found only 10 per cent of cancer patients are offered non-invasive treatments.
    This is despite many of these treatments being recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
    And many doctors and patients remain in the dark about some of the newer treatments due to ‘a severe lack of education’ .
    The APPG, which is made up of different political parties and peers, was formed to drive awareness of Minimally Invasive Cancer Therapies - proven cancer treatments that provide similar outcomes to cancer surgery but are more targeted and less invasive than traditional surgery.
    Paul Sayer, founder of charity Prost8, which launched its ‘ONE in EIGHT’ campaign to help men with prostate cancer get better access to minimally invasive treatment, said: “The report has identified a culture of overtreatment even when it’s not the best or safest option.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 29 June 2022
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients with long-lasting symptoms from Covid will have access to more convenient tests and checks closer to home, under new NHS measures announced.
    Specialist clinics, dedicated to Long Covid, will now be able to send people for tests at local one stop shops and mobile clinics, rather than people going back to their GP practice for multiple different tests.
    Backed by an additional £90 million investment, the updated Long Covid plan includes ambitions for all patients to have an initial assessment within six weeks to ensure they are diagnosed and treated quickly.
    Latest estimates from the ONS show that around 1.6 million people in England are experiencing ongoing COVID symptoms lasting more than four weeks, with around one in five saying it has a significant impact on their daily life.
    The plan, which has been developed with expert insights from patients, clinicians and partners across the health and care system, shows the NHS has already made significant progress on delivering the 10 commitments it set out for Long Covid services just over one year ago.
    This includes establishing a nationwide network of 90 specialist long COVID clinics, 14 hubs for children and young people and investment in training and guidance to support GP teams in managing the condition.
    Dr Kiren Collison, GP and chair of the NHS long COVID taskforce said: “Long COVID can be devastating for those living with it, and while we continue to learn more about this new condition, it’s important people know they’re not alone, and that the NHS is here for them.
    “In just under two years, the NHS has invested £224m to support people experiencing long term effects from COVID – from setting up specialist clinics, hubs for children, and an online recovery platform, to providing training for GP teams.
    “Today’s plan builds on this world-leading care, to ensure support is there for everyone who needs it, and that patients requiring specialist support can access care in a timely and more convenient way.”
    Read full story
    Source: NHS England, 28 July 2022

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