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Mark Hughes

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  1. Mark Hughes
    The NHS waiting list in England has fallen after three months of consecutive rises.
    At the end of September, it stood at 7.39 million, down from 7.41 million the month before. Of those waiting, 61.8% of patients had been waiting less than 18 weeks.
    That is the best performance for more than two years, but is well below the target of 92%, which the government has promised it will hit by the end of the parliament.
    The NHS also released figures showing more than one million people came forward for flu jabs in the past week after a vaccination "SOS" was issued last week amid the early rise in flu cases this year.
    Read full article.
    Source: BBC News, 13 November 2025
  2. Mark Hughes
    The number of deaths linked to superbugs that do not respond to frontline antibiotics increased by 17% in England last year, according to official figures that raise concerns about the ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance.
    The figures, released by the UK Health Security Agency, also revealed a large rise in private prescriptions for antibiotics, with 22% dispensed through the private sector in 2024.
    The increase in private prescribing is partly explained by the Pharmacy First scheme, a flagship policy of Rishi Sunak’s government that allows patients to be prescribed antibiotics for common illnesses without seeing a GP, raising questions about whether the shift in prescribing patterns risks contributing to the rise in resistance.
    “Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest health threats we face,” said the UKHSA’s chief executive, Prof Susan Hopkins. “More people than ever are acquiring infections that cannot be effectively treated by antibiotics. This puts them at greater risk of serious illness and even death, with our poorest communities hit the hardest.”
    The emergence of drug-resistant strains is an inevitable consequence of natural selection. Whenever the drugs are used they wipe out some bugs, but any survivors multiply and are transmitted.
    Limiting the use of antibiotics to when they are most needed is one of the most effective ways of combatting the spread of resistance, which it has been predicted could cause as many as 10 million deaths a year globally by 2050.
    The latest surveillance data found that the number of antibiotic-resistant infections in 2024 equated to an average of nearly 400 newly reported cases a week.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Guardian, 13 November 2025
  3. Mark Hughes
    Dozens of patients were put at risk after two of the UK's leading transplant centres continued fitting a heart device - despite knowing of concerns it had a higher mortality rate than its rival product.
    Concerns were raised by the NHS about the device in 2018. Of the patients who were subsequently fitted with the mechanical pump, half went on to die within three years.
    LVADs have been life-savers for decades and, for a number of years, hospitals had a choice of two devices - the HeartWare HVAD, sold by the Irish-American company Medtronic, and the Heartmate III, sold by US manufacturer Abbott.
    In October 2018, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), which oversees transplants in the UK, conducted a preliminary audit comparing how the two pumps had performed. A more detailed analysis followed in April 2019.
    The results were stark. Of the 119 patients who had received the Medtronic device, 45% - or 54 patients - had died within two years. In contrast, just 15% - 15 out of 97 patients - who were given the Abbott pump had died over the same period. Similarly, the number of complications - such as strokes or needing a new pump - were significantly higher for the Medtronic device. The audit said there were "no significant differences" between the types of patients who received each device.
    One of the UK's six transplant centres, the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, did not wait for the NHS analysis. It had picked up on the growing international concerns and had stopped using the Medtronic device in February 2018 "after considering the results of two randomised controlled trials", as their clinicians "considered the Heartmate III as superior".
    However, Harefield Hospital continued to solely use the Medtronic device until early 2021, shortly after the manufacturer had issued a safety notice. The Freeman Hospital continued until June 2021, when the manufacturer withdrew it from sale "in the interest of patient safety".
    The regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), continued to approve the device for use after the 2019 analysis, though it had not been informed by the NHS of the data's existence.
    Read full article.
    Source: BBC News, 12 November 2025
  4. Mark Hughes
    Breast mesh implants promoted as “internal bra” supports have become the subject of legal and regulatory scrutiny. Not cleared for this use by the FDA, the mesh implants have been linked to higher rates of infections, reoperation and implant failure.
    The “internal bra” technique uses synthetic or biologic mesh in combination with other breast surgeries to lift breasts and enhance results. In November 2023, the FDA released a safety communication emphasizing that no surgical mesh products are cleared or approved for use in breast surgeries. Despite this, mesh products have seen increased off-label use for internal bra techniques in breast surgeries with implants.
    There are approximately 100,000 breast reconstruction surgeries per year and more than 300,000 breast augmentation surgeries per year in the US. The use of breast mesh in these procedures could put people at risk of higher complication rates.
    Read full article.
    Source: Drugwatch, 30 October 2025
  5. Mark Hughes
    NHS Lothian will face increased intervention from the Scottish Government, the health secretary has said, after a damning review found a “culture of mistrust” had led to patients being harmed at one of Scotland’s busiest maternity units.
    The decision comes as the director of NHS Lothian apologised after a report from Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) found “serious concerns” about staffing shortages for maternity care at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
    Health Secretary Neil Gray announced in the wake of the report the health board had been escalated to level three on the NHS support framework, meaning “significantly enhanced support” would now be provided. He said a Scottish Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce would be set up, to listen to “women’s experiences of maternity services”, as he said he was “deeply disappointed and concerned” by the HIS report.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Scotsman, 29 October 2025
  6. Mark Hughes
    Elderly patients have been left languishing in their own excrement and puddles of urine for hours on end in NHS hospitals, a major charity has said.
    Corridor care is a “crisis in plain sight” in A&Es across the country, charity Age UK warned ministers, as it described “truly shocking” incidents of poor care of elderly people waiting days on end for attention.
    In a new report, The Longest Wait, Age UK revealed “heartbreaking” incidents of poor care, including a woman dying from a heart attack after being left to wait; a patient who was “lost” after being put on a disused corridor; and a man left hooked up to an IV drip in a chair for 20 hours, who soiled himself because he was unable to get to the toilet.
    Age UK warned that many patients are unwilling to go to A&E, even if they are in a life-threatening situation, because of their past experiences.
    It called on the government to “urgently” tackle corridor care as it warned that older people are disproportionately affected.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Independent, 31 October 2025
    Related reading
    Corridor care and patient safety - a series of blogs shining a light on some of the key patient safety issues surrounding corridor care
  7. Mark Hughes
    The UK's winter flu season has begun five weeks earlier than usual, health officials are warning.
    The UK Health Security Agency said cases were rising quickly among children and young people – and warned the virus would soon start to spread across older age groups. The organisation urged people eligible for the flu vaccine to come forward to get protected. But they said it was too early to say how difficult and serious this year's flu season would be.
    One of the concerns is that the flu season could peak before the majority of the vulnerable groups have got immunised - the vaccination campaign has only been running a few weeks. Two of the worst winter flu seasons of the past decade have been seen in the last three years, something partly attributed to the bounce-back of the virus after Covid restrictions and when immunity has been low. Last year nearly 8,000 people died from flu and in the 2022-23 flu season there were nearly 16,000 deaths.
    Read full article.
    Source: BBC News, 30 October 2025
  8. Mark Hughes
    For Shelley Mclean, every night is a sleepless one, just to keep her 11-year-old daughter alive.
    Missy was born with a rare genetic condition that affects her breathing, digestion and movement. She spent the first nine months of her life in hospital before coming home with a breathing tube in her throat, a feeding tube in her stomach, and a line into her bowel. At first, the family had some NHS-funded nighttime care to help keep Missy safe while she slept. But when her local NHS body decided she no longer met the threshold, that support was taken away. Now, Missy's mother is responsible for her care.
    Children like Missy who leave hospital but still need intensive support are meant to receive what's called NHS continuing care - specialist help for those with the most complex, life-limiting or life-threatening needs. But new figures obtained by Sky News reveal just how uneven continuing care has become. NHS spending on children's continuing care ranges from just 80p to £6 per head depending on where families live.
    Out of almost 100,000 children in England with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition, only around 4% - roughly 4,400 - receive NHS continuing care funding. And more than half of all disabled children referred for this kind of support are rejected.
    Read full article.
    Source: Sky News, 30 October 2025
  9. Mark Hughes
    Patients are being left in hospital corridors for “dangerously long periods” health leaders have warned. The long waits mean patients are missing timely access to specialist care.
    New data shows fewer than one in five acutely unwell patients are receiving their first assessment in an acute medical unit (AMU), the The Society for Acute Medicine (SAM) said.
    AMUs are short stay assessment and admission units for patients who need specialist assessment and/or opinion. Patients are referred to AMUs by emergency department (A&E) doctors, other hospital departments, or directly by a GP.
    Read full story.
    Source: The Independent, 10 October 2025
    Related Reading
    Corridor care and patient safety
  10. Mark Hughes
    One in 17 hospitalizations in 2024-2025 — representing more than 153,000 people — resulted in someone experiencing a potentially preventable harm such as a drug error, hospital-acquired infection, a “patient accident” like a fall or radiation burn or some other incident serious enough to require treatment or a prolonged stay, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
    In a quarter of those cases, people experienced two or more harmful “events” during their stay. The data are based on 2.6 million hospital stays. 
    The overall rate of harm has remained at six per cent for the fifth year in a row, higher than pre-COVID years. 
    Read full story.
    Source: National Post, 9 October 2025
  11. Mark Hughes
    The hospital waiting list in England has risen for the third month in a row with experts warning the government's key NHS priority - tackling the backlog - is at risk.
    At the end of August the waiting list for routine treatments hit 7.41 million – in May it was 7.36 million. The proportion waiting longer than the target time of 18 weeks has also risen.
    Experts said the government was facing a significant challenge reducing waits, but ministers said its investment in the NHS would pay off. The government has promised that by the end of this parliament it will hit the 18-week waiting time target – something that has not been done for a decade.
    Read full story.
    Source: BBC News, 9 October 2025
  12. Mark Hughes
    In a statement made to The Pharmaceutical Journal, Henrietta Hughes has urged the government to provide a full response to recommendations made in her February 2024 report.
    The Hughes Report, published in February 2024, called on the government to set up a two-stage redress scheme, including a possible £100,000 for each patient harmed as a result of valproate use, followed by a main scheme payout, based on the individual needs of each patient.
    Hughes’ exclusive statement to The Pharmaceutical Journal follows a letter written by campaigners from the Independent Fetal Anti-Convulsant Trust and Fetal Anti-Convulsant Syndrome Association to the government calling for compensation and clarity.
    The letter, addressed to Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, and Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer was written by Janet Williams and Emma Murphy, both of whom are mothers of children with foetal valproate syndrome.
    Read full story.
    Source: The Pharmaceutical Journal, 9 October 2025
    Related reading
    The Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh (Patient Safety Commissioner for England, 7 February 2024) Reflections on The Hughes Report: Pelvic mesh, sodium valproate, hormone pregnancy tests and options for redress (a blog from Patient Safety Learning) A year on from The Hughes Report: Urgent action needed on redress (Patient Safety Learning, 7 February 2025)
  13. Mark Hughes
    A major teaching trust was forced to close its maternity services to new births twice in two days, due to unsafe staffing levels, HSJ can reveal.
    Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust temporarily closed suites at St James’s Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary sites on 16 and 17 August.
    All new patients were diverted to neighbouring hospitals as a result of the closures, which ran from 4pm on Saturday to 7am on Sunday, and from 2.30pm on Sunday to 6.30am on Monday.
    Read full article. (Paywalled)
    Source: Health Service Journal, 22 August 2025
  14. Mark Hughes
    A new technology could reduce NHS waiting lists for prosthetic legs by half, a study has found. The software personalises prosthetic leg fittings based on data from previous patients.
    The data-driven fittings for below the knee prosthetics were, on average, as comfortable for patients as those created by highly skilled prosthetists, the NHS trial suggested. Technology developed by Radii Devices and the University of Southampton is hoping to halve the number of clinical visits for the fitting from an average of four to two using the software.
    Nearly 100 people have now had a prosthetic leg designed this way, across multiple centres in the UK and the USA.
    The study has now moved into its final stage where the new software is developed alongside clinicians to see how it can be best incorporated into their practices.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Independent, 22 August 2025
  15. Mark Hughes
    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Thursday it is reinstating a federal task force for safer childhood vaccines after 27 years.
    The original task force was created by Congress under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 to improve the safety, quality and oversight of vaccines administered to American children. It was disbanded in 1998 and has been inactive ever since.
    HHS said the task force will be led by Jay Bhattacharya, the National Institutes of Health director, and represented by senior leaders of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    Read full article
    Source: Reuters, 14 August 2025
  16. Mark Hughes
    NHS England is launching a recruitment campaign to attract trust and integrated care board non-executive directors (NEDs) in the face of an increasing number of retirements and resignations.
    A tender notice published by NHS England says the service has “experienced difficulty in recruiting NEDs” and therefore needs to “refresh” its “talent pipeline”.
    It adds this is particularly important as “a large number of NEDs are coming to the end of their terms of office”, while others are “stepping down” for other reasons.
    Read full article (Paywalled).
    Source: Health Service Journal, 15 August 2025
  17. Mark Hughes
    Artificial intelligence has invented two new potential antibiotics that could kill drug-resistant gonorrhoea and MRSA, researchers have revealed.
    The drugs were designed atom-by-atom by the AI and killed the superbugs in laboratory and animal tests. The two compounds still need years of refinement and clinical trials before they could be prescribed.
    Researchers have previously used AI to trawl through thousands of known chemicals in an attempt to identify ones with potential to become new antibiotics. Now, the MIT team have gone one step further by using generative AI to design antibiotics in the first place for the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea and for potentially-deadly MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).
    Read full article.
    Source: BBC News, 14 August 2025
  18. Mark Hughes
    Patients who use social media to help plan cosmetic procedures will now be able to access more reliable trustworthy information thanks to a landmark new initiative between the government and TikTok. 
    More people are using social media apps like TikTok to research potentially risky operations - like hair transplants and dental work - abroad as they are often cheaper or more readily available than in the UK but are often presented with slick marketing campaigns that do not highlight the dangers of the surgery.  
    To help keep these patients informed, TikTok and the government have partnered with medical influencers, like Midwife Marley and Doc Tally to create content to show the risks, help carry out thorough research and provides advice on how to make trips as safe as possible.
    The Foreign Office will also provide more detailed travel advice for those seeking to travel abroad for ‘tweakments.’
    Read full article.
    Source: Department of Health and Social Care, 15 August 2025
    Related reading: Crackdown on unsafe cosmetic procedures to protect the public
  19. Mark Hughes
    A vulnerable 14-year-old girl was unlawfully killed when an agency support worker failed to keep her under observation at a secure psychiatric unit, an inquest jury has concluded.
    The worker, who used a false identity, left Ruth Szymankiewicz alone even though she had complex mental health issues and was judged to need constant watching because she was a suicide risk.
    Ruth was able to slip back to her room and harmed herself at the privately run Huntercombe hospital near Maidenhead on 12 February 2022. She died two days later.
    During the inquest it emerged that the worker, who went under the stolen identity Ebo Acheampong, had never worked at any hospital before the day he was put in charge of observing Ruth and did not receive an induction before his shift.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Guardian, 14 August 2025
  20. Mark Hughes
    The Trump administration has been talking to pharmaceutical companies about ways to raise prices of medicines in Europe and elsewhere in order to cut medication costs in the United States, according to a White House official and three pharmaceutical industry sources.
    US officials told drug companies it would support their international negotiations with governments if they adopt "most favored nation" pricing under which US drug costs match the lower rates offered to other wealthy countries, the White House official said.
    The US is currently negotiating bilateral trade deals and setting tariff rates on the sector.
    The Trump administration has asked some companies for ideas on raising prices abroad, two of the sources said, describing multiple meetings over several months aimed at lowering US prices without triggering cuts to research and development spending pharmaceutical companies insist would result.
    Read full article.
    Source: Reuters, 7 August 2025
  21. Mark Hughes
    Patients are now able to view the results of at-home blood and DNA tests from MyHealthChecked on the NHS App, through an integration with Patients Know Best (PKB). 
    PKB is a personal health record which integrates data sources from NHS and non-NHS health providers as well as devices and information from patients.
    The integration with over-the-counter test provider MyHealthChecked, which went live on 25 July 2025, also allows patients to securely share their test results with healthcare professionals. 
    The service is available for customers wherever PKB is live with the NHS App, which includes 22 integrated care systems in England, and Swansea Bay University Health Board in Wales.
    Read full article.
    Source: Digital Health, 8 August 2025
  22. Mark Hughes
    AI chatbots are frequently prone to repeating false and misleading medical information, according to new research.
    Experts have warned of a “critical need” for stronger safeguards before the bots can be used in healthcare, adding models not only repeated untrue claims but also “confidently” expanded on them to create explanations for non-existent medical conditions.
    The team from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine created fictional patient scenarios, each containing one fabricated medical terms such as a made-up disease, symptom, or test, and submitted them to leading large language models. In a study published in journal Communications Medicine, they said that the chatbots “routinely” expanded on the fake medical detail, giving a “detailed, decisive response based entirely on fiction”.
    Read full article.
    Source: The Independent, 7 August 2025
  23. Mark Hughes
    Tom Parker was working alone three miles (4.8km) off the Devon coast when his fishing boat hit a wave and lurched to one side.
    He didn't know it at the time, but Tom, 37, had broken his fibula and badly damaged his ankle ligaments. He somehow hauled in his fishing gear and made it to hospital to get patched up, but months after the accident his wound just wouldn't heal properly.
    It was only after he turned up at an innovative clinic on the quayside in Brixham that he was put on strong antibiotics and told he needed a second operation.
    "Without that service, I would have probably ended up with my leg turning septic and I'm not too sure what would have happened after that," he says.
    Under the 10 Year Health Plan, published last month, health officials said the NHS in England needed to undergo a radical shift, away from hospitals to community care, and away from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place.
    Read full article.
    Source: BBC News, 8 August 2025
  24. Mark Hughes
    There have been more measles cases reported in the US in the past month – at least 89 confirmed cases since the start of July – than in most years since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter century ago, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    And this year’s total – 1,356 confirmed cases since January – is higher than it’s been in more than 30 years. There have been 32 outbreaks this year, accounting for nearly 90% of all cases since January. Only 10 states remain at zero cases reported this year.
    Experts say that declining childhood vaccination rates across the US coupled with ongoing spread of measles in the US – and large outbreaks in neighbouring Canada and Mexico – are raising concerns as children start to gather for the new school year.
    Read full article.
    Source: CNN, 6 August 2025
  25. Mark Hughes
    A General Medical Council survey has found that 46 per cent of clinicians in Scotland see care failings weekly, a higher proportion than elsewhere in the UK.
    The survey showed a reduction in the number of doctors noting safety incidents weekly in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since 2023 — but an increase in Scotland.
    Backlogs in accident and emergency departments, resulting in thousands of patients stuck on trolleys for hours queueing for beds, are thought to be one of the issues driving potential errors.
    Read full article (paywalled).
    Source: The Times, 7 August 2025

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