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Sam

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  1. Sam
    A hospital review of mesh operations by a surgeon who left dozens of patients in agony is now looking into another type of procedure he carried out.
    Tony Dixon, who used mesh surgery to treat bowel problems, has always maintained he did the operations in good faith.
    Now it has emerged that other patients who had their rectum stapled are also being written to.
    Spire Hospital Bristol said its "comprehensive" review remains ongoing.
    Mr Dixon pioneered the use of artificial mesh to lift prolapsed bowels and a review of the care he gave patients receiving Laparoscopic ventral mesh rectopexy has already concluded.
    Now the Spire has contacted patients who underwent a Stapled Transanal Rectal Resection (STARR operation) with Mr Dixon.
    Many of the affected patients have told the BBC they did not give informed consent for the procedure and are in chronic pain.
    Read full story
    Source: 11 September 2023
  2. Sam
    The family of a student who died after hospital staff missed that she had developed sepsis despite a string of warning signs have claimed she was the victim of a “lack of care”, as a coroner ruled there were “gross” failures in her treatment.
    Staff at Southmead hospital in Bristol failed to carry out the sepsis screening and observations needed to keep 20-year-old Maddy Lawrence safe after she was taken to hospital with a dislocated hip sustained in a rugby tackle.
    Outside court, the student’s mother, Karen Lawrence, said: “It has been a constant struggle to understand how a healthy, strong and fit 20-year-old could lose her life to sepsis which was allowed to develop under the care of professionals.
    “Her screams of pain and our pleas for help were merely managed, temporarily quietened with painkillers while the infection progressed unnoticed by hospital staff.
    “Our daughter was failed by a number of nurses and medical staff; symptoms were ignored, observations were not taken, on one occasion for 16 hours. There was no curiosity, basic tests were not completed even when hospital policy required them.
    “Maddy herself expressed concern on multiple occasions but her pain was not being taken seriously. As well as failing to fulfil their duty, those nurses and medical staff offered no sympathy, no compassion and little attention.
    “This failure meant Maddy was not given the chance to beat sepsis. Significant delays in its discovery meant the crucial window for treatment was missed. Maddy did not die due to under-staffing or a lack of money. Her death was the result of a lack of care.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 8 September 2023
  3. Sam
    A 33-year-old New Zealand woman who was accused of faking debilitating symptoms has died of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS).
    Stephanie Aston became an advocate for patients' rights after doctors refused to take her EDS symptoms seriously and blamed them on mental illness. She was just 25 when those symptoms began in October 2015. At the time, she did not know she had inherited the health condition.
    EDS refers to a group of inherited disorders caused by gene mutations that weaken the connective tissues. There are at least 13 different types of EDS, and the conditions range from mild to life-threatening. EDS is extremely rare.
    Aston sought medical help after her symptoms—which included severe migraines, abdominal pain, joint dislocations, easy bruising, iron deficiency, fainting, tachycardia, and multiple injuries—began in 2015, per the New Zealand Herald. She was referred to Auckland Hospital, where a doctor accused her of causing her own illness.
    Because of his accusations, Aston was placed on psychiatric watch. She had to undergo rectal examinations and was accused of practising self-harming behaviours. She was suspected of faking fainting spells, fevers, and coughing fits, and there were also suggestions that her mother was physically harming her.
    There was no basis for the doctor’s accusations that her illness was caused by psychiatric issues, Aston told the New Zealand Herald. “There was no evaluation prior to this, no psych consultation, nothing,” she said.
    She eventually complained to the Auckland District Health Board and the Health and Disability Commissioner of New Zealand. “I feel like I have had my dignity stripped and my rights seriously breached,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 6 September 2023
  4. Sam
    Tonjanic Hill was overjoyed in 2017 when she learned she was 14 weeks pregnant. Despite a history of uterine fibroids, she never lost faith that she would someday have a child.

    But, just five weeks after confirming her pregnancy she seemed unable to stop urinating. She didn’t realize her amniotic fluid was leaking. Then came the excruciating pain.
    “I ended up going to the emergency room,” said Hill, now 35. “That’s where I had the most traumatic, horrible experience ever.”
    An ultrasound showed she had lost 90% of her amniotic fluid. Yet, over the angry protestations of her nurse, Hill said, the attending doctor insisted Hill be discharged and see her own OB-GYN the next day. The doctor brushed off her concerns, she said. The next morning, her OB-GYN’s office rushed her back to the hospital. But she lost her baby.
    Black women are less likely than women from other racial groups to carry a pregnancy to term — and in Harris County, where Houston is located, when they do, their infants are about twice as likely to die before their 1st birthday as those from other racial groups. Black fetal and infant deaths are part of a continuum of systemic failures that contribute to disproportionately high Black maternal mortality rates.
    “This is a public health crisis as it relates to Black moms and babies that is completely preventable,” said Barbie Robinson, who took over as executive director of Harris County Public Health in March 2021. “When you look at the breakdown demographically — who’s disproportionately impacted by the lack of access — we have a situation where we can expect these horrible outcomes.”
    Read full story
    Source: KFF Health News, 24 August 2023
  5. Sam
    More than 120,000 died waiting for NHS treatment, as backlog hits all-time high. 
    The number of NHS patients dying while waiting for treatment has doubled in five years, new figures suggest.
    More than 120,000 people died while on waiting lists last year, according to an analysis of health service data. The total is even higher than it was in lockdown, with health leaders saying the pandemic and NHS strikes have made clearing backlogs more difficult.
    Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “These figures are a stark reminder about the potential repercussions of long waits for care. They are heartbreaking for the families who will have lost loved ones and deeply dismaying for NHS leaders, who continue to do all they can in extremely difficult circumstances."
    “Covid will have had an impact on these figures – but we can’t get away from the fact that a decade of under-investment in the NHS has left it with not enough staff, beds and vital equipment, as well as a crumbling estate in urgent need of repair and investment.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 31 August 2023
  6. Sam
    The inquiry into how nurse Lucy Letby was able to murder seven babies will now have greater powers to compel witnesses to give evidence.
    In a significant move, ministers upgraded the independent inquiry after criticism from families of the victims that it did not go far enough.
    The inquiry, ordered after Letby was found guilty this month, was not initially given full statutory powers.
    Health Secretary Steve Barclay said he had listened to the families.
    He said he had decided a statutory inquiry led by a judge was the best way forward and "respects the wishes" of the families.
    Mr Barclay said the key advantage was the power of compulsion.
    "My priority is to ensure the families get the answers they deserve and people are held to account where they need to be," he added.
    He said an announcement about who would chair the inquiry would be made in the coming days - ministers have already said it will be a judge.
    Richard Scorer, a lawyer who is representing two of the families, welcomed the government's announcement.
    "It is essential that the chair has the powers to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath, and to force disclosure of documents. Without these powers, the inquiry would have been ineffectual and our clients would have been deprived of the answers they need and deserve," he said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 30 August 2023
  7. Sam
    Details of allegations against a surgeon who left dozens of patients in agony after undergoing mesh operations have been published.
    A tribunal will look at whether Tony Dixon failed to provide adequate clinical care to six patients at Southmead Hospital and the private Spire Hospital in Bristol.
    He had pioneered the use of artificial mesh to lift prolapsed bowels.
    The surgeon, who was dismissed in 2019, has always maintained the operations were done in good faith, and that any surgery could have complications.
    The Medical Practitioners Tribunal, which starts in Manchester on 11 September and is due to end on 23 November, will look into allegations that between 2010 and 2016 Mr Dixon failed to provide adequate clinical care in a number of areas, including:
    ensuring procedures for some of the patients were clinically indicated adequately advising some of the patients regarding options for treatment obtaining informed consent before performing clinical procedures adequately performing a procedure for one patient providing adequate post-operative care for some communicating appropriately with some of the patients and their family members. Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 August 2023
  8. Sam
    The United States is in the middle of a maternal health crisis. Today, a woman in the US is twice as likely to die from pregnancy than her mother was a generation ago.
    Statistics from the World Health Organization show the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the developed world. Women in the US are 10 or more times likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than mothers in Poland, Spain or Norway.    
    Some of the worst statistics come out of the South - in places like Louisiana, where deep pockets of poverty, health care deserts and racial biases have long put mothers at risk.
    Dr Rebekah Gee: The state of maternal health in the United States is abysmal. And Louisiana is the highest maternal mortality in the US. So, in the developed world, Louisiana has the worst outcomes for women having babies."
    A third of Louisiana's parishes are maternal health deserts – meaning they don't have a single OB-GYN, leaving more than 51 thousand women in the state without easy access to care and three times more likely to die of pregnancy related causes.
    Read full story
    Source: CBS News, 20 August 2023
  9. Sam
    Hundreds of migrants have declined NHS treatment after being presented with upfront charges over the past two years, amid complaints the government’s “hostile environment” on immigration remains firmly in place.
    Data compiled by the Observer under the Freedom of Information Act shows that, since January 2021, 3,545 patients across 68 hospital trusts in England have been told they must pay upfront charges totalling £7.1m. Of those, 905 patients across 58 trusts did not proceed with treatment.
    NHS trusts in England have been required to seek advance payment before providing elective care to certain migrants since October 2017. It covers overseas visitors and migrants ruled ineligible for free healthcare, such as failed asylum seekers and those who have overstayed their visa. The policy is not supposed to cover urgent or “immediately necessary” treatment. However, there have been multiple cases of people wrongly denied treatment.
    Dr Laura-Jane Smith, a consultant respiratory physician and member of the campaign group Medact, said: “I had a patient we diagnosed as an emergency with lung cancer but they were told they would be charged upfront for treatment and then never returned for a follow-up. This was someone who had been in the country for years but who did not have the right official migration status. A cancer diagnosis is devastating. To then be abandoned by the health service is inhumane.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 20 August 2023
  10. Sam
    At least 20 patients have suffered harm due to their follow-up appointments not being booked at a hospital department where people ‘continue to come to harm’, according to an internal review.
    Torbay and South Devon Foundation Trust is reviewing its ophthalmology service after 22 people were harmed following “system failures” with their follow-up appointments.  
    The trust’s initial investigation, obtained by HSJ with the Freedom of Information Act, warned there were “potentially” other patients affected by the failures who had not yet been identified.
    In response, the trust said its ophthalmology department had already “undertaken a significant amount of work to address a large proportion of the actions arising from the review”, including building another operating theatre and recruiting more staff.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 August 2023
  11. Sam
    In September last year, Ebrima Sajnia watched helplessly as his young son slowly died in front of his eyes.
    Mr Sajnia says three-year-old Lamin was set to start attending nursery school in a few weeks when he got a fever. A doctor at a local clinic prescribed medicines, including a cough syrup.
    Over the next few days, Lamin's condition deteriorated as he struggled to eat and even urinate. He was admitted to a hospital, where doctors detected kidney issues. Within seven days, Lamin was dead.
    He was among around 70 children - younger than five - who died in The Gambia of acute kidney injuries between July and October last year after consuming one of four cough syrups made by an Indian company called Maiden Pharmaceuticals.
    In October, the World Health Organization (WHO) linked the deaths to the syrups, saying it had found "unacceptable" levels of toxins in the medicines.
    A Gambian parliamentary panel also concluded after investigations that the deaths were the result of the children ingesting the syrups.
    Both Maiden Pharmaceuticals and the Indian government have denied this - India said in December that the syrups complied with quality standards when tested domestically.
    It's an assessment that Amadou Camara, chairperson of the Gambian panel that investigated the deaths, strongly disagrees with.
    "We have evidence. We tested these drugs. [They] contained unacceptable amounts of ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol, and these were directly imported from India, manufactured by Maiden," he says. Ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol are toxic to humans and could be fatal if consumed".
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 21 August 2023
  12. Sam
    More than 3,000 patients have died following incidents in the Irish health service since 2018, new data shows.
    New HSE data shows more than 480,000 incidents potentially causing harm were recorded across hospitals and community healthcare groups since 2018. These include falls, attacks on patients or staff, problems with medication, treating the wrong limb, or reactions to medical devices, among other issues.
    Last year’s total of 106,967 was the highest of five years recorded, up from 94,422 in 2018.
    While around half the incidents annually led to no injury, last year 0.65% or 556 led to a death. That stood at 0.59% or 557 deaths in 2018.
    A spokesperson for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said the figures are very high, but not surprising.
    “Hospitals are not supposed to be dangerous places," she said.
    "No matter how highly skilled your staff are, patient safety issues and the risk of missed care incidents are inevitable in a situation where patients are lining corridors on trolleys and there aren’t enough staff to care for them."
    Read full story
    Source: Irish Examiner, 18 August 2023
  13. Sam
    Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK's most prolific child serial killer in modern times.
    The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
    Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.
    Commenting on the verdict, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Rob Behrens said:
    “We know that, in general, people work in the health service because they want to help and that when things go wrong it is not intentional. At the same time, and too often we see the commitment to public safety in the NHS undone by a defensive leadership culture across the NHS.
    “The Lucy Letby story is different and almost without parallel, because it reveals an intent to harm by one individual. As such, it is one of the darkest crimes ever committed in our health service. Our first thoughts are with the families of the children who died. 
    “However, we also heard throughout the trial, evidence from clinicians that they repeatedly raised concerns and called for action. It seems that nobody listened and nothing happened. More babies were harmed and more babies were killed. Those who lost their children deserve to know whether Letby could have been stopped and how it was that doctors were not listened to and their concerns not addressed for so long. Patients and staff alike deserve an NHS that values accountability, transparency, and a willingness to learn.  
    “Good leadership always listens, especially when it’s about patient safety. Poor leadership makes it difficult for people to raise concerns when things go wrong, even though complaints are vital for patient safety and to stop mistakes being repeated. We need to see significant improvements to culture and leadership across the NHS so that the voices of staff and patients can be heard, both with regard to everyday pressures and mistakes and, very exceptionally, when there are warnings of real evil.”
  14. Sam
    Older patients should walk around hospital wards and along corridors to prevent their muscles weakening, research suggests.
    Lying in a hospital bed for several days can cause a sharp deterioration in strength, leaving some elderly patients struggling to walk or live independently when they are discharged.
    New research shows this decline can be prevented if patients are helped to walk for at least 25 minutes a day while in hospital.
    The best effect was observed when patients walked around the hospital for at least 50 minutes a day. The study suggested that a mixture of physical activity, such as 20 minutes working with resistance bands while seated and 20 minutes of walking, also helped.
    The authors said patients who remained active during their stay in hospital were less likely to suffer “adverse events” after they were discharged.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 4 August 2023
  15. Sam
    A man died after A&E doctors sent him home from hospital and “told him to drink Lucozade” despite him vomiting 100 times in 24 hours.
    Nick Rousseau died from an undiagnosed blocked bowel in 2019 after doctors at Milton Keynes Hospital failed to spot that he had the life-threatening condition.
    The 47-year-old was sent home twice in three days and reassured he “would be alright” as doctors believed he had gastroenteritis, his “devastated” wife Kimberly White said.
    But Mr Rousseau was actually suffering from an ischaemic bowel, a condition which blocks the arteries to the bowel. He had been to see his doctors several times and had lost three stones in weight over two years due to vomiting and diarrhoea but was never diagnosed.
    His family, represented by Osbornes Law, received a six-figure payout in June from Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. While it did not admit negligence, it accepted that there were features of Mr Rousseau’s illness which could have justified admission, inpatient observation, and further tests, which could have given a definitive diagnosis.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 4 August 2023
  16. Sam
    The prospect of waiting at least six weeks for a biopsy was too much for Neil Perkin. In February, the 56-year-old was told that he had suspected prostate cancer which needed to be confirmed by examining a sample of his tissue.
    “After the initial appointment with the consultant, there were no letters, texts or anything,” Perkin said. Instead, he decided to pay for it himself: £5,000 – a substantial sum for the part-time ferry operator. The results from a private hospital in Guildford confirmed the cancer.
    “I’d lost faith in the NHS by this point and I went private,” he said. “The cancer was spreading and my surgeon made it clear that if I’d waited for the NHS for my prognosis, [the] chances of cancer recurrence would be far worse.”
    In May he paid another £22,500 for the prostate to be removed at a private hospital in London, with financial help from his family. “I feel let down. It turned out from the pathology that this was urgent and a delay would have made a huge difference to my outcome, my prognosis and quality of life. They got there in the nick of time.”
    Portsmouth Hospitals University Trust said it was sorry to have been unable to meet Perkin’s expectations and strived to provide quality and timely care. “But we recognise that across the NHS there is an increased demand on services and this can impact patient waiting times.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 30 July 2023
  17. Sam
    A director at a major acute trust said it needs to stop “caving in” to demand pressures by opening extra escalation beds.
    Board members at Mid and South Essex were discussing a recent report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which rated medical services as “inadequate”.
    The CQC flagged significant staffing shortages and repeated failures to maintain patient records, among other issues.
    Deputy chair Alan Tobias told yesterday’s public board meeting: “We have just got to hold the line on these [escalation] beds. We never do. Every year we cave in…
    “We have just got to hold the line with this… Do what some other hospitals do, they shut the doors then. We have never had the bottle to do that.”
    Barbara Stuttle, another non-executive director, said: “Our staff are exhausted… We don’t have the staff to give the appropriate care to our patients when we have got extra beds. To have extra beds on wards, I know we have had to do it and I know why, [but] you are expecting an already stretched workforce to stretch even further.
    “And when that happens, something gives. Record keeping, that’s usually the last thing that gets done because they’d much rather give the care to patients.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 28 July 2023
  18. Sam
    An award-winning hospital consultant says he has been “hunted” out of the NHS after 43 years for flagging patient safety failings.
    Peter Duffy, 61, performed his final surgical procedure, supervising a bladder cancer removal, earlier this month at Noble’s Hospital on the Isle of Man.
    He said he had “been looking forward to a good few more years of full-time work — another five, at least”. But the cumulative toll of a long-running whistleblowing dispute with his former employer, Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (UHMBT), instead pushed him into “an abrupt, even savage termination of my calling”.
    The General Medical Council watchdog recently dropped a 30-month probe into Duffy prompted by emails that he alleges were falsified. The emails, which were apparently sent by Duffy in December 2014 but did not surface until 2020, appeared to implicate him in the string of clinical errors that led to the death of Peter Read, a 76-year-old man from Morecambe.
    The GMC concluded that it could not attach weight to the emails as evidence. However, Duffy says the ordeal of “having the responsibility for an avoidable death I’d reported being flipped and of having the finger pointed back at me” drove him to contemplate suicide.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 24 July 2023
  19. Sam
    A nurse-led trial has found that a new electronic tool could reduce the number of preventable injuries and deaths caused by wrongly inserting nasogastric tubes.
    The study, led by Tracy Earley, a consultant nutrition nurse at Royal Preston Hospital, tested a new fibre-optic device which can tell clinicians definitively if a nasogastric tube – which is inserted through the nose and delivers food, hydration and medicine into the stomach – has been placed correctly.
    Currently, to check if nasogastric tubes – also referred to as NG tubes – are in the right place, nurses have to extract bodily fluid from the patient through the tube. Clinicians then test this fluid on a pH strip to judge whether the placement is correct.
    Studies show that interpreting the pH level results in mistakes 12-30% of the time, and that in 46% of cases nurses are unable to draw aspirate at all. This means patients have to undergo x-rays, leaving them without nutrition or treatment for longer.
    The study tested a device called NGPod, which uses a fibre-optic sensor to retrieve the pH reading from the tip of the NG tube leading to a definitive 'yes' or 'no' result in terms of whether it has been placed correctly – removing the need for aspirate or interpretation from the health professional.
    It found that the device was as accurate as pH strip testing, and removed all of the risks associated with making subjective pH strip judgements.
    Read full story
    Source: Nursing Times, 18 July 2023
  20. Sam
    NHS mental health services are stuck in a “vicious cycle” of short staffing and overwhelming pressures, a government committee has warned.
    Rising demand for mental health services has “outstripped” the number of staff working within NHS organisations, according to the public accounts committee.
    A report from the committee warned that ministers must act to get services out of a “doom loop” in which staff shortages is hitting morale and leading people to quit the already-stretched services.
    It found staffing across mental health services has increased by 22% between 2016 and 17 and 2021 and 22 while referrals for care have increased by 44% over the same period.
    Healthcare leaders warned there are 1.8 million people on the waiting list for NHS mental health care with hospital bosses “deeply concerned”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 21 July 2023
  21. Sam
    The government has admitted that many ‘vulnerable’ hospitals ‘suffer with a lack of permanence of leadership’, but said that chiefs are only sacked by NHS England ‘in extreme and exceptional circumstances’.
    The comments were included in the government’s response to the independent investigation into major maternity care failures at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, which highlighted how the practice of repeatedly hiring and firing leaders  had contributed to its problems.
    The investigation said successive chairs and CEOs at the FT were “wrong” to believe it provided adequate care, and urged that they be held accountable. But it said senior management churn had been “wholly counterproductive”, and that it had “found at chief executive, chair and other levels a pattern of hiring and firing, initiated by NHS England” which would “never have been an explicit policy, but [had] become institutionalised”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 July 2023
  22. Sam
    More than 250,000 dementia patients could miss out on new treatments for the disease because they do not have a formal diagnosis, according to government figures.
    NHS data published for the first time shows the prevalence of different types of dementia with which people in England have been diagnosed.
    Dementia is an umbrella term for many different conditions, affecting more than 55 million people worldwide.
    This week, health regulators were urged to approve two new game-changing dementia drugs, after a landmark study confirmed that donanemab slowed cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients by 35%, while last year, a second drug, lecanemab, was found to reduce the rate by 27%.
    The NHS primary care dementia figures estimate that there are about 708,000 people over 65 with dementia in England, but only about 450,000 have a recorded diagnosis. That means that more than 250,000 are missing out on these potential new treatments. 
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 20 July 2023
  23. Sam
    The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by the NHS should be faster, and more frameworks should be in place to get emerging technologies to as many patients as possible, experts have told MPs.
    A number of senior figures from medicine and biotechnology gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee as part of its inquiry into cancer technology.
    Stephen Duffy, a professor of cancer screening at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London, told MPs there is “strong potential” for AI, particularly in areas such as reading mammograms for the breast screening programme.
    However, he warned that there will be “staff issues in terms of the number of staff needed to double-read mammograms”.
    He added: “Those issues aren’t going away. It seems to me that AI systems have already been shown to be very good in terms of detection of cancer on from mammograms, so they’re safe in that respect.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 19 July 2023
  24. Sam
    A trust has been accused of presiding over the deterioration of a key service amid communication problems between senior leaders and a ‘worrying series of resignations’ which has left the department with ‘no doctors’.
    The British Association of Dermatologists wrote to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust on 13 July to request an urgent meeting with the provider’s management to discuss the matter.
    The letter, seen by HSJ, outlines fundamental patient safety and staffing concerns about the trust’s dermatology service and accuses the trust of putting “continued communication barriers” between clinicians and management.
    The letter, signed by BAD president Mabs Chowdhury, says there are now “no doctors in the department” after two consultants and a locum consultant resigned “due to apparent unhappiness with the running of services [and in] a continuation of a worrying series of resignations”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 19 July 2023
  25. Sam
    The majority of trust leaders have reported an increase in the ‘burden’ put on them by regulators, citing more demanding ‘ad hoc’ requests during heightened operational pressure.
    In NHS Providers’ latest survey of NHS trust leaders’ experiences of regulation, a little over half of respondents – 52% – said the burden from NHS England and the Care Quality Commission had increased in the past year.
    The percentage was higher among acute/community and community trusts, and all ambulance and specialist trust respondents said the burden had increased. 
    An even higher overall share of trusts – 59% – said “ad hoc requests” from regulators had increased during the same time period. This includes requests for information or meetings at short notice, diverting staff from day-to-day operational duties.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 July 2023
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