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Sam

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  1. Sam
    Striking ambulance workers in two regions have said for the first time that they will only answer immediately life-threatening calls — abandoning previous agreements to cover some Category 2 incidents.
    Agreed exemptions (derogations) from ambulance strike action so far this winter have varied regionally and across different unions; but all have so far included some Category 2 cover.
    However, GMB told HSJ its members in the North East and North West today would cover only Category 1 calls – defined as “immediately life threatening” – during their action today.
    Category 2 includes more than any other category, and covers a wide range of incidents including suspected heart attacks and strokes.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 February 2023
  2. Sam
    A high court judge has expressed her “deep frustration” at NHS delays and bureaucracy that mean a suicidal 12-year-old girl has been held on her own, in a locked, windowless room with no access to the outdoors for three weeks.
    In a hearing on Thursday, Mrs Justice Lieven told North Staffordshire combined healthcare NHS trust “you are testing my patience”, after she heard that a proposal to move Becky (not her real name), could not progress until a planning meeting that would not be held until next week, and that a move was not anticipated until 2 March.
    Three sets of doctors at the hospital trust have disagreed as to Becky’s diagnosis; at her most recent assessment doctors said she was not eligible to be sectioned, which would trigger the protections provided by the Mental Health Act, because her mental disorder was not of the “nature and degree” as to warrant her detention.
    In a robust exchange, the judge demanded: “Where’s the urgency in this … I cannot believe that the life and health of a 12-year-old girl is hanging on an issue of NHS procurement, when you cannot tell me what it is you’re trying to procure.
    “If the delay is procurement, I’m not having it,” Lieven continued. “I will use the inherent jurisdiction to make an order. We have a 12-year-old child in a completely inappropriate NHS unit for about three weeks, and it’s suddenly dawned on your client that ‘actually we’ll put her in a Tier 4 unit and we might have to do some [building] work.’”
    Sometimes, the judge said, “public bodies have to move faster”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 17 February 2023
  3. Sam
    Women suffering from chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) are facing mental health crises after being “dismissed and gaslighted” by health professionals for years, according to a leading specialist.
    Daily debilitating pain has left patients feeling suicidal, with those in recovery describing lingering mental health problems “akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)”, said Dr Rajvinder Khasriya, an NHS consultant urogynaecologist at the Whittington Hospital in London.
    Patients have said they feel crippling anxiety over planning ahead to ensure there is always a toilet around, even after their condition has been controlled with treatment. 
    Vicky Matthews, who searched for a diagnosis for three years after a recurrent UTI became chronic, said the condition caused a “gradual decline” in her mental health as medical professionals were unable to pinpoint what was causing her pain.
    "I questioned my pain. I questioned what was going on. I questioned whether it was actually real and that was a pretty awful thing to be dealing with on top of having physical pain,” the 43-year-old said, describing what she felt was “mental torture”.
    Read full story
    Source: I News, 12 February 
    Further reading on the hub
    The clinical implications of bacterial pathogenesis and mucosal immunity in chronic urinary track infection
  4. Sam
    A rapid test that can help preserve the hearing of newborn babies is set to be used by NHS hospitals.
    For some babies, commonly used antibiotics can become toxic. The drugs damage sensory cells inside the ear leading to permanent hearing loss.
    The test - which analyses babies' DNA - can quickly spot those who are vulnerable. It means they can be given a different type of antibiotic and avoid having a lifetime of damaged hearing.
    Gentamicin is the first-choice antibiotic if a newborn develops a serious bacterial infection. It is life-saving and safe for the majority of people.
    However, it has a rare side effect. About 1,250 babies in England and Wales are born with a subtle change in their genetic code that allows the antibiotic to bind more strongly to the hair cells in their ears, where it becomes toxic.
    These tiny hairs help convert sounds into the electrical signals that are understood by the brain. If they are damaged, it results in hearing loss.
    The side effect is well known, but until now there was no test that could get the results fast enough. It would be dangerous to delay treatment, and alternative antibiotics are not used as they have their own side effects and because of concerns about antibiotic resistance.
    The new genedrive kit analyses a sample taken from inside the baby's cheek. Tests at two neonatal intensive care units in Manchester and Liverpool showed it could spot who was susceptible to hearing loss in 26 minutes, and using it did not delay treatment.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 9 February 2023
  5. Sam
    Mental health sick days cost the NHS almost half a million pounds as staff anxiety and stress levels haved skyrocketed.
    Costs have almost doubled compared to before the pandemic from £279 million to £468 million.
    The sickness data shared with The Independent by GoodShape, an employee well-being and performance analysis company, shows the number of staff sick days increased in 2022 to 12 million from 7.21 million in 2019. That is despite the overall number of people working in the NHS increasing from 1.2 to 1.3 million.
    The overall cost to the NHS of absences for the five most common reasons – which includes mental health – increased to a “staggering” £1.85 billion from £1.01 billion between 2019 to 2022, according to figures from GoodShape.
    Covid was still the most common reason for staff sickness last year, according to the analysis, accounting for 4.4 million lost days, while mental health was a close second driving 3 million days off due to illness.
    Pat Cullen, chief executive and general secretary for the Royal College of Nursing said in response: “These figures are shocking but not surprising. With 47,000 vacant nurse posts in England alone, the pressures on staff are unrelenting.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  6. Sam
    The ‘optimal layout’ for an isolation room to contain the spread of Covid has been created following tests at a London hospital.
    The room was designed by researchers at Imperial College London to reduce the risk of infection for health care staff as far as possible.
    Researchers used a state-of-the-art fluid model to simulate the transmission of the virus within an isolation room at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, west London.
    They found that the area of highest risk of infection is above a patient’s bed at a height of 0.7 to two metres, where the highest concentration of Covid is found.
    After the virus is expelled from a patient’s mouth, the research team explained that it gets driven vertically by wind forces within the room.
    The research, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, is based on data collected from the room during a Covid patient’s stay.
    The work centred on the location of the room’s air extractor and filtration rates, the location of the bed, and the health and safety of the hospital staff working within the area.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  7. Sam
    Vulnerable female patients have been sexually “exposed” on a mixed gender ward deemed not “fit for purpose”, the NHS watchdog has warned.
    The Care Quality Commission found that sexual incidents had occured at Hill Crest, a 25-bed mixed gender mental health unit in Redditch, as male and female were being put at risk.
    It found male patients are able to walk into female bathrooms and bedrooms, leading to risks of sexual assault and relationships. It found that sexual incidents had taken on the unit because of the risks.
    The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards is significantly higher than on single-sex wards, data has shown.
    According to the CQC, the trust graded sexual incidents between patients as “low harm” but did not fully consider them or follow up actions to keep patients safe.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  8. Sam
    Nurses could refuse to carry out any further strikes alongside other health workers because of fears over patient safety, The Independent has learnt.
    A mass walkout billed as the largest strike in NHS history is due to take place on Monday as tens of thousands of nurses, paramedics and 999 call handlers walk out in a bid to force ministers to the negotiating table.
    But the coordinated strikes could be a one-off if nurses feel that the decision to take part in direct action compromises patient safety, The Independent has been told.
    One union source said walkouts are not carried out on a “come what may” basis, and that the unions would have to assess whether striking together was “helpful” or not.
    Unions have been escalating their industrial action in recent weeks in an attempt to secure higher pay rises. Any de-escalation in tactics will be seen as a blow to their campaign and a boost to Rishi Sunak’s hopes of riding out the wave of protests.
    With patient safety the priority, sources insisted there are strong local controls that will pull nurses from picket lines if they think there is an issue.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 5 February 2023
  9. Sam
    Free HIV tests that can be done at home are being offered this week to people in England.
    It is part of a government drive to improve diagnosis, which dropped off during the Covid pandemic.
    The kit is small enough to fit through the letterbox and arrives in plain packaging through the post.
    It gives a result within 15 minutes by testing a drop of blood from a finger prick. A "reactive" result means HIV is possible and a clinic check is needed. Support and help is available to arrange this.
    About 4,400 people in England are living with undiagnosed HIV, which comes with serious health risks.
    HIV medication can keep the virus at undetectable levels, meaning you cannot pass HIV on and your health is protected.
    Most people get the virus from someone who is unaware they have it, according to the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) charity which campaigns about and provides services relating to HIV and sexual health.
    HIV testing rates remain a fifth lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic - with heterosexual men in particular now testing far less than in 2019.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 5 February 2023
  10. Sam
    “Frustration with the system was why I went off in the end,” said Conor Calby, 26, a paramedic and Unison rep in southwest England, who was recently off work for a month with burnout. “I felt like I couldn’t do my job and was letting patients down. After a difficult few years it was challenging.”
    While he usually manages to keep a distinct divide between work and home life, burnout eroded that line. He also lost his sleep pattern and appetite.
    The final straw came when what should have been a 15-minute call resulted in three hours on the phone trying to persuade the services that were supposed to help a suicidal patient to come out. “I was on a knife edge. That was due to the system being broken. That’s the trigger.”
    Doctors and nurses are struggling under the strain too. After her third time with burnout - the last resulting in her taking six months off work – Amy Attwater, an A&E doctor, considered leaving the profession altogether.
    Attwater, 36, said in the Covid crisis, during which a colleague killed himself, she started having suicidal thoughts and doubting her own abilities. She twice reported that she was being bullied but said no action was taken.
    “The only thing I was left with was to take time off work. I ended up having therapy, seeing a psychiatrist and being on two antidepressants,” said Attwater, the Midlands-based committee member for Doctors’ Association UK.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 5 February 2023
  11. Sam
    A little boy whose headaches turned out to be a brain tumour died in his parent’s arms just four months after his diagnosis.
    Rayhan Majid, aged four, died after doctors discovered an aggressive grade three medulloblastoma tumour touching his brainstem.
    His mother Nadia, 45, took Rayhan to see four different GPs on six separate occasions after he started having bad headaches and being sick in October 2017.
    No one thought anything was seriously wrong, but when his headaches didn’t clear up Nadia rushed him to A&E at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
    An MRI scan revealed a 3cm x 4cm mass in Rayhan’s brain.
    Rayhan underwent surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible and was told he would need six weeks of radiotherapy and four months of chemotherapy.
    But before the treatment even started another MRI scan revealed the devastating news that the cancer has spread.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 30 January 2023
  12. Sam
    An acute trust has been fined a record sum by the Care Quality Commission for failing to provide safe maternity care, which resulted in the death of a baby after 23 minutes.
    Nottingham University Hospitals must pay a fine of £800,000 within two years. It is only the second time the regulator has brought a case against a NHS maternity service, and the highest fine ever given for failings of this nature.
    The trust pleaded guilty earlier this week to two charges of failing to provide safe care and treatment to Sarah Andrews and her baby daughter Wynter Andrews at Queen’s Medical Centre in 2019, a short time after her birth by Caesarean section. This guilty plea saw the fine reduced from £1.2m. 
    An inquest in 2020 found the death was a “clear and obvious case of neglect”. It was also found there was “an unsafe culture prevailing within maternity services”, including a “failure to listen and respond to staff safety concerns”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 27 January 2023
  13. Sam
    “Pointless” bureaucracy is helping hospitals grind to a halt, a leading doctor has warned.
    Dr Gordon Caldwell, who has just retired after 40 years as an NHS hospital consultant, said “horribly inefficient” paperwork around patients moving in and out of wards is fuelling record delays.
    The senior doctor took a photograph of all the forms required for one medical admission to an NHS hospital, laid against his 5ft 10in frame.
    Dr Caldwell said promises by the NHS to “digitise” the health service had simply seen needless bureaucracy transferred on to poor computer systems that were often incompatible with each other.
    The specialist in general medicine and diabetes endocrinology said: “A few years ago there were estimates that nurses were spending around 50 per cent of their time on paperwork;  now I’d say it’s closer to 70 per cent.”
    “It’s bureaucratic and it’s very slow and horribly inefficient,” he said.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 21 January 2023
  14. Sam
    Thousands of NHS operations and appointments have had to be cancelled because of the nurses' strikes in England this week.
    Over the two days, NHS England said 27,800 bookings had to be rescheduled, including 5,000 operations and treatments.
    There were more than 30 hospital trusts affected with some saying between 10% to 20% of normal activity was lost.
    They warned the dispute was hampering progress in reducing the backlog.
    Saffron Cordery, of NHS Providers, which represents hospital bosses, said the strike days caused "significant disruption" and were "some of the hardest" hospitals have had to cope with this winter.
    She said it would have a "big knock-on effect on efforts to tackle the backlog".
    "The ramifications go well beyond the day itself. We are deeply concerned by this pile-up of demand, which will only continue with more strikes on the horizon."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 21 January 2023
  15. Sam
    Ministers must use legislation to address an “unacceptable and inexcusable” failure to address racial disparity in the use of the Mental Health Act (MHA), MPs and peers have said.
    The joint committee on the draft mental health bill says the bill does not go far enough to tackle failures that were identified in a landmark independent review five years ago, but which still persist and may even be getting worse.
    The committee says the landmark 2018 review of the MHA by Prof Simon Wessely – which the bill is a response to – was intended to address racial and ethnic inequalities, but that those problems have not improved since then “and, on some key metrics, are getting rapidly worse”.
    Lady Buscombe, the committee chair, said: “We believe stronger measures are needed to bring about change, in particular to tackle racial disparity in the use of the MHA. The failure to date is unacceptable and inexcusable.
    “The government should strengthen its proposal on advanced choice and give patients a statutory right to request an advance choice document setting out their preferences for future care and treatment, thereby strengthening both patient choice and their voice.”
    A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are taking action to address the unequal treatment of people from Black and other ethnic minority backgrounds with mental illness – including by tightening the criteria under which people can be detained and subject to community treatment orders.
    “The government will now review the committee’s recommendations and respond in due course.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 19 January 2023
  16. Sam
    Consultants who blew the whistle at a major teaching trust have raised “grave concerns” about the impartiality of three reviews into the safety and bullying allegations they made.
    Last month, Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board announced three investigations into University Hospitals Birmingham, following worries about bullying and poor workplace culture.
    Former trust consultants Manos Nikolousis, John Watkinson and Tristan Reuser have now written to the cross-party reference group holding the investigations to account. Their letter, seen by HSJ, outlines their concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
    The first investigation is reviewing the trusts’ handling of 12 never events, staff deaths including a recent suicide, and 26 GMC referrals. It is being run by former NHS England deputy medical director Mike Bewick and may report as early as next week.
    The second and third reveiws will assess trust leadership and broader cultural issues respectively, and will be carried out with UHB and NHSE. 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 18 January 2023
  17. Sam
    An artificial pancreas has been successfully trialled in patients with type 2 diabetes, a university said.
    Scientists at the University of Cambridge developed the device which combines a glucose monitor and insulin pump with an app.
    The app uses an algorithm that predicts how much insulin is required to keep glucose levels in the target range.
    Average glucose levels fell while patients trialled the device, the university said.
    The researchers have previously shown that an artificial pancreas run by a similar algorithm is effective for patients living with type 1 diabetes, where the body's immune system attacks and destroys the cells that produce insulin.
    Dr Charlotte Boughton from the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, said: "Many people with type 2 diabetes struggle to manage their blood sugar levels using the currently available treatments, such as insulin injections.
    "The artificial pancreas can provide a safe and effective approach to help them, and the technology is simple to use and can be implemented safely at home."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 19 January 2023
    You may also be interested in:
    Top picks: 5 key resources about diabetes Diabetes technology is life-changing, but we need to be prepared when it fails How safe are closed loop artificial pancreas systems?
  18. Sam
    A new state of the art institute for antimicrobial research is to open at Oxford University thanks to a £100 million donation from Ineos.
    Ineos, one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, and the University of Oxford are launching a new world-leading institute to combat the growing global issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which currently causes an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths each year- and could cause over 10m deaths per year by 2050. Predicted to also create a global economic toll of $100 trillion by mid-century, it is arguably the greatest economic and healthcare challenge facing the world post-Covid.
    It is bacterial resistance, caused by overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which arguably poses the broadest threat to global populations. The world is fast running out of effective antibiotics as bacteria evolve to develop resistance to our taken-for-granted treatments. Without urgent collaborative action to prevent common microbes becoming multi-drug resistant (commonly known as ‘superbugs’), we could return to a world where taken-for-granted treatments such as chemotherapy and hip replacements could become too risky, childbirth becomes extremely dangerous, and even a basic scratch could kill.
    The rapid progression of antibacterial resistance is a natural process, exacerbated by significant overuse and misuse of antibiotics not only in human populations but especially in agriculture. Meanwhile, the field of new drug discovery has attracted insufficient scientific interest and funding in recent decades meaning no new antibiotics have been successfully developed since the 1980s.
    Alongside its drug discovery work, the IOI intends to partner with other global leaders in the field of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) to raise awareness and promote responsible use of antimicrobial drugs. The academic team will contribute to research on the type and extent of drug resistant microbes across the world, and critically, will seek to attract and train the brightest minds in science to tackle this ‘silent pandemic’.
    Read full story
    Source: University of Oxford, 19 January 2021
  19. Sam
    Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to humanity, health leaders have warned, as a study reveals it has become a leading cause of death worldwide and is killing about 3,500 people every day.
    More than 1.2 million – and potentially millions more – died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the most comprehensive estimate to date of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

    The stark analysis covering more than 200 countries and territories was published in the Lancet. It says AMR is killing more people than HIV/Aids or malaria. Many hundreds of thousands of deaths are occurring due to common, previously treatable infections, the study says, because bacteria that cause them have become resistant to treatment.
    “These new data reveal the true scale of antimicrobial resistance worldwide, and are a clear signal that we must act now to combat the threat,” said the report’s co-author Prof Chris Murray, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
    “We need to leverage this data to course-correct action and drive innovation if we want to stay ahead in the race against antimicrobial resistance.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 20 January 2022
  20. Sam
    Families of people with dementia have said there is a national crisis in care safety as it emerged that more than half of residential homes reported on by inspectors this year were rated “inadequate” or requiring improvement – up from less than a third pre-pandemic.
    Serious and often shocking failings uncovered in previously “good” homes in recent months include people left in bed “for months”, pain medicine not being administered, violence between residents and malnutrition – including one person who didn’t eat for a month.
    In homes in England where standards have slumped from “good” to “inadequate”, residents’ dressings went unchanged for 20 days, there were “revolting” filthy carpets, “unexplained and unwitnessed wounds” and equipment was ”encrusted with dirt”, inspectors’ reports showed.
    Nearly one in 10 care homes in England that offer dementia support reported on by Care Quality Commission inspectors in 2022 were given the very worst rating – more than three times the ratio in 2019, according to Guardian analysis.
    Read full story
    Source: 29 December 2022
     
  21. Sam
    A GP surgery accidentally told patients they had aggressive lung cancer instead of wishing them a merry Christmas.
    Askern Medical Practice sent the text message to people registered with the surgery in Doncaster on 23 December.
    Sarah Hargreaves, who was waiting for medical test results, said she "broke down" when she received the text, only to be later told it was sent in error.
    The first text told recipients they had "aggressive lung cancer with metastases", a type of secondary malignant growth.
    It directed patients to fill out a DS1500 form, which allows people with terminal diseases to claim certain benefits.
    However, about an hour later people received a second text telling them it was an error and it was meant to wish them a merry Christmas instead.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 29 December 2022
  22. Sam
    Technology that accurately predicts when patients will be ready to leave hospital upon their arrival in A&E is being introduced to solve the NHS bed-blocking crisis.
    The artificial intelligence (AI) software analyses data including age, medical conditions and previous hospital stays to estimate how long a patient will need to remain.
    Hospital managers can then alert social care services in advance about the date when patients are expected to be discharged, allowing care home beds or community care packages to be prepared.
    Nurses said the technology had “revolutionised” their ability to discharge patients on time, meaning people who would otherwise have been stuck in hospital had got home for Christmas.
    The new technology, developed by the British AI company Faculty, is being tested at four NHS hospitals in Wales belonging to the Hywel Dda health board. Analysis suggests that the tool will save NHS trusts 3,000 bed days and £1.4 million a year by speeding up discharges, which in turn frees beds for elective procedures such as hip replacements.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 26 December 2022
  23. Sam
    Woodside Care Village in Warwick is staged like a town centre in miniature, with benches and a fountain, cafe tables and front doors to homes styled as either “town”, “country” or “classical”. But none of the places are quite what they seem, because here everything has a greater purpose: to improve the wellbeing of people with dementia.
    Modelled on a groundbreaking Dutch experiment in looking after people with Alzheimer’s disease, the purpose-built facility, which opened in 2019, is quietly breaking new ground for a better kind of dementia care.
    “Everything is dressed and staged to look familiar,” said Jo Cheshire, the communications manager for the home’s operator, WCS. “We try to make sure people aren’t severing their links with the past. We have one lady who works in the launderette with a badge, because that’s what she did before. It feels like they are contributing to the community.”
    “The idea is you have freedom,” said Cheshire. “If you come upon a locked door it can increase agitation, that’s unsettling for the other residents and it makes the carer’s job harder.”
    Staff ratios are higher than normal, at two staff for every five or six people rather than the usual one. This means staff can spend more time interacting with the residents.
    Staff are briefed with a “this is me” document, which details the likes and dislikes of each person with dementia and has photos through their lives, the time they like to get up, when they like to eat. 
    A clinical trial of such “person-centred” dementia care in 69 care homes in London and Buckinghamshire published in 2020 showed that it improved quality of life for people with dementia and reduced agitation and the burden of depression or aggression. It also reduced hospital and GP visits.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 30 December 2022
  24. Sam
    Some integrated care systems (ICSs) still require “an awful lot of control” from the centre, Patricia Hewitt has told HSJ, tempering any expectations that her government-commissioned review will bring about a wholesale roll-back of national performance management.
    The former Labour health secretary, who is also an integrated care board chair, was commissioned in November by chancellor Jeremy Hunt and health secretary Steve Barclay to review ICS autonomy and accountability.
    In her first interview since she started the work, Ms Hewitt also said: 
    She had not ruled out “legislative tweaks” as a result of her review, but emphasised ICBs already had substantial ”soft power”; Some ICBs were still indulging in ‘old school’ combative behaviour, and stressed they should not become ‘top down regulators’; She wanted to “catalyse” the Care Quality Commission’s move to focus on systems and integration; and It appeared there were probably too many non-clinical support staff in the NHS, but not too many managers, and she would look more closely at the issue. Read full story
    Source: HSJ, 30 December 2022
  25. Sam
    The government could scrap a number of NHS targets after a review of the health service, it has been reported.
    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and health secretary Steve Barclay commissioned Patricia Hewitt, a former Labour health secretary, last month to review how the NHS’s new integrated care systems should work, as well as how the health service should work to “empower local leaders”, giving them more autonomy.
    According to the i newspaper, the government could abolish a majority of health service targets as a result of the review, so it can be run along similar lines to schools. Ms Hewitt is set to publish her review next spring.
    The newspaper said ministers believe the NHS has become “overly centralised”, with doctors and trusts having to meet many different targets - more than 70 for GPs - and forced to tailor their work to meet them.
    Instead, the government would rather run the NHS “more like we do the schools system”, a senior government source told the i, giving local leaders increased responsibility on how to effectively meet NHS goals.
    The idea of fewer targets was received positively by the Royal College of GPs, which described many of the targets as “tick box exercises”.
    Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs, told the newspaper that GPs are working under “intense workload” and pressure, with a “bureaucratic burden” adding to their workload.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 26 December 2022
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