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Sam

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  1. Sam
    Hundreds of thousands of children have been left waiting by the NHS for the developmental therapies they need, with some waiting more than two years, The Independent can reveal.
    The long waiting lists for services such as speech and language therapy will see a generation of children held back in their development and will “impact Britain for the long haul”, according to the head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).
    More than 1,500 children have been left waiting for two years for NHS therapies, according to internal data obtained by The Independent, while a further 9,000 have been waiting for more than a year. The total waiting list for children’s care in the community is 209,000.
    Dr Camilla Kingdon, president of the RCPCH, told The Independent: “The extent of the community waiting lists is extremely alarming. Community health services such as autism services, mental health support and speech and language therapy play a vital role in a child’s development into healthy adulthood, and in helping children from all backgrounds reach their full potential.
    “A lack of access to community health services also has direct implications for children and families in socio-economic terms. Delays accessing these essential services can impact social development, school readiness and educational outcomes, and further drive health inequalities across the country.”
    She said health and care staff are working immensely hard, but that without support they will struggle to address the long delays, which will “impact Britain for the long haul”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 26 December 2022 
  2. Sam
    Coronavirus modelling data will stop being published in early January, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says.
    Statistics covering the growth rate of the virus are currently released fortnightly, but the agency says this is no longer necessary.
    Chief data scientist Dr Nick Watkins said this is due to the UK living with Covid-19 because of vaccines and therapeutics.
    At the height of the pandemic both the R rate and growth rate for England were published weekly. Since April this year it has been published fortnightly.
    Dr Watkins said it served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and government decisions.
    "Vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19," Dr Watkins said.
    "We continue to monitor Covid-19 activity in a similar way to how we monitor a number of other common illnesses and diseases.
    "All data publications are kept under constant review and this modelling data can be reintroduced promptly if needed, for example, if a new variant of concern was to be identified."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 26 December 2022
  3. Sam
    The NHS is set to eliminate hepatitis C in England by 2025 due to targeted screening campaigns for those at risk and effective drug treatments, according to health officials. NHS England said the measures are helping to dramatically cut deaths from the virus five years ahead of global targets.
    Deaths from hepatitis C – including liver disease and cancer – have fallen by 35% since NHS England struck a five-year deal worth almost £1bn to buy antiviral drugs for thousands of patients in 2018.
    The World Health Organization’s target of a 10% reduction in hepatitis C-related death by 2020 has been exceeded threefold in England.
    An NHS screening programme launched in September is also enabling up to 80,000 people unknowingly living with the disease to get a diagnosis and treatment sooner by searching health records for key risk factors, such as historic blood transfusions or HIV.
    Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said the health service was “leading the world” in the drive to save lives and eliminate hepatitis C while also tackling health inequalities.
    He said: “Thanks to targeted screening and because the NHS has a proven track record of striking medicine agreements that give patients access to the latest drugs, we are on track to beat global targets and become the first country to eliminate hepatitis C.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 28 December 2022
  4. Sam
    The health service in England is returning to a payment-by-results-style system for elective activity, new guidance confirms.
    Providers struggled to hit elective targets in 2022-23, in large part due to ongoing covid, emergency care and staffing pressures, but some have argued that incentives to carry out more activity are too weak.
    Proposals for the NHS payment system for 2023-24 issued state: “The large backlog in elective care is a significant issue for the NHS and the patients who rely on it. We want the NHSPS to include an elective funding mechanism which means that providers are paid based on the level of activity they deliver.”
    The plans add: “The approach we are proposing gives providers maximum financial incentive to deliver the elective activity targets they are being set.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 23 December 2022
  5. Sam
    German public research funder Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is conducting an audit of the clinical trials it has supported in the past. The audit was announced in response to a request from TranspariMED asking DFG for a list of all its trials completed between 2009 and 2017, to which DFG replied that it currently has no such comprehensive dataset.
    DFG stated that it is "currently preparing an evaluation of its clinical trials programme. In the framework of this evaluation the data you requested will be collected and analysed, as the outcomes of trials supported by DFG is of high interest including for DFG itself."
    TranspariMED, an organisation which aims to end evidence distortion in medicine, sees this development as a good opportunity for DFG to check whether and when clinical trials were registered and their results made public.
    Previous research has shown that nearly a third of German academic trials never make their results public.
    This not only wastes public money, but also harms patients because it leaves gaps in the evidence base on the efficacy and safety of drugs, medical devices, and non-drug treatments.
    Due to gaps in German law, there is still no legal obligation to make the results of many German clinical trials public.
    Read full story
    Source: TranspariMed, 20 December 2022
  6. Sam
    Vulnerable patients, including some children, have faced long delays for a suitable bed as organisations argue over whose responsibility it is to fund and deliver their care, HSJ understands.
    In a letter outlining winter arrangements, NHS England has warned trust leaders and commissioners against delaying emergency mental health admissions – typically needed when a patient is away from home, and understood to be more common over the Christmas period – while determining which area has which responsibility.
    National mental health director Claire Murdoch wrote: “It is not acceptable to delay an emergency mental health admission while determining which area has clinical and financial responsibility for the care of an individual.”
    She added such admissions should be arranged “as quickly as possible, and without delay caused by any financial sign-off process”. 
    It comes as HSJ has been told patients can often end up waiting for several days in emergency departments or in “inappropriate” out of area or acute beds when disputes occur over who is responsible for their care.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 15 December 2022
  7. Sam
    Nearly 8,900 more people have died of cancer than expected in Britain since the start of the pandemic, amid calls for the Government to appoint a minister to deal with the growing crisis. 
    In an essay in The Lancet Oncology, campaigners and medics said the upward trend of cancer deaths is likely to continue, with 3,327 in the last six months alone. 
    They urged the Government to tackle the crisis with the same focus and urgency given to the Covid vaccine rollout, and called for a cancer minister to get on top of the backlog.
    NHS data from November showed that in the last 12 months, 69,000 patients in the UK have waited longer than the recommended 62-day wait from suspected cancer referral to start of treatment.
    Professor Gordon Wishart, a former cancer surgeon and chief medical officer of Check4Cancer, said: “The Covid-induced cancer backlog is one of the deadliest backlogs and has served to widen the cracks in our cancer services". 
    “Now we face a deadly cancer timebomb of treatment delays that get worse every month because we don’t have a sufficiently ambitious plan from policymakers. I urge the Government to work with us.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 15 December 2022
  8. Sam
    The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has not met thresholds required to strike in its vote, it announced today, but physiotherapy staff are set to strike at more than 100 trusts in their first ever action ballot over pay.
    The trade union announced this afternoon that its ballot had not reached the turnout required to take strike action. 88& of those who voted said they supported strike action, but only about 47% of eligible members voted. Law requires a turnout of at least 50%, the RCM said.
    It comes as nurses prepare to take industrial action on 15 and 20 December, over pay and safety concerns, with ambulance staff across the GMB Union, Unison and Unite set to walk out on 21 December (and GMB also on 28 December).
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
  9. Sam
    The government is setting up 19 more diagnostic centres in communities across England to help tackle the Covid backlog.
    Ninety one are already open and have delivered more than 2.4 million tests, checks and scans since last summer, ministers say.
    It is hoped the centres will speed up access to services for patients, thereby reducing waiting times.
    Seven million people in England are now waiting for hospital treatment.
    GPs can refer patients to community diagnostic centres so that they can access life-saving checks and scans, and be diagnosed for a range of conditions, without travelling to hospital.
    Some are located in football stadiums and shopping centres and can offer MRI and CT scans, as well as x-rays.
    In September, according to the government, the hubs delivered 11% of all diagnostic activity - and its ambition is for 40% to be achieved by 2025.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 7 December 2022
  10. Sam
    Ministers have been urged to launch a public inquiry into the care of mental health patients after The Independent revealed allegations that patients had suffered “systemic abuse” in inpatient units.
    A joint investigation with Sky News found that teenagers at facilities run by The Huntercombe Group had been left with post-traumatic stress disorder by their treatment despite hundreds of warnings to regulators and the NHS.
    Now the government is facing calls to review all mental health care services over fears that these cases are “the tip of the iceberg”.
    Labour’s shadow mental health minister Dr Rosena Allin-Khan has called for a “rapid review” by the government into inpatient mental health services, while Deborah Coles, the chief executive of charity Inquest, has called on the new health secretary Steve Barclay to launch a statutory public inquiry.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 28 October 2022
  11. Sam
    Parents are being urged to get their young children vaccinated against flu as data suggests hospitalisation rates among under-fives have almost doubled in England in the space of two weeks.
    Data suggests the UK could face a triple whammy of respiratory illness this winter. While experts are concerned there could be another Covid wave, levels of both flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are increasing. The latter is a common winter virus that typically affects young children and can cause bronchiolitis.
    Dr Conall Watson, consultant epidemiologist for the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said hospital admission rates for flu had risen in recent weeks and were highest in children under five.
    “Already this year a small number of young children have needed intensive care. Please book your preschooler in for flu vaccine at your GP surgery as soon as you can,” he said. “Flu nasal spray vaccine is also currently being offered to all primary school children and will be available for some secondary school years later this season.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 28 October 2022
  12. Sam
    Researchers in the US have found a genetic link between people with African ancestry and the aggressive type of breast cancer. They hope their findings will encourage more black people to get involved in clinical trials in a bid to improve survival rates for people with the disease.
    Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is more common in women under 40 and disproportionately affects black women.
    A study published in the journal JAMA Oncology found that black women diagnosed with TNBC are 28% more likely to die from it than white women with the same diagnosis.
    Now a new study has confirmed a definitive genetic link between African ancestry and TNBC. Lisa Newman, of Weill Cornell Medicine, has been part of an international project studying breast cancer in women in different regions of Africa for 20 years.
    She says representation of women with diverse backgrounds on clinical trials is absolutely critical.
    "Unfortunately, African-American women are disproportionately under-represented in cancer clinical trials and we see this in the breast cancer clinical trials as well," says Dr Newman.
    "If you don't have diverse representation, you don't understand how to apply these advances in treatment.
    "Part of it is because there is some historic mistrust of the healthcare system.
    "We do continue to see systemic racism in the healthcare delivery system where it has been documented, tragically, that many cancer care providers are less likely to offer clinical trials to their black patients compared with their white patients."
  13. Sam
    More than 900 invitees converged on Manchester Central last night to find out which projects would emerge winners in the latest edition of our Patient Safety Awards.
    The awards recognise and reward the hard-working teams and individuals who, in these times of austerity, pay restraints and workforce shortages, are striving to deliver improved patient care.
    HSJ correspondent Annabelle Collins gave a welcome speech before comedian and writer Justin Moorhouse hosted the event, which was held at the end of the first day of the Patient Safety Congress.
    Ms Collins said: “Not only are you treating more and more patients, in difficult circumstances, you’re treating them safely and innovating during a time when the health service is being told by the government to be more efficient. To do more, with less. I think this makes your work and achievements even more special.
    This year, the awards were presented under four key areas:
    Clinical and specialist excellence; Enacting organisation-wide change; Proactive prevention and harm avoidance; and Service/system innovation. Read about the winners
    Source: HSJ, 25 October 2022
  14. Sam
    An endometriosis sufferer has said her reproductive organs are so damaged by a three-year delay for surgery, it has affected her ability to have children.
    Claire Nicholls, 29, has been in pain for years with the condition - which involves tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing elsewhere.
    Ms Nicholls said she was passed from "pillar to post" and for 10 years, medical professionals did not seem to believe how much pain she was actually in.
    She has stage four endometriosis, which is the most severe and widespread.
    "The pain can be excruciating, at times I can't get out of bed and I have also had to attend the emergency department," she said.
    After opting to go private, her surgeon said he was unable to see many of her organs due to the amount of scarred tissue caused by the delay in surgery.
    "He told me the scarred tissue and adhesions were all around my organs... they couldn't remove it all as it could have damaged other organs including my bladder - it was just too severe," she said.
    Northern Ireland has the longest gynaecological waiting lists in the UK, according to a professional body. It is calling for two regional endometriosis centres.
    The report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found 36,900 women in Northern Ireland are on a gynaecology waiting list - a 42% increase since the start of the pandemic.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 25 October 2022
  15. Sam
    Hospitals “desperate” to free up beds could be putting patients in danger, The Independent has been told.
    NHS trusts are being forced into “risky behaviours” in the push to free up hospital beds and A&E departments, experts have warned.
    It comes as new data reveals that waits for ambulance crews outside hospitals hit 26 hours in September, with more than 4,000 patients likely to have experienced severe harm due to delays.
    In documents leaked to The Independent, hospital leaders in Cornwall warned staff that current pressures in its emergency care system combined with ambulance delays have “tragically resulted in deaths”.
    Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust and the Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said in the document that ambulance delays and waits in A&E were causing a “risk to life”, and that as a result they were planning to begin discharging patients into the care of the voluntary sector.
    The document said: “It is likely that the risk of such support not meeting all the patients’ individual requirements is less than the risk to life currently experienced in the community when there are significant handover delays at the hospital front doors.”
    It comes as North West Ambulance Service launched an investigation after a patient died waiting in the back of an ambulance outside A&E, the Manchester Evening News reported.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 24 October 2022
  16. Sam
    Trust chief executives risk becoming “prisoners” of organisations with poor cultures if they do not “step back and see the bigger picture”, a former chief inspector of hospitals has said.
    Ted Baker said he was “tired” of people getting angry about cultural problems in the NHS while doing nothing to change it, amid an appeal for “less anger and more thoughtful interventions”.
    He told HSJ’s Patient Safety Congress greater understanding was needed about what will change culture, and working to do so, rather than “rail against the culture in the way people do all the time”.
    Professor Baker said: “One of my real concerns is that we often end up criticising individuals in organisations because they, if you like, embody the ‘wrong’ culture.
    “But many individuals are often prisoners of the culture themselves, but we don’t see that.
    “You put a chief executive into an organisation with a poor culture, if they don’t have the wisdom and the vision to step back and see the bigger picture, they could become trapped in the culture themselves.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 24 October 2022
  17. Sam
    Research led by Trinity College in Ireland has found that a regulation which came into effect in May 2021 with the aim of improving the oversight of medical devices in Ireland is leading to unintended consequences which may put some surgeries for children, and the treatment of rare diseases, at risk. The study has been published in the journal Pediatric Cardiology.
    Medical devices include a great diversity of technologies, which are evaluated and approved in the European Union (EU) according to a revised law that came into effect on 26 May 2021, known as the Medical Device Regulation or MDR (EU 745/2017). It has a transition period that allows products that were approved under the previous rules (the EU Medical Device Directives) to continue to be marketed until 26 May 2024 at the latest. As a result of a series of unforeseen factors, there is a possibility that the MDR may result in products becoming unavailable, with the consequent risk of a loss of some interventions that are reliant upon those devices. Devices that are used for orphan or paediatric indications are particularly vulnerable to this.
    The paper provides an example of one device, the Rashkind balloon catheter, first developed by Dr William Rashkind in 1966 to open the upper chambers in the heart in neonates with congenital heart disease. A number of these balloons were once available in Europe and now there is only one. This device may become unavailable next year. If this happens, it will not be possible to continue this procedure, and alternative surgeries or treatments are far less optimal. The paper also describes the timeline and cost of bringing the device to market in the EU, the US and Canada, and the cost and time needed to access the EU market has become much greater. 
    Researchers believe there is now an urgent need for policy to be developed to protect essential medical devices for orphan indications and for use in children, to ensure that necessary interventions can continue, and to ensure a more sustainable system in Europe over the longer term.
    Read full story
    Source: Trinity College Dublin, 20 October 2022
  18. Sam
    The NHS in Wales needs to "speed up the process" of treating people waiting over two years for hospital treatment, the health minister said.
    Eluned Morgan said health boards need to prioritise the "longest waiters and they're not always doing that".
    There are 59,350 people waiting over two years in Wales, although the number has fallen for a fifth month in a row.
    The Welsh NHS Confederation, which represents NHS health organisations, has been asked to comment.
    In Wales, there are 183,450 operations and procedures waiting more than a year.
    Overall waits - from referral to treatment - have passed 750,000.
    Scotland has 7,650 patients waiting more than two years, England has 2,646.
    Asked on BBC Politics Wales why so many more people are waiting longer in Wales, Ms Morgan said: "Our health boards need to make sure that they're taking people from the longest waiters and they're not always doing that."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 23 October 2022
  19. Sam
    Cancer patients in this country should have the best survival chances in the world. With its universal healthcare system and world-leading researchers, the UK should be able to offer every patient the knowledge and reassurance that their disease will be picked up quickly and treated rapidly, with the best that science can throw at it.
    Yet Britain languishes towards the bottom of developed nations’ league tables of cancer performance. On nearly every metric this is one of the worst places in the western world to get cancer — and some experts fear that survival rates are about to go backwards for the first time in a generation.
    Britain is now operating a “late diagnosis service” for the disease, a former UK cancer tsar has said, while waiting times are creeping up and up and nearly half of patients are diagnosed when their tumours have already spread, slashing their survival chances.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 22 October 2022
  20. Sam
    About 4,000 UK victims of the infected blood scandal are to receive interim compensation payments of £100,000 by the end of this month.
    It is being paid to those whose health is failing after developing blood borne viruses like hepatitis and HIV. It is also being paid to partners of people who have died.
    Conan McIlwrath, from Larne in County Antrim, who is among the 100 or so victims affected in Northern Ireland said it was "very much welcomed".
    "This is the first compensation that's ever been paid - anything prior has been support," he told BBC News NI.
    All victims have campaigned for actual 'compensation' as they have said only this would acknowledge decades of physical and social injury, as well as loss of earnings and the cost of care.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 22 October 2022
  21. Sam
    The NHS is launching an effort to recruit tens of thousands of nurses to help fill the record number of vacancies that low pay, Covid and heavy workloads have created across the service.
    A multimedia blitz will try to raise nursing’s profile as a worthwhile career by featuring patients who benefited from nurses’ skills and dedication.
    NHS England’s “We are the NHS” campaign will use radio, social media and cinema advertisements to portray nursing as a varied and fulfilling role that can change people’s lives.
    It comes soon after NHS figures showed that the number of empty posts in nursing across hospitals, mental health, community care and other services had reached 46,828 – the largest number ever. That means that more than one in 10 nursing roles (11.8%) are unfilled across the service overall.
    While the NHS is short of almost every type of staff, service chiefs say the acute lack of nurses is a key reason why so many patients are waiting so long for A&E, cancer treatment and other care.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 24 October 2022
  22. Sam
    The troubled agency that supplies blood to the NHS has a ’very serious problem’ with racism, a staff survey has revealed.
    Six hundred staff at NHS Blood and Transplant were surveyed and the results have been summarised in an internal memo, seen by HSJ. 
    It said 55% of respondents felt the problem of racism at NHSBT is “extremely or very serious”, while half had little confidence in the organisation’s recent efforts to tackle racial inequality.
    When contacted for comment, a NHSBT spokeswoman said the results were “difficult to read” and added that “we are deeply sorry to those who have experienced negative behaviour”.
    The issues over race and leadership come at perhaps the most operationally challenging period in NHSBT’s history.  It is struggling to find enough staff for its donation clinics, which meant it issued its first-ever “amber alert” over blood supplies recently. 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 October 2022
  23. Sam
    Researchers are calling on five million UK adults to join what they hope will be one of the biggest studies in the world, to create the most detailed picture ever of the nation's health.
    The aim is it to find better ways to prevent, spot and treat illnesses like cancer and dementia early on. It will involve collecting health and genetic data and creating a long-term repository of health information.
    Our Future Health is part-funded by government, industry and charities. They hope to get their first set of results in the next few years.
    Chairman of the programme, Prof Sir John Bell, said the ambition is to use the results to fundamentally shift the focus of healthcare systems to earlier diagnosis and prevention.
    Invitations will go out this autumn to more than three million people in London, West Yorkshire, West Midlands and Greater Manchester. Over time it will be open to all UK adults.
    Volunteers will:
    fill in questionnaires about their lifestyles and any health problems have blood tests for measurements such as blood sugar and cholesterol have their height, weight and blood pressure measured take genetic tests consent to share their NHS records. According to the plans the information will be used in a number of different ways.
    Scientists will collate and combine this information and store it so that people cannot be identified, building up a bank of health and genetic data.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 October 2022
  24. Sam
    A patient flow model which involves moving A&E patients to wards “irrespective” of whether there are beds available, is under review for wider rollout by NHS England and is being endorsed by senior clinicians, despite safety fears, HSJ has learned. 
    The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said it would be “unethical” for leaders not to at least consider implementing some form of “continuous flow” model for emergency patients.
    The approach has been been trialled recently by North Bristol Trust and at several London trusts. HSJ understands NHS England is considering the wider implementation of the continuous flow model, although no final decision has yet been made.
    The calls come despite patient safety concerns about the model being raised by the Nuffield Trust think tank, who said the evidence for the model is “poor” and could spread risk to other parts of the hospital.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 October 2022
  25. Sam
    Sarah was only allowed to see her 78-year-old mother through a small, double-glazed window that opened 2in at the bottom. There had been a Covid outbreak in her care home and her family were barred from entry, contrary to government guidelines.
    But this was not December 2020. It was two months ago.
    “It was just horrific,” said Sarah. “Mum said, ‘I feel like I’m in prison.’ And it was hard for us to disagree.” Sarah and her sisters kept pushing for visitor rights, offering to wear full PPE, but the home, which charged £1,050 a week, instead issued a 28-day eviction notice, saying they “could not meet the family’s needs”.
    In March this year, all restrictions on care homes were lifted. In a Covid outbreak — two or more positive tests — “visits should happen in all circumstances”. Each resident is allowed one visitor, and this does not need to be the same person throughout the outbreak. However, privately run homes are not following government guidelines. 
    “We saw a massive, tragic loss of life at the beginning of the pandemic among this demographic,” said Helen Wildbore, director of Relatives and Residents Association. “But now care homes have swung dramatically to the other extreme and they have become medically risk averse at the cost of people’s mental health and quality of life. We know people in isolation who have just given up the will to live, who feel like they have been abandoned.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 23 October 2022
    You may also be interested to read these two original blogs posted on the hub:
    Visiting restrictions and the impact on patients and their families: a relative's perspective It’s time to rename the ‘visitor’: reflections from a relative
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