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Found 110 results
  1. News Article
    Trusts have been told to check the safety of their helipads after an accident in a hospital car park left a pensioner dead. Jean Langan, 87, was blown over by the “downwash” of air from a helicopter at Derriford Hospital last year. She was walking through a car park at the hospital after an appointment when she fell and hit her head as an HM Coastguard helicopter landed on the hospital’s helipad. Another elderly woman broke her pelvis. Now the Health and Safety Executive has written to trust chief executives reminding them of their duty to manage health and safety risks around helipads. These risks include downwash from helicopters, the moving parts of helicopters, and the design and location of helipads. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 August 2023
  2. News Article
    More than 250 NHS buildings in Scotland could contain a potentially dangerous type of concrete that can collapse without warning. NHS Scotland issued a Safety Action Notice in February and completed a "desktop survey" of its estate in June. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was used to build roofs, walls and floors from the 1960s to the 1990s. NHS Scotland has warned the material is potentially vulnerable to "catastrophic failure without warning". But a Scottish government spokesperson said there was "no evidence to suggest that these buildings are not safe." Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 July 2023
  3. Content Article
    The NHS in England has around 1,500 hospitals, where most emergency and elective care is carried out. The hospital estate contains many old buildings and its condition has been deteriorating. In response, in 2020, the government announced the New Hospital Programme (NHP) and committed to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. This report shows the key findings and progress made. Responding to the National Audit Office (NAO) report on the New Hospitals Programme, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation said: “Members will be concerned by the delays to many parts of the New Hospitals Programme, as this report from the National Audit Office reveals. Especially as some trusts are having to find additional money to tackle ongoing maintenance issues such as new roofs, when they were led to believe they would be moving to a new site or given funds to build something new as part of this programme. This is adding more pressure on finance departments whose budgets are already stretched to the limit. “Our members tell us that the maintenance backlog continues to be a significant challenge, impacting productivity and their ability to deliver the transformation required, hindering their progress in reducing the elective backlog and rendering some areas as unusable."
  4. News Article
    NHS England’s target for all trusts to have a working electronic patient record (EPR) system by March 2025 is now ‘unachievable’’ and a new date has been set a year later, government has admitted. A new report of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority – the government body which scrutinises and supports major projects – states: “Delivery confidence is [rated] red as a number of NHS trusts are reporting they are unlikely to be able to fully implement an electronic patient record by March 2025.” The document, published quietly last week, downgrades the rating from “amber” to “red” – and also reveals £700m was cut from the programme’s budget last year. The “frontline digitisation” programme was launched by government and NHSE in 2021 with the aim of getting all trusts to a minimum level of capability, including 90% to have an EPR of an acceptable standard by the end of 2023, and 100 per cent by March 2025. But the IPA report states that a revised business case is now being prepared to reflect a new “end date” of March 2026. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 24 July 2023
  5. News Article
    The government is on track to break a key election promise from Boris Johnson to build 40 new hospitals in England by the end of the decade, a damning report by the public spending watchdog has found. Delays to projects mean the target is unlikely to be met, with work on buildings in the second cohort of the scheme yet to have started as of May, according to the National Audit Office. The approach to achieving objectives at the lowest possible cost could also result in hospitals that are too small, the watchdog warned, as modelling assumptions may be unrealistic about the extent to which care in future will be provided outside hospitals. The government failed to achieve good value for money, with the scheme having cost £1.1bn by March this year, and progress has been slower than expected, the report concluded. The claim will ignite concerns that the new hospitals would struggle to cope in the event of another pandemic, given England already has one of the highest rates of hospital bed occupancy among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 July 2023
  6. Content Article
    This year marks the NHS's 75th anniversary, and is an important moment to look back at where the service has come from, consider where it stands today and to look forward to how it needs to change to meet future needs. This report from the NHS Assembly draws on the feedback of thousands of people who have contributed to a rapid process of engagement with patients, staff and partners. It aims to help the NHS, nationally and locally, plan how to respond to long term opportunities and challenges. It sets out what is most valuable about the NHS, what most needs to change, and what is needed for the NHS to continue fulfilling its fundamental mission in a new context.
  7. News Article
    Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust temporarily suspended admissions to the women’s and children’s centre at Princess Royal Hospital – which houses the provider’s consultant-led maternity services – earlier this week due to an issue with a generator. HSJ understands a power cut occurred and estates chiefs were concerned about running solely on battery power, hence suspending admissions while the problem was fixed. Five inductions of labour were diverted to neighbouring trusts, while fewer than five caesarean sections were rescheduled during the outage. Meanwhile, 56 patients accessing the trust’s telephone triage service were advised by medical chiefs to attend nearby hospitals. Following the incident, a learning review is taking place, and HSJ understands this will investigate whether any women came to harm. HSJ has also been told the generator has been fixed “as good as permanently”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 23 June 2023
  8. News Article
    Multiple trusts have expressed disappointment at being overlooked in the government’s latest announcement on the ‘40 new hospitals’ programme. In 2021, ministers expanded the new hospitals programme by inviting bids for another eight projects to be funded nationally. However, last week they confirmed that just five new bids – all acute hospitals with unsafe roof plank structures – had been accepted. Multiple mental health trusts have also expressed frustration, after just one new mental health scheme has been included in the list of 40 “new” hospitals, although the government is counting three which were already in progress outside the programme. Joe Rafferty, chief executive of Mersey Care, has compared a lack of investment into mental health estate to “institutionalised discrimination”. Bradford District Care said it was “very disappointing” to find out its bid to replace “wholly unsuitable” wards designed in the 1950s had not been accepted, adding: “Still no parity for mental health in the total NHP funding allocation so far.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 31 May 2023
  9. News Article
    The health secretary is set to signal a major delay to one of the headline promises in the last Conservative manifesto by suggesting the delivery of 40 new hospitals in England is likely to be pushed back until after 2030. In a move that will spark anger among MPs who wanted “spades in the ground” before the next election, government sources said Steve Barclay would make the announcement today. The pledge to build and fund “40 new hospitals over the next 10 years” was one of the major headlines of Boris Johnson’s pitch to the electorate in 2019. Sources indicated the government had been ready to make the announcement about the probable delay for some time, but it was repeatedly pushed back because of fears about a backlash from Tory MPs. Rundown NHS hospitals have become a danger to patients, warn health chiefs Read full story Source: The Guardian, 25 May 2023
  10. News Article
    Patients, doctors and nurses are enduring constant ward closures and flooding in “dilapidated and unpleasant” buildings because a new hospital promised by the government has still not been delivered, one of its most senior medics has warned. Patient safety could soon be at risk unless the replacement for St Helier Hospital, in south London, is finally confirmed by ministers, according to the outgoing chief medical officer of its NHS trust. Some of the buildings pre-date the NHS, while wards have been shut due to sinking foundations. Writing in the Observer, Dr Ruth Charlton, the chief medical officer of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, warns: “Right now, we are delivering safe care – but it’s not easy in such a dilapidated and unpleasant environment, and I fear we won’t be able to provide the level of care we’d like to – or should be – for much longer,” she writes. “Our patients and our staff deserve so much better than this current state – where wards are being shut down because the foundations are sinking, and floods and leaks are a certainty every winter. “Every day we wait costs money, and each year we have to spend more and more on updating our old, rundown buildings – diverting scarce resources from the front line … there’s no other option. We must progress our plans to build our new hospital and make improvements to our existing sites.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 May 2023
  11. Content Article
    Medical equipment, supplies, and devices (ESD) serve a critical function in healthcare delivery and how they function can have an impact on patient safety. ESD-related safety issues include malfunctions, physically missing ESDs, sterilisation and usability. Describing ESD-related safety issues from a human factors perspective that focuses on user interactions with ESDs can provide additional insights to address these issues. This article in the journal Patient Safety reviewed ESD patient safety event reports submitted to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System to identify ESD-related safety issues.
  12. News Article
    A fifth of UK hospitals were forced to cancel operations during the three days in July last year when temperatures soared, research suggests. The findings, published in a letter to the British Journal of Surgery, are based on surveys from surgeons, anaesthetists and critical care doctors working during the heatwave from July 16-19 2022, when temperatures reached as high as 40C in some parts of the country. The researchers received 271 responses from 140 UK hospitals – with one in five (18.5%) reporting elective surgeries being cancelled due to the heatwave. The respondents also said surgical services were poorly prepared for heatwaves, with 41% of operating theatres having no means to control ambient temperature, while more than a third (35.4%) reported making changes to maintain routine surgical activity during the period. These include delayed discharge of high-risk patients, changes to surgical teams, selecting lower-risk patients to have surgery, and restricting surgical activity to day cases. Other measures included longer staff breaks, extra fluids to patients, and surgeries earlier in the morning when temperatures were lower. Read full story Source: The Independent, 23 March 2023
  13. Content Article
    Appropriate capital funding is needed to bring long neglected parts of the NHS estate into the 21st century for staff and patients. From fixing leaking roofs and broken boilers, to transforming estates to make them fully digitised and sustainable, and enhancing diagnostic capacity, capital investment has the potential to transform the NHS – improving patients’ experience and making it more efficient and effective. This report from NHS Providers explores the state of capital funding and allocations across the NHS provider sector and how trusts can access capital. It highlights the extent of the dilapidated estate and make the case for strategic capital investment at both the system and national level to drive productivity, improve patient care, and enable much-needed transformation across the NHS.
  14. News Article
    Mental health trusts are exploring wider use of CCTV to review incidents of seclusion or restraint in response to high-profile abuse scandals, HSJ has learned. All providers of mental health, learning disability and autism services were ordered to review safety and asked to feed back to NHS England’s national team. The request was made in a letter from national director Claire Murdoch sent in response to abuse allegations aired by BBC Panorama and Channel 4’s Dispatches. The review is taking place alongside NHSE’s launch of a £36m three-year quality programme. This aims to identify providers and systems needing support, commission a culture and leadership development programme for all trusts, and produce a new model for safe inpatient care. Results of trust-level reviews, seen by HSJ, show at least five providers aim to use CCTV more “pro-actively”, as a tool for boosting safety. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 February 2023
  15. News Article
    When Amy Fantis gave birth to her first child two years ago, the labour was rapid, lasting only about four hours, and she was reliant on gas and air. Her second baby is due in just a few days — but the hospital has, like others around Britain, imposed a ban on the popular form of pain relief. Fantis, 36, from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, is one of many women affected by the decision of several NHS trusts to suspend the use of the gas because of fears that midwives and doctors have been exposed to unsafe levels for prolonged periods. In some hospitals, levels of the nitrous oxide and oxygen mix are more than 50 times higher than the safe workplace exposure limits. In a survey of more than 16,600 women who gave birth last year, the Care Quality Commission found that 76% of respondents used gas and air at some point during labour. Although short-term use of the gas in childbirth is harmless to women and their babies, long-term exposure for midwives and doctors can affect the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B12, damaging nerves and red blood cells and causing anaemia. It is not believed that any NHS staff have become ill as a result of long-term exposure to gas and air. NHS England and the Health and Safety Executive recently warned other hospitals that they need to check the ventilation on maternity wards and ensure staff are kept safe. NHS England is planning to send out new guidance to trusts on the issue after a series of hospitals had to stop using the gas. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 25 February 2023
  16. News Article
    Only half the recommended number of medical staff were on duty at the O2 Brixton Academy on the night of a crush at the south-west London venue. Industry guidelines suggest there should have been medical cover of at least 10 people, including a paramedic and a nurse, but no paramedics or nurses were present. Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and security guard Gaby Hutchinson, 23, died in hospital following the crowd surge on 15 December 2022 at the concert. The medical provider, Collingwood Services Ltd, said it was "fully confident" its team had "responded speedily, efficiently and with best practice". Two whistleblowers who regularly work for Collingwood Services Ltd at Brixton told BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme that medical cover at the south London gig had been "inadequate". Neither of them was there when the crush happened, but one said he had spoken to colleagues who were. "[They] had two student paramedics, so they're basically unqualified," said one whistleblower. "They have to be supervised by a paramedic, not by anybody of a lower grade. They didn't have appropriate supervision." Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 February 2023
  17. News Article
    Doctors have warned that patient safety is being put at risk by the state of crumbling NHS hospitals which have fallen into potentially dangerous disrepair, an ITV News investigation has found. Year-long leaks, collapsing floors, ageing roofs and potential for falling stone are among the issues exposed in the investigation - which have caused whole wards to be closed down. One doctor told ITV News conditions are so poor in hospitals she has worked in that “we are always just hoping that the next time something happens it does not cause something catastrophic.”Half of the 87 hospital trusts in England that responded to our Freedom of Information requests had at least one unresolved structural or maintenance issue, as of October 2022. Footage shared with ITV News by staff working in NHS hospitals lays bare some of the appalling conditions doctors are forced to treat patients in every day. Some leaks have been so severe they flood and close entire corridors, while some wards have become so unsafe they have been permanently shut. Read full story Source: ITV News, 22 February 2023
  18. News Article
    Hospitals in England have recorded more than 450 sewage leaks in the last 12 months, data shows, putting patients and staff in danger and prompting warnings that the NHS estate is “falling apart” after a decade of underinvestment. Freedom of information requests to NHS trusts by the Liberal Democrats found alarming examples of sewage leaking on to cancer wards, maternity units and A&E departments. The investigation also uncovered multiple cases of urine and faeces flowing into hospital rooms and on to general wards. Health officials called the revelations shocking. In some instances, sewage leaks made entire hospital departments unsafe for patients and led to staff struggling to work because they felt nauseous and had headaches. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This is a national scandal. Our country’s hospitals are falling apart after years of underinvestment and neglect. Patients should not be treated in these conditions and heroic nurses should not have the indignity of mopping up foul sewage.” “At every turn, our treasured NHS is crumbling, from hospital buildings to dangerous ambulance wait times. The government needs to find urgent funds to fix hospitals overflowing with sewage. Patient and staff safety is a risk if ministers fail to act,” he said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 February 2023
  19. News Article
    The number of overheating incidents in clinical areas reported by NHS trusts has almost doubled over the last five years, with directors saying ageing estates make them vulnerable to extreme weather events. Providers reported that temperatures went above 26°C – the threshold for a risk assessment – more than 5,500 times in 2021-22, according to official data. Overheating looks set to become an increasingly significant issue for NHS estates, HSJ was told, as climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and more intense. Janet Smith, head of sustainability at Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare Trusts, said: “We’re feeling it now. And it’s not going to change unless we do something about it. We need a climate resilient estate to actually deliver sustainable care.” An overheating incident is when the temperature surpasses 26°C in an occupied ward or clinical space in a day, with each area counting as a separate incident. When this happens, trusts should carry out a risk assessment and take action to ensure the safety of vulnerable patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 February 2023
  20. News Article
    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
  21. News Article
    Six wards in a busy London Hospital, added at a cost of £24 billion during the pandemic, are lying empty because the builders did not install sprinklers. With the NHS in crisis, the Royal London Hospital in east London, has had to mothball the space, which is large enough to take 155 intensive care beds, while officials work out what to do with it. They have no patients in it since last May. Source: The Sunday Times, 29 January 2023 Shared by Shaun Lintern on Twitter
  22. News Article
    Thousands of extra hospital beds and hundreds of ambulances will be rolled out in England this year in a bid to tackle the long emergency care delays. The 5,000 new beds will boost capacity by 5%, while the ambulance fleet will increase by 10% with 800 new vehicles. Details of the £1bn investment will be set out later in a joint government and NHS England two-year blueprint. Questions have also been raised about how the extra resources will be staffed - 1 in 10 posts in the NHS is vacant. The government believes the measures, which will be introduced from April, will help the NHS to start getting closer to its waiting time targets. It has set goals that by March 2024: 76% of A&E patients will be dealt with in four hours. Currently fewer than 70% are. The official target is 95% An average response time of 30 minutes for emergency calls such as heart attacks and strokes. In December patients waited over 90. The official target is 18. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said cutting NHS waiting times was one of his five main priorities. Read full story Source: BBC News, 30 January 2023
  23. News Article
    A major London trust has been criticised for ‘underplaying’ the problems caused by a ‘catastrophic’ IT outage, a new report has revealed. The Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust report also noted one patient suffered “moderate harm” and several others “low” level harm after last July’s incident, which was caused by a combination of a heatwave and ageing infrastructure. However, the trust said there was no evidence the “underplaying” of issues was deliberate. The report identified one incident of “moderate” patient harm, in which a patient was unable to receive a pancreas transplant due to staff being unable to safely monitor critical observations. The patient has since had a successful operation, the trust’s report stated. Another 20 “low” harm incidents were reported, which included delays in patients receiving their test results and/or medicines, while the report added the trust could not rule out that “further harm events may be identified” amidst an ongoing harm review. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 January 2023
  24. News Article
    A construction firm has been ordered to pay £5m after fire and electrical safety defects were found at one of the NHS’s largest cancer centres. Lendlease was responsible for the design and build of the Bexley Wing at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, under a private finance initiative deal nearly 20 years ago. The building houses Leeds Cancer Centre, one of the largest in the country, and some other services. It is run by Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust. Concerns were later raised over fire and electrical safety in the plant room, where the building’s power supply is situated, according to a ruling published by the technology and construction court. This included a lack of fire separation between the primary and secondary source of power, which risked a single incident disabling them both. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 January 2023
  25. News Article
    Record levels of overheating and a sharp rise in flooding at England’s hospitals are putting vulnerable patients at risk, figures show. Analysis of NHS data by the Liberal Democrats found that the number of health trusts reporting overheating in clinical areas had doubled compared with six years ago, and floods had increased by nearly 60% from last year. An overheating incident is logged when an occupied ward or clinical area’s daily maximum temperature exceeds 26C, the temperature at which some patients become unable to cool themselves effectively. The latest government figures show that in the summer of 2022 there were an estimated 2,985 excess deaths due to heatwaves, the highest number on record. Heatwaves also forced a fifth of UK hospitals to cancel operations. The number of serious flooding incidents, where water caused disruption such as by breaching a building or flooding a road, rose from 176 to 279. The climate crisis is expected to increase these risks to hospitals and patients. Helen Buckingham, the director of strategy at the Nuffield Trust, said: “These figures are a cause for real concern about the resilience of the NHS’s estate to the growing threat from extreme weather in the UK. As temperatures have climbed, so too have the number of overheating incidents in NHS hospitals.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2023
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