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Found 964 results
  1. News Article
    Progress being made on tackling the hospital waiting backlog will be put at risk by next week's junior doctors' strike, NHS bosses are warning. NHS England medical director Prof Sir Stephen Powis said there had been huge achievements over the winter. But he said it was inevitable the 72-hour walkout in England, which starts on Monday, would have an impact. It comes as the annual NHS staff survey shows a falling number happy to recommend the care at their service. The poll found 63% would be happy to see a friend or relative treated - down by five percentage points in the past year and 11 over two years. Meanwhile, latest performance data shows NHS emergency services are continuing to miss their targets, although the situation is not getting worse. Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said despite the situation not getting worse it still presented a "damning" picture, and warned it was "increasingly causing harm to patients". Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 March 2023
  2. News Article
    Nearly three-quarters of children detained under the mental health act are girls, a new report has found, amid warnings youngsters face a “postcode lottery” in their wait for treatment. Average waiting times between children being referred to mental health services and starting treatment have increased for the first time since 2017 with the children’s commissioner describing support across the country as “patchy”. In the annual report on children’s mental health services, the watchdog warned that, although the average wait is 40 days, some children are waiting as long as 80 days for treatment after being referred in 2021-22. The analysis, published on International Women’s day, also says young girls represented the highest proportion of children detained under the mental health act last year, highlighting “stark and worrying” gender inequalities. Read full story Source: The Independent, 7 March 2023 Further reading on the hub: Top picks: Women's health inequity
  3. News Article
    Patients are being warned of a “shocking gap in cancer care” as new figures reveal that fewer than 3% of England’s NHS trusts met a key waiting-times target last year for cancer patients to be treated within two months of an urgent GP referral. Of 125 hospital trusts in England analysed, only three (2.4%) hit the standard of treating 85% of patients within 62 days after an urgent referral in 2022. Some trusts have not hit the standard for at least eight years. More than 66,000 patients were forced to wait more than two months for their first treatment last year after a referral, the figures reveal. One leading cancer charity said this weekend the cancer care system was not fit for purpose, with “lives left hanging in the balance”. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dems health spokesperson, said the figures showed that even before the pandemic struck, the number of hospital trusts meeting targets was falling rapidly. “Now the situation is so bad that barely any hospitals are able to provide patients with the treatment they need on time. Ministers have consistently failed to plan ahead or provide adequate funding, while taking patients and NHS staff for granted. There is a shocking gap in cancer care from one area to another,” she said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 March 2023
  4. News Article
    More than half of ambulance workers have seen a patient die because of a delay in reaching them after a 999 call or overcrowding in A&E, a new survey has found. The findings, from a survey of frontline paramedics and other ambulance staff, are another stark illustration of the patient safety risks created by the crisis in NHS urgent and emergency care. “These findings are utterly terrifying,” said Rachel Harrison, the national secretary of the GMB union, which sought the views of more than 1,200 members working in NHS ambulance services in England and Wales. It asked them if they had ever witnessed a death that had occurred because of a delay involving an ambulance or other part of the care system. Just over half (53%) said they had done so and another 30% were aware of it happening with a colleague. The findings are disclosed in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary being shown this Thursday about how long delays in ambulance crews handing over patients to A&E staff, and thus being unable to respond quickly to 999 calls, are affecting both patients and staff. “The delay and dilation of care that we see is just unconscionable,” Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the programme. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 March 2023
  5. News Article
    Ambulance chiefs have warned of a ‘significant escalation’ in the strike action being planned by unions next week – saying the flexibilities that helped deal with previous walk-outs will no longer be available. In a letter to local NHS leaders, seen by HSJ, North West Ambulance Service said unions are “becoming more stringent in their approach”, and the trust’s ability to respond to incidents will be severely weakened. For the last day of strike action in February, the GMB union told NWAS it was abandoning exemptions (derogations) for category 2 calls, which include heart attacks and strokes. The NWAS letter, sent yesterday, said the Unite union also now intends to take this approach on 6 March. Last month the head of the London Ambulance Service said the reduced level of service in the capital “causes harm to our patients” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 March 2023
  6. News Article
    The government must end “age discrimination” against eating disorder patients that is causing avoidable deaths, experts have warned. A cross-party parliamentary group and the Royal College of Psychiatrists are calling for access targets to make sure adults with eating disorders get treated within a set time. The demands come after the healthcare watchdog said patients were dying while waiting to be seen. Wera Hobhouse, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group, and Agnes Ayton, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ eating disorder committee, said the targets must be equal to those for children, which were set in 2016. According to the Health Service Journal, 19 patients under the care of inpatient and community eating disorder services have died since 2017. A senior coroner in Norfolk also highlighted failings in 2019 and sent a warning to both NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care, over the deaths of five young women. Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 March 2023 To support Eating Disorders Awareness Week, we have pulled together eight useful resources to help healthcare professionals, friends and family support people with eating disorders: Top picks: Eight resources on eating disorders
  7. News Article
    One patient is dying every 23 minutes in England after they endured a long delay in an A&E unit, according to analysis of NHS figures by emergency care doctors. In all, 23,003 people died during 2022 after spending at least 12 hours in an A&E waiting for care or to be admitted to a bed, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM). That equates to roughly 1 every 23 minutes, 63 every day, 442 a week or 1,917 each month. The college said its findings, while “shocking”, were also “unsurprising” and reflected the fact that emergency departments are often overwhelmed and unable to find patients a bed in the hospital. Rosie Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesperson, said “patients are now dying in their droves” due to successive Conservative governments neglecting the NHS, and added that the lives lost due to A&E snarl-ups constituted a “national disaster”. “Long waiting times are associated with serious patient harm and patient deaths,” said Dr Adrian Boyle, RCEM’s president. “The scale shown here is deeply distressing.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 February 2023
  8. News Article
    Urgent action is needed to prevent people dying from eating disorders, the parliamentary and health service ombudsman for England has warned, as he said those affected are being “repeatedly failed”. The NHS needs a “complete culture change” in how it approaches the condition, while ministers must make it a “key priority”, according to Rob Behrens. Little progress has been made since the publication of a devastating report by his office in 2017, which highlighted “serious failings” in eating disorder services, he said. Lives continue to be lost because of “the lack of parity between child and adult services”, and “poor coordination” between NHS staff involved in treating patients. There remain issues with the training of medical professionals, Behrens added. “We raised concerns six years ago in our ignoring the alarms report, so it’s extremely disappointing to see the same issues still occurring,” he said. “Small steps in improvements have been taken, but progress has been slow, and we need to see a much bigger shift in the way eating disorder services are delivered." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 February 2023
  9. News Article
    The health safety watchdog has said that doctors, ambulance dispatchers and other NHS staff in England have faced "significant distress" and harm over the past year as a result of long delays in urgent and emergency care. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), which monitors safety in the health service in England, said many staff it interviewed for a national investigation "cried or displayed other extreme emotions" when asked about their working environment. "The bad sides [of my job] give me nightmares, flashbacks and fear, but they can also make me hyperactive, sleepless and sometimes not care about the danger I put myself in," one paramedic told the BBC. Sarah, not her real name, has worked in the ambulance service for more than a decade, but describes the last 12 months as the most difficult she can remember. "Over the winter I have witnessed and helped with cardiac arrests in the corridors of hospitals and in the back of ambulances," she said. "I spent four hours with an end-of-life patient. There was no hospice or district nurse available, so I had to make the choice to give them meds for a peaceful, expected death and prepare the family. "I felt ashamed that I could not stay till the end, but I had to move on to the next job as I had done all I could." The HSIB found NHS staff were reporting increased levels of stress, worry and exhaustion because they were not always able to help the sickest patients. HSIB has now urged trusts to do more to protect workers’ mental health, saying there is an “intrinsic link” between patient safety and staff wellbeing. Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 February 2023
  10. News Article
    Hundreds of thousands of children are waiting for surgery as new figures show the backlog has spiralled by almost 50 per cent in two years. The latest NHS data for December lays bare the parlous state of paediatric medicine, with NHS leaders and doctors warning that adult care is being prioritised over children’s. In December 2022, 364,000 children were waiting for treatment, from neurosurgery to ear, nose and throat operations, while a further 200,000 needed community services such as speech and language therapy. The surgery figure is up by 48%t since April 2021 – a far bigger increase than was seen in the overall NHS waiting list, which grew by 36% over the same period. Mike McKean, vice-president of policy at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said “Lengthy waits are unacceptable for any patient, but for children and young people, waits can be catastrophic, as many treatments need to be given by a specific age or developmental stage. It is not the same as for adults. If you miss the right window to treat a child, or wait too long, the consequences can be irrevocable.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 19 February 2023
  11. News Article
    A coroner has urged the health secretary to take action to prevent needless deaths after a woman died of heart failure following a four-hour wait in the back of an ambulance. Lyn Brind, 61, was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, with chest pains and low blood oxygen levels but could not be admitted because the hospital had “no space”. Instead she remained in a queue of ambulances outside A&E without a timely diagnosis or treatment and where warning signs about her condition were missed. It was only after four hours and 25 minutes of waiting that she was transferred to a ward, by which time she was “agitated and short of breath”. She was placed on life support but died 22 minutes later. Brind’s family believe the grandmother of four, a former dinner lady from the town, “might still be alive today” had she been admitted more swiftly. “She wasn’t given a chance,” her partner of 38 years, Richard Bunton, said. After an inquest earlier this month into Brind’s death in May 2022, the senior coroner for Norfolk, Jacqueline Lake, took the unusual step of writing to England’s health secretary, Steve Barclay, to raise concerns about the NHS and social care. She warned that others could die in similar circumstances unless action was taken. “I believe you have the power to take such action,” Lake wrote in a prevention of future deaths report. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 January 2023
  12. News Article
    Hundreds of thousands of older people in England are having to endure chronic pain, anxiety and unmet support needs owing to the worsening shortage of social care staff and care home beds. Age UK has said older people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure are increasingly struggling with living in their own homes because of a lack of help with everyday tasks such as getting out of bed, dressing and eating. The decline in the amount of support and care provided to older people is piling pressure on families and carers and leaving the NHS in constant crisis mode, contributing heavily to ambulance queues outside A&E departments, the charity said in a new report It warned that there would be a repeat of the NHS crisis this winter – in which rising numbers of elderly people have been unnecessarily stuck in hospital because of an acute lack of social care – without a shift to preventing unnecessary admissions. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 February 2023
  13. News Article
    "It would be much better if I was out there than in here," said Roger. The 69-year-old looked wistfully across Newport from the window next to his bed at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Wales. He has been here for three weeks after being admitted with an infection and although he is now well enough to leave, and desperate to do so, he can't. Roger has cerebral palsy and the impact of his recent illness means he needs extra care to be arranged before he can safely go home. Roger is not alone. "At least a quarter of patients in our care of the elderly beds are in a similar position," explained Helen Price, a senior nurse at the hospital. "It is very much a waiting game for that care to be available," she said. Hospitals in Wales are fuller than ever, according to the latest statistics. In the final week of January more than 95% of all acute beds in the Welsh NHS were occupied, which is the highest figure ever recorded. Paul Underwood, who manages urgent care in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, said there are well over 350 patients medically fit enough to leave hospital. "Roughly a third of patients do not need to be accommodated on those sites and that's extremely difficult," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 16 February 2023
  14. News Article
    A new way of screening ambulance calls is to be introduced across England in an effort to improve response times. NHS England is asking ambulance crews to review which emergency calls other than those classed as immediately life threatening can be treated elsewhere. The calls - known as category two - include emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes. But the category also covers some that may not need such a fast response, such as burns and severe headaches. About 40% of these lower priority calls classed as category two by call handlers will now receive callbacks from a doctor, nurse or paramedic to see whether there is an alternative to sending an ambulance. In trials in London and across the West Midlands, nearly half of those receiving a callback were advised to go instead to an urgent treatment clinic, their GP or a pharmacist. NHS England is now asking the other eight ambulance services in England to adopt the approach. Read full story Source: BBC News, 16 February 2023
  15. News Article
    A high-profile £250m government intervention to free up hospital beds has so far failed to deliver any significant reduction in delayed discharges – with multiple systems instead reporting large increases. Steve Barclay announced the fund, including £200m to buy step-down residential care beds to speed up discharges, on 9 January, following a “recovery forum” crisis summit at 10 Downing Street. NHS England said in guidance on 13 January the funding must bring “immediate improvements”, and local leaders were again told to “maximise the impact of their areas’ allocation of the money in the run up to strikes on 6 February”. But according to official data, in the week the new money was announced, there was an average of 14,035 patients who did not meet the clinical “criteria to reside”, but were still waiting to leave hospital, equating to around one in seven occupied beds. The total numbers have barely changed since then, with an average of 13,975 cases reported in the week to 5 February, also representing one in seven occupied beds. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 February 2023
  16. News Article
    Millions of people in England with mental ill-health are not seeking NHS help, and many who get it face long delays and a “poor experience”, a report says. Long waits for care will persist for years because soaring demand, exacerbated by Covid, will continue to outstrip the ability of severely understaffed mental health services to provide speedy treatment, the National Audit Office (NAO) found. The report found that “NHS mental health services are under continued and increasing pressure and many people using services are reporting poor experiences”. Under-18s, the LGBT+ community, minority ethnic groups and people with more complex needs are most likely to find the system inadequate. “While funding and the workforce for mental health services have increased and more people have been treated, many people still cannot access services or have lengthy waits for treatment,” the NAO said. It found: An estimated 8 million people with mental health needs are not in contact with NHS services. There are 1.2 million people waiting for help from community-based mental health services. While the mental health workforce grew by 22% between 2016-17 and 2021-22, the NHS recorded a 44% increase in referrals over the same period. In 2021-22, 13% of mental health staff quit. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 February 2023
  17. News Article
    A mother who has seen her suicidal 12-year-old daughter shuttled between placements and then held in a locked and windowless hospital room says she is frightened for her child’s life. Since going into care in Staffordshire nine months ago, Becky (not her real name) has attempted to take her own life on several occasions. Her case throws fresh light on the chronic nationwide shortage of secure accommodation for vulnerable children. “I am constantly told there is nowhere for her,” said her mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons. “I fear I’ll soon be arranging her funeral due to the systemic failings in health and social care.” Becky has been alone in a locked hospital room since 27 January. The room has no window or access to the outdoors, no furniture except for a bed, and she is permitted no belongings. All human contact is conducted through a hatch. The child’s court-appointed guardian told the high court at a hearing to discuss Becky’s case that she considered “the risk to Becky’s life to be catastrophic”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 February 2023
  18. News Article
    NHS waiting lists are unlikely to fall in 2023, and the backlog is unlikely to be significantly tackled until mid-2024 despite being one of Rishi Sunak’s priorities for this year, research suggests. The NHS has struggled to increase the number of people it is treating from its waiting lists each month due to ongoing pressures from Covid-19, although there have been signs of improvement in the past month, analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found. Max Warner, an IFS economist and one of the report’s authors, said that although the NHS had made “real progress” to reduce the number of patients waiting a very long time for care, efforts to increase overall treatment volumes had “so far been considerably less successful”. The NHS Providers’ chief executive, Julian Hartley, urged the government to introduce a fully funded workforce plan and to talk to unions about pay for this financial year as strikes were causing huge disruption to services, and risked undoing hard-won progress made on care backlogs. “Mounting pressures on acute, ambulance, mental health and community services, such as chronic workforce shortages, could hamper efforts to cut the backlog further if left unchecked,” he said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 February 2023
  19. News Article
    A record number of eating disorder patients are not getting the life-saving treatment they need due to lengthy waits, leaked NHS data shows. More than 8,000 adults are waiting to be seen for therapy, according to internal figures from NHS England – the highest figure recorded since data collection began in 2019. In March 2021, there were around 6,000 adults waiting, while it was less than 2,000 in March 2019. One leading doctor warned that delays were leading to avoidable deaths, while multiple coroners investigating the deaths of nine patients since 2021 have repeatedly called on the NHS and ministers to improve services to prevent more. An investigation by The Independent can also reveal that long waits have led to a woman, 24, taking her own life while waiting two years for appropriate care, and patients being admitted to hospital because their conditions became so severe they developed life-threatening physical conditions. Dr Agnes Ayton, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ lead for adult eating disorders, said long waits meant patients were “dying avoidably” because under-resourced services were forced to turn them away or leave them waiting for years. Anorexia has the highest morality rate of any psychiatric disorder. “One important thing is eating disorders are treatable, people can get better with time and treatment. We shouldn’t accept anorexia has the highest mortality rate because a lot of these deaths are avoidable and treatable. We should be aiming to provide high-quality care,” she said. Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 February 2023 Further reading on the hub: People with eating disorders should not face stigma in the health system and barriers to accessing support in 2022 Eating disorders: challenges of the pandemic
  20. News Article
    Commissioners have begun a ‘serious incident review’ across their integrated care system after early indications showed patients may have suffered harm due to long waits for cancer treatment. The review has been launched by Somerset Integrated Care Board into dermatology services after an initial review found five of 50 patients had seen their skin lesions increase in size since being referred to hospital by their GPs. ICB board papers stated “potential patient harm has been identified” for those patients, who were on the two-week wait pathway to be seen by a specialist following a referral by their GP. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 3 February 2023
  21. News Article
    A major hospital in the UK has declared a critical incident, warning it is facing “immense pressures” on its services. Wigan’s Royal Albert Edward Infirmary urged people to avoid its A&E unless suffering a “life or limb-threatening emergency”. Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh (WWL) Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust warned that “unprecedented attendances” meant the emergency department was “full”. It said it is working with partners to discharge patients who are ready to leave hospital. The trust, which previously declared a critical incident in December, said the safety of its patients is the “top priority”. By declaring a critical incident, hospitals are able to take action so that safe services are maintained despite increasing pressures. Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 February 2023
  22. News Article
    NHS England has effectively admitted the backlog of cancer long-waiters will still be higher in March 2024 than before covid hit, in a document seen by HSJ. The consultation document, detailing trajectories for reducing numbers waiting 62 days or more from referral, shows the expected national total in March 2024 is 18,755. NHS England previously committed to reducing this to pre-pandemic levels (14,226) by March 2022, then delayed the target until March this year. There are now significant backlogs in diagnostics, with particular challenges in endoscopy and breast screening. NHS Providers director of policy and strategy Miriam Deakin said: “Cancer is a key priority for trusts. They understand the risk to patients who have to wait. “The pandemic left people waiting longer than NHS trusts wanted for diagnosis or to start treatment, with some people not coming forward, but now urgent referrals for suspected cancer are far higher than pre-pandemic. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 February 2023
  23. News Article
    The amount of time people over 80 spend in A&E in England has almost doubled in a year, leaving them at increased risk of coming to harm and dying, emergency care doctors are warning. An analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) found that people of that age are spending 16 hours in A&E waiting for care or a bed, a huge rise on the nine hours seen in 2021. The college, which represents the UK’s A&E doctors, warned that long waits, allied to overcrowding in hospitals and older people’s often fragile health, is putting them in danger. Doctors specialising in emergency and elderly care warned that older people forced to spend a long time in A&E are more likely to suffer a fall, develop sepsis, get bed ulcers or become confused. Dr Adrian Boyle, the RCEM’s president, said that it is also likely that some older people are dying as a result of the delays they are facing, combined with their often poor underlying health. The risks older people face while waiting in sometimes chaotic A&E units are so great that they are likely to be disproportionately represented among the 500 people a week who the RCEM estimates are dying as a direct result of delays in accessing urgent medical help. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 31 January 2023
  24. News Article
    “I was worried it would grow and spread,” Charlotte Park, a breast cancer patient tells The Independent. “What happens if I hadn’t been that really pushy person? Sometimes I still go into a dark place and I think: I am so lucky to be here.” The 50-year-old, from Richmond in Yorkshire, found a lump in her breast in June 2020 and went straight to see her GP who informed her she would have to wait two weeks to see a specialist. After a fortnight of waiting, she started to panic and rang the clinic who said they were still working through referrals from four to six weeks prior to her referral. “I was getting frustrated and impatient by this point,” Ms Park recalls. “There was no leeway and they didn’t see if they could squeeze me in. I just felt frustrated. There was nothing I could do. It was all out of my hands. I was feeling teary.” Ms Park is one of thousands of women with breast cancer in England facing delays of weeks or months to see a specialist or receive treatment. Data, shared exclusively with The Independent, shows delays were substantially worse for those with breast cancer than other forms of cancer. In the end, Ms Park was forced to wait 25 days to see a specialist. The wait was “agony”, she said. It was difficult to definitively determine if the delays caused her cancer to grow, she noted. Her comments come in the context of thousands of women with breast cancer being forced to wait longer than the NHS-recommended time of two months to get treatment, in a situation branded “perilous” by healthcare professionals. Exclusive data shows only seven in ten women in England received treatment for breast cancer two months after getting an urgent doctor’s referral between January and November 2022. This amounts to just more than 16,500 women and is way below the NHS target for 85% of breast cancer patients diagnosed via an urgent GP referral to start their cancer treatment within two months of their GP visit. Read full story Source: The Independent. 31 January 2023
  25. News Article
    A dementia home care agency spent as little as three and a half minutes on taxpayer-funded care visits and filed records claiming far more care was given, according to evidence seen by the Guardian. The hasty care was exposed by Susan Beswick’s family, who called it “totally inadequate”. They say they had been told visits to 78-year-old Beswick, who has Alzheimer’s disease, were supposed to last 30 or 45 minutes. Across nine visits this month, care workers formally logged close to six hours of care. But security cameras suggest they were in the house for under one hour 20 minutes – less than nine minutes a visit on average. On one evening visit, footage showed two carers entering, asking if Beswick had eaten and checking her incontinence pad, before leaving three minutes and 15 seconds later. But they appeared to log on a care tracking app that they had been with her for one hour and 16 minutes. Beswick, who for years was a care worker herself, “deserves so much better”, said her daughter-in-law Karen Beswick. “It’s upsetting us the way mum is being cared for here,” she said. “They come in and check her [incontinence] pad and go. They are supposed to be encouraging her to drink. They don’t really talk to mum a lot. It’s not good at all. I will start crying. We are all trying to get the best for mum.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 January 2023
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