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Found 1,320 results
  1. News Article
    NHS England and the government have been criticised for “selective reporting” of statistics by an influential Westminster committee. The chair of the Public Accounts Committee Meg Hillier wrote to NHS England CEO Amanda Pritchard requesting “greater realism about the scale of the challenge” on cancer services. It follows the government and NHSE claiming in a government response to the committee that they had “implemented” one of its earlier recommendations, to “bring cancer treatment back to an acceptable standard”. In their February report on backlogs and waiting times, MPs said cancer delays were “unacceptable” and services should be recovered “as a matter of urgency”. The report also criticised NHSE for “over-optimism” when drawing up cancer and elective recovery plans. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 July 2023
  2. News Article
    Most frontline medics believe ministers are seeking to “destroy the NHS” because they have starved it of cash and mistreated its staff, the leader of Britain’s doctors has said. Prof Philip Banfield also warned that the health service, which on Wednesday will mark the 75th anniversary of its creation, is so fragile that it may not survive until its 80th. Banfield, the British Medical Association’s chair of council, mounted an unusually strong attack on the government’s handling of the NHS in an interview with the Guardian. “This government has to demonstrate that it is not setting out to destroy the NHS, which it is failing to do at this point in time,” he said. “It is a very common comment that I hear, from both doctors and patients, that this government is consciously running the NHS down. [And] if you run it down far enough, it’s going to lead to destruction. “You’ll struggle to find someone [among doctors] on the frontline who thinks otherwise, because that’s what it feels like.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 4 July 2023
  3. News Article
    The government has rejected calls to set a target and strategy to end ‘appalling’ disparities in maternal deaths. In response to a Commons women and equalities committee report, published on Friday, ministers said a “concrete target does not necessarily focus resource and attention through the best mechanisms”. The response added: “We do not believe a target and strategy is the best approach towards progress.” The government said disparities will be monitored through local maternity and neonatal systems, which are partnerships comprising commissioners, providers and local authorities. A recommendation to increase the annual budget for maternity services to up to £350m per year, backed by the now chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and maternity investigator Donna Ockenden, was also rejected. Read full story Source: HSJ, 3 July 2023
  4. News Article
    Healthcare leaders have called for an urgent plan to tackle the social care crisis, warning Rishi Sunak there is “clear concern” over an ongoing failure to tackle staff shortages. The warning from Matthew Taylor, chief executive of NHS Confederation which represents hospitals and community services, comes after the publication of the long-awaited £2.4bn NHS workforce plan, which committed to 300,000 extra nurses and doctors in the coming years. Mr Taylor said any benefits to improve NHS staffing will be “limited” without an equivalent strategy for the social care sector, which currently has 165,000 vacant posts. Health bosses, represented by NHS Confederation, have now written to the prime minister asking for “urgent intervention” and calling for a clear plan for improving pay and conditions to attract staff. Martin Green, chief executive for Care England that represents care homes, warned that the sector “is in the midst of a workforce crisis, which is going to get worse not getting better”. He welcomed the NHS Confederation’s letter and said unless similar improvements were made within social care, there would be more “cancelled operations, more people languishing in hospital when they don’t need to and the whole breakdown of the system”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 July 2023
  5. News Article
    As the NHS turns 75, it is under unprecedented pressure: record waiting lists, demand for care and delays in discharging patients who are well enough to go home are putting all parts of the health service under immense strain. Sickness absence is at record levels, while nearly 170,000 NHS workers in England quit their jobs last year. Recent strikes by nurses, ambulance staff and junior doctors, coupled with the historic decision by consultants and radiographers to strike, too, show the depth of anger. Five experts spell out what’s needed to make the health service thrive again. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 July 2023
  6. News Article
    A major teaching trust is dominated by a “medical patriarchy”, while “misogynistic behaviour” is a regular occurrence, two investigations have discovered. Two reports into University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust have been published. They are the outcome of an investigation into the trust’s leadership carried out by NHS England, and an oversight review by former NHSE deputy medical director Mike Bewick. They follow major concerns being raised over recent months about safety, culture, and leadership at the trust. The NHSE review said the trust “could do more to balance the medical patriarchy that dominates” the organisation. It noted consultants are invited to observe a chief executive’s advisory group meeting, but nursing, midwifery and allied health professional leaders are not.” On culture, NHSE said the trust should take steps to ensure staff can work in psychologically safe environments where “poor behaviours are consistently addressed” and to “eradicate bullying and cronyism at all levels of the organisation”. Staff had described “inequity and cronyism” being a feature of recruitment processes at all levels. Read full story (paywalled)
  7. News Article
    NHS whistleblowers need stronger legal protection to prevent hospitals using unfair disciplinary procedures to force out doctors who flag problems, the British Medical Association has said. Doctors are being “actively vilified” for speaking out, which has resulted in threats to patient safety, including unnecessary deaths, according to the council chair of the doctors’ union, Phil Banfield. Despite a series of scandals in recent years, it is becoming more common for hospitals to use legal tactics and “phoney investigations” to undermine or force out whistleblowers rather than address their concerns, he warned. Banfield said: “Someone who raises concerns is automatically labelled a troublemaker. We have an NHS that operates in a culture of fear and blame. That has to stop because we should be welcoming concerns, we should be investigating when things are not right. “Whistleblowers are pilloried because some NHS organisations believe the reputational hit is more dangerous than unsafe care,” he added. “Whereas the safety culture in aviation took off after some high-profile airplane crashes in the 70s, the difference is that the aviation industry embraced the need to put things right and understand the systems that led to the disaster – the NHS has not invested in solving the system, it’s been bogged down in blaming the individual instead of the mistake.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 2 July 2023
  8. News Article
    An acute trust’s leadership has been downgraded to ‘inadequate’ after some staff ignored concerns raised directly by CQC inspectors, while others said bullying was ‘rife’. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found multiple reports of staff raising concerns at York and Scarborough Foundation Trust, but that staff felt they were “ignored”, dismissed or “swept under the carpet”. The trust’s leadership has been rated as “inadequate”, down from “requires improvement”, although its overall rating remains “requires improvement”. The CQC said “poor leadership was having an impact across all of the services” and there were occasions “where leaders displayed defensiveness or appeared to tolerate poor behaviours from staff.” The trust said it had been under “sustained pressure” but had already begun to make improvements, including a new information system in maternity services and a review of nursing establishment numbers. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 June 2023
  9. News Article
    Thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year as part of a government push to plug the huge workforce gaps that plague almost all NHS services. The number of places in medical schools will rise from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and could reach 15,000 by 2031 as a result of the NHS’s first long-term workforce plan. There will also be a big expansion in training places for those who want to become nurses, with the number rising by a third to 40,000 by 2028 – matching the number of nurses the health service currently lacks. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, hailed the long-awaited plan as “a once in a generation opportunity to put staffing on a sustainable footing for years to come”. Medical groups, health experts and organisations representing NHS staff welcomed the plan as ambitious but overdue. Richard Murray, chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, said it could be a “landmark moment” for the health service by providing it with the staff it needs to provide proper care. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 June 2023
  10. News Article
    Ex-health secretary Matt Hancock has criticised the UK's pandemic planning before Covid hit, saying it was "completely wrong". He told the Covid Inquiry that planning was focused on the provision of body bags and how to bury the dead, rather than stopping the virus taking hold. He said he was "profoundly sorry" for each death. After giving evidence he approached some of the bereaved families, but they turned their backs on him as he left. The former health secretary, who answered questions from the inquiry on Tuesday, said he understood his apology might be difficult for families to accept, even though it was "honest and heartfelt". Under questioning from Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the Covid Inquiry, Mr Hancock stressed that the "attitude, the doctrine of the UK was to plan for the consequences of a disaster". Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 June 2023
  11. News Article
    The head of NHS England was critical of the government’s slogan urging people to “protect the NHS” at the start of the Covid pandemic, amid concerns it would stop people coming forward for much-needed treatment. Simon Stevens, who led the NHS until July 2021, was one of the slogan’s “greatest critics” and was not involved in the government discussion that led to the phrase being deployed. “It was a tremendously powerful slogan,” writes journalist Isabel Hardman in Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles That Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future. “It was popular in government – but not universally so. In fact, one of its greatest critics was Simon Stevens. Stevens wasn’t on the calls where [government advisers] came up with ‘Protect the NHS’, and initially he complained in private that it gave the impression that the public was there for the health service – not the health service being there for the public. “Either way, the focus quickly became about the importance of ‘protecting the NHS’. But there was never a clear definition of what it was being protected from.” Later in 2020, Lord Stevens referred to his concerns about the slogan, writing: “Rather than say ‘Protect the NHS’, health service staff prefer to say: ‘Help us help you’.” Senior NHS figures also attempted to battle against the slogan from the spring of 2020, urging patients to come forward as normal. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 25 June 2023
  12. News Article
    A permanent change in approach is needed for deciding which hospitals are built and when, and should be led by the NHS not politicians, the government’s ‘new hospitals programme’ boss has told HSJ. Natalie Forrest, who is leading the government’s drive to build “40 new hospitals” by 2030, said the service must move beyond political targets, and towards the NHS having more autonomy to work through a list of rebuilds needed. Ms Forrest, who has led the programme since 2021, said: “There shouldn’t be a special group that are getting rebuilt, and everyone else has to watch from the sidelines.” The former Chase Farm Hospital chief said she believed this was now the direction of travel, and that a commitment from ministers for a “rolling programme” beyond 2030 represented the “biggest success [for the NHP] so far”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 26 June 2023
  13. News Article
    The NHS is set to undergo the "largest expansion in training and workforce" in its history, Rishi Sunak has said. Speaking to the BBC, the prime minister said the plans would reduce "reliance on foreign-trained healthcare professionals". It comes at a time of record-high waiting lists in the NHS and junior doctors set to stage a five-day strike next month. The full plans are expected to be published next week. Pressed about the length of time it would take to see the results of the changes, Mr Sunak accepted it could take "five, ten, fifteen years for these things to come through", but that did not mean it was not the right thing to do. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 June 2023
  14. News Article
    The World Health Organization (WHO) and almost 200 other health associations have made an unprecedented call for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. A call to action published on Wednesday, urges governments to agree a legally binding plan to phase out fossil fuel exploration and production, similar to the framework convention on tobacco, which was negotiated under the WHO’s auspices in 2003. “The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said the WHO president, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO’s climate change department, said the letter was a watershed moment. “This is the first time the health sector has come together to issue such a statement explicitly about fossil fuels,” he told the Guardian. “The current burden of death and disease from air pollution is comparable to that of tobacco use, while the long-term effects of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate present an existential threat to humanity – as do nuclear weapons.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 September 2022 Further reading Climate change: why it needs to be on every Trust's agenda
  15. News Article
    Hardeep Singh, an informatics leader, patient safety advocate and innovator, and friend of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF), has been awarded the Individual Achievement Award in the 20th John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards for demonstrating exceptional leadership and scholarship in patient safety and healthcare quality through his substantive lifetime body of work. The Joint Commission and National Quality Forum present Eisenberg Awards annually to recognise major achievements to improve patient safety and healthcare quality. Dr Singh, chief of the Health Policy, Quality & Informatics Program in the Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety at Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and professor at Baylor College of Medicine, was recognised for his pioneering career in diagnostic and health IT safety and his commitment to translating his research into pragmatic tools, strategies, and innovations for improving patient safety. His commitment to improving patient safety began while pursuing his Master of Public Health at the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2002 when he first learned the field of patient safety existed. That commitment was galvanised early in his medical career, as he found himself treating patients who had been misdiagnosed, received unsafe care, or experienced poor outcomes. The breadth and depth of Dr Singh's research work is remarkable, but what is most notable is the extent to which he has succeeded in translating it into pragmatic strategies and innovations for improving patient safety. Dr. Singh emphasised that while the Eisenberg Award recognizes an individual for their achievements, his work in patient safety has been successful because of its multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach with psychologists, human factors engineers, social scientists, informaticians, patients, and more. That work has led to the development of several tools to improve patient safety, including The Safer Dx Checklist, which helps organizations perform proactive self-assessment on where they stand in terms of diagnostic safety. "As an immigrant and an international medical graduate, I have had a lifelong dream to make an impact on health care. I saw every scientific project as an opportunity to change health care. So, I made a personal commitment that my research must use a pragmatic, real-world improvement lens and challenge the status quo in quality and safety," Dr. Singh said. Read full story Source: Jewish Healthcare Foundation News, 31 August 2022
  16. News Article
    A new patient safety chief should be appointed in each of the four UK nations to oversee health and social care and tackle the currently “fragmented and complex” system, experts have urged. The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (the body that oversees the 10 statutory bodies that regulate health and social care professionals in the UK, including the General Medical Council) has called for what it described as a radical rethink to improve safety in care. In a report published last week, it recommended the appointment of an independent health and social care safety commissioner (or equivalent) for each UK country. These commissioners would identify current and potential risks across the whole health and social care system, it said, and instigate necessary action across organisations. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 6 September 2022 Related reading Working together to achieve safer care for all: a blog by Alan Clamp (chief executive of the Professional Standards Authority) Joining up a fragmented landscape: Reflections on the PSA report ‘Safer care for all’ (a blog from Patient Safety Learning
  17. News Article
    Liz Truss has been warned against “fantasy predictions” that the NHS can return to normal without radical change and was told that “unacceptable standards” are being normalised. In a rare political intervention, the professional standards body for the UK’s 220,000 doctors agreed that the NHS was routinely letting down patients. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said politicians must be prepared for radical changes to save the health service. Closing smaller hospitals, accepting that routine dentistry cannot be free for everyone and a return of Covid volunteers to allow doctors to treat more patients were all suggested by the head of the academy. The academy released a report that declared the NHS was in crisis, writing: “The system is providing increasing proportions of care or services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety, and should not be acceptable in a country with the resources that we have in the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily.” The report sets out a series of recommendations for reform, including boosting staff numbers, reforming social care and spending more on technology. Helen Stokes-Lampard, the academy’s chairwoman, said patients were facing a “dismal winter” and that politicians must take difficult decisions. “If we don’t make changes it will inevitably deteriorate further,” she said. “The demand isn’t going away, the pressure isn’t going away, which is why the challenge for our government and for our whole society is to confront these issues and have a difficult conversation.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 9 September 2022
  18. News Article
    NHS England’s chief strategy officer has called for a “reset” of the current “overwhelmingly negative narrative” about the health service. Chris Hopson said there was a collective responsibility to present a more balanced picture, while still being honest about problems. The service should do more to emphasise successes, improvements and where there is good performance, he said. He acknowledged there were too many instances where good quality care could not be delivered due to current pressures on the service. But they were being addressed and improvements being made. “We need to make sure that our staff, our patients but also the taxpayers hear that more balanced narrative,” he said at the Ambulance Leadership Forum event on Wednesday. Ambulance services – whose response times have sky-rocketed, well beyond their targets, over the past 18 months – have been at the centre of much recent negative coverage. Mr Hopson argued that the constantly negative narrative was having an impact on staff – whose work was not being recognised – and creating a sense that the NHS was broken. “That narrative is partly being driven by opponents of the NHS and also [those] who want to attack the government,” Mr Hopson said, although he acknowledged that it also reflected genuine instances of staff and patient experience. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 September 2022
  19. News Article
    Thérèse Coffey has been appointed as the new health and social care secretary. Ms Coffey, previously work and pensions secretary, has been appointed to the role by the new prime minister, Liz Truss. A close ally of Ms Truss, Ms Coffey has also been appointed as her deputy prime minister. The new prime minister, in her first speech in the role, said that putting “our health service on a firm footing” was one of her “three early priorities”. She pledged to improve access and build “hospitals”. Ms Coffey said this evening her priorities were “ABCD”, representing “ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 September 2022
  20. News Article
    Internal documents show significant evidence of bullying and discrimination within NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) which dates back at least eight years, when the organisation was led by the current chief executive of the Care Quality Commission. HSJ has seen a report which detailed major tensions and dysfunction at NHSBT’s Colindale site in north London in 2016, four years before another report found similar problems. Given the damning findings of the second report, in 2020 – which found a “toxic environment”, multiple accounts of bullying, and “systemic racism” at the same site – it raises questions around the actions taken by NHSBT’s former leaders, including current CQC boss Ian Trenholm, to address the issues raised in the 2016 report. The 2016 report was commissioned by the manufacturing directorate and concluded the hospital services department at the Colindale site was “dysfunctional” after a highly contentious reorganisation of some services and teams. It noted “a series of bullying and harassment incidents” were being reported, but which staff felt were not investigated appropriately, and claims of “discriminatory practice” by managers. Read full story Source: HSJ, 26 August 2022
  21. News Article
    Liz Truss’s desire to talk about cutting management in the NHS will get in the way of more important conversations about the future operating model of the health service, a respected system leader has said. In an interview with HSJ, Rob Webster, chief executive of the West Yorkshire integrated care system, said NHS managers have been a “fundamental” part of the response to the pandemic and that they have a “good record of delivering” when backed by coherent plans. His comments come after Ms Truss, who was confirmed as the new prime minister today, said during the Conservative Party leadership contest she was planning “fewer levels of management” in the NHS. When asked about the comments made by Mrs Truss, as well as similar statements from health secretary Steve Barclay, Mr Webster said: “This is part of the reality of the NHS being a political issue, that you will get this sort of debate. “And I think if you want to enter debate about the NHS being over-managed, you can look at any one of a number of independent publications that demonstrate that it’s not, from the Kings Fund, the Nuffield trust, and various others…" Mr Webster said many patients in the NHS are still receiving good, safe and timely care, but at the same time many people are waiting too long to access services while staff have faced “incredible pressure” for an extended period. “What we need to do is to work our way out of this,” he said. “And we can only do that with a coherent plan which is politically led nationally, politically owned locally, and led by people in the system collectively.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 September 2022
  22. News Article
    A doctor who was sacked for raising patient safety concerns has won a case against England's hospital regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Orthopaedic surgeon Shyam Kumar worked part-time for the CQC as a special adviser on hospital inspections, but Manchester Employment Tribunal found that he was unfairly dismissed. Between 2015 and his dismissal in 2019, Mr Kumar wrote to senior colleagues at the CQC with a number of serious concerns. They included a hospital inspection, at which he claims patient safety was significantly compromised when a group of whistleblowing doctors was prevented from discussing their concerns. Mr Kumar said, on many occasions, he reported concerns about a surgeon at his own trust, Morecambe Bay, who had carried out operations that were "inappropriate" and of an "unacceptable" quality and harmed patients. He warned the CQC that the trust management wanted to bury it "under the carpet". The tribunal noted that his concerns were found to be justified and the surgeon eventually had conditions placed on his licence to practise. The CQC "accepted the findings". Mr Kumar, who has been awarded compensation, says his concerns were ignored. "The whole energy of a few individuals in the CQC was spent on gunning me down, rather than focusing on improvement to patient safety and exerting the regulatory duties," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 September 2022
  23. News Article
    Health secretary Steve Barclay says trust chief executives should be held accountable for ambulance handover delays in a ‘fair’ way that recognises factors outside their control. Mr Barclay made a wide ranging speech at a Policy Exchange event on Thursday. However, the content of the speech was much less radical than earlier press reports in which it was suggested he would tell the NHS to “scrap targets”, “declare war on pointless pen-pushers”, and deprioritise “cancer, maternity and mental health”. Last month, the health secretary summoned the chief executives of six of the NHS trusts which are recording the longest waits for ambulance handovers at their emergency departments. Mr Barclay was asked by HSJ what the consequences would be for leaders who failed to improve the situation. He said: “It’s not about blaming the chief executives, it’s about understanding what are their challenges and how do we then get clarity on that. “Once we’ve agreed on that, then you can have performance management to hold individual chiefs to [account on] the bits that are within their control, distinct from bits that may be the ambulance trust’s or others in the system.” He said the government and NHS England would ask what was “within the chief exec’s control” and how a trust’s performance compared to that of its peers? Trusts would be asked to “comply” with best practice or explain why they were not. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHSE would then be able to decide “what are the things where it [the trust] needs wider support?” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 September 2022
  24. News Article
    Hospital trusts in England face “eye-watering” rises in energy bills of £2m a month each due to the fuel price surge, with NHS leaders saying patients may face longer waiting times or even see their care “cut back” as a result. NHS trusts are concerned they will have to make critical choices on staff levels and the services they provide in order to keep operating, with energy costs predicted to be as much as three times higher than a year ago. The BMJ surveyed NHS trusts in England for details of their recent and predicted future energy bills and how they expected to operate this coming winter when taking into account the additional energy charges on the way. Most said they expected their energy bills to double at least. Rory Deighton, senior acute lead at the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said: “This isn’t an abstract problem, as the gap in funding from rising inflation will either have to be made up by fewer staff being employed, longer waiting times for care, or other areas of patient care being cut back." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 September 2022
  25. News Article
    Cold homes will damage children’s lungs and brain development and lead to deaths as part of a “significant humanitarian crisis” this winter, health experts have warned. Unless the next prime minister curbs soaring fuel bills, children face a wave of respiratory illness with long-term consequences, according to a review by Sir Michael Marmot, the director of University College London’s Institute of Health Equity, and Prof Ian Sinha, a respiratory consultant at Liverpool’s Alder Hey children’s hospital. Sinha said he had “no doubt” that cold homes would cost children’s lives this winter, although they could not predict how many, with damage done to young lungs leading to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema and bronchitis for others in adulthood. Huge numbers of cash-strapped households are preparing to turn heating systems down or off when the energy price cap increases to £3,549 from 1 October, and the president of the British Paediatric Respiratory Society, also told the Guardian that child deaths were likely. “There will be excess deaths among some children where families are forced into not being able to heat their homes,” said Dr Simon Langton-Hewer. “It will be dangerous, I’m afraid.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 September 2022
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