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Found 798 results
  1. News Article
    A struggling A&E told patients they had no beds in the hospital and would face waits of 13 hours, The Independent has learned. NHS staff at Harlow A&E, run by Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust, warned patients on Monday: “We’ve got 170 patients in the department, there are 90 patients waiting to be seen at the moment…our current wait time for a doctor is seven and half hours I will estimate by the time I go home in the morning at 8 ‘clock some of you will still be waiting because the waits will get up to 13 hours. “There are currently no beds in the trust we’re trying to make space if we can but if people are admitted there’s a chance they’ll stay in A&E overnight." “We will do our best to make you comfortable but please don’t expect you will be going direct to a ward because that might not happen.” The staff member asked relatives to leave as the department was so busy. Speaking with The Independent an emergency department consultant from the Midlands said they were “fed up”. He added: “It’s just so unfair on patients and staff. The best ones are burning out and wanting to leave. The only way to survive seems to be to stop caring/trying It’s just so unfair on patients and staff. The best ones are burning out and wanting to leave. The only way to survive seems to be to stop caring/trying.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 June 2022
  2. News Article
    The number of patients stuck in hospitals despite being ‘medically fit’ to leave has continued to increase in recent months, leading to warnings from NHS Confederation that trusts are finding it ‘impossible’ to make progress on reducing the numbers. Official statistics for April suggest an average of 12,589 patients per day in NHS hospitals in England – 13% of all occupied beds – did not meet the “criteria to reside”. At 31 trusts, the proportion was 20% or more. NHS England has since told local leaders to make reducing the numbers of delayed discharges an operational priority. The issue is a key factor behind the long waits in emergency care, as ward beds are taking longer to become available to accident and emergency patients. Rory Deighton, acute lead at NHS Confederation, said targets to reduce delayed discharges “will not be met” unless the government “invests in domiciliary care wages,” amid high numbers of vacancies in the social care sector. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 June 2022
  3. News Article
    More than 500 seriously ill patients died last year before they could get treatment in hospital after the ambulance they called for took up to 15 hours to reach them, an investigation by the Guardian reveals. The fatalities included people who had had a stroke or heart attack or whose breathing had suddenly collapsed, or who had been involved in a road traffic collision. In every case, an ambulance crew took much longer to arrive than the NHS target times for responding to an emergency. Bereaved relatives have spoken of how the pain of losing a loved one has been compounded by the ambulance crew having taken so long to arrive and start treatment. Coroners, senior doctors and ambulance staff say the scale of the loss of life illustrates the growing dangers to patients from the implosion of NHS urgent and emergency care services. “These 500-plus deaths a year when an ambulance hasn’t got there in time are tragic and avoidable,” said Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors. “These numbers are deeply concerning. This is the equivalent of multiple airliners crashing.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 March 2023
  4. News Article
    The crisis in the NHS is leading to continued higher-than-usual death levels in England and Wales, experts have said. Figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that almost 170,000 more people than normal died in England and Wales between March 2020, when coronavirus was declared a pandemic, and the end of 2022 – 11% higher than the five-year average. However, the new data also shows that the number of excess deaths has continued, even as the virus’s fatality rate has declined thanks to vaccinations and weaker strains, with 90% of the excess deaths in 2022 occurring in the second half of the year, coinciding with recent NHS pressures and the impact of a cold winter. Prof David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University said that “analyses have suggested that delays in ambulance arrivals and in A&E will have had a substantial impact, as well as the cold weather and the early flu season”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 March 2023
  5. News Article
    In posts on two Facebook forums, GP Survival and Resilient GP, family doctors write anonymously, revealing their concerns about how hard they sometimes find it to get an ambulance to attend to a sick patient – and the risks that can pose. “I ended up in the back of a police car with sirens going with a stranger who’d had a probable stroke on the street. Category 2 ambulance hadn’t come after 45 minutes so flagged down a cop car. They bundled us in. “Emergency department full of waiting ambulances unable to unload and I eventually left him in the very capable hands of the stroke team. Terrifying how broken our system is and how many people had likely just walked past him before I spotted him from my car." “Our emergency care practitioner called an ambulance at 6pm on Wednesday 6 July. Very elderly gentleman. Off legs, urinary symptoms, not eating/drinking. Guess when crew arrived? This morning, Friday 8 July, around 10am – 40 hours [later]. And the ECP had to wait 35 minutes just for 999 call to be answered!” “I recently complained [to the local ambulance service] for first time ever when ambulance refused to take a very sick patient of mine into hospital that I’d assessed over the phone because ‘her obs are normal’. They weren’t but even if they had been the reliance on these alone, ignoring the medical background, the family history and my history was just wrong. “I then had to go out and see her, re-call 999 (with many hours additional delay) and she died after a few days in hospital.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 March 2023
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. News Article
    Nursing shortages are contributing to children waiting up to three times longer for spinal surgery than pre-pandemic, a top surgeon has claimed. Chris Adams says up to one in four operations are cancelled at NHS Lothian, with staffing the main reason. Mr Adams also claims that some children are not being put on waiting lists as early as they should be. NHS Lothian disputes some of Mr Adams' statements but says "significant pressures" are affecting waiting times. The senior clinician, one of Scotland's three paediatric spinal surgeons, said he was speaking out of behalf of spinal patients and their families The surgeon's claims appear in a new BBC Disclosure investigation into Scotland's NHS, which reveals that some children are waiting up to three times longer than pre-pandemic for spinal surgery, with some waiting more than a year. At least 51 out of a possible 190 planned spinal surgeries at RHCYP were cancelled at short notice in 2022, with nursing shortages understood to be the main cause Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 March 2023
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. News Article
    There are 625,000 people on a hospital waiting list in Scotland. That figure is the highest on record and equivalent to one in nine of the population. Backlogs have soared since the Covid pandemic and more people faced with long waits are seeking private treatment. An opinion poll commissioned by BBC Scotland suggests one in five of those who replied said they - or one of their family - had paid for private medical care in the past 12 months. Most (73%) said they would have preferred to use the NHS. Linda Fyfe, from South Ayrshire, was among those not prepared to wait for NHS treatment when she needed a hip replacement. Within months Linda went from living with the "bearable" pain in her right hip to being unable to comfortably move more than 100 yards. The 75-year-old said the pain changed her whole lifestyle and she could not wait between 12 and 18 months for an operation on the NHS. The retired social work administrator was quoted £14,000 to go private in the UK but this was more than she could afford. She opted to have the same procedure done in Lithuania for about half the price. The Kaunas clinic that treated Linda said it sees about 10 people a month from Scotland and more from across the UK."I made the right decision. I couldn't have gone another year or 18 months and it might even have taken longer. Read full story Source: BBC News, 6 March 2023
  12. News Article
    Older and overweight patients are making it harder to clear NHS surgery backlogs, anaesthetists have warned. New data reveal an “extremely worrying picture” of increasing age, rates of obesity and complexity of surgical patients across the UK, the Royal College of Anaesthetists said. The average age of patients requiring anaesthesia increased by 2.3 years, from 50.5 to 52.8, over the last decade, while their BMI also jumped from 24.9 (borderline normal/overweight) to 26.7 (overweight). The proportion of patients who are complex or have other comorbidities has also significantly increased, the study found. When patients are older, overweight and have other problems, this makes anaesthetic and surgical care more complicated and higher risk, the authors said. Managing these patients safely takes longer during surgery and can lead to slower recovery times, requiring more time in hospital. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 2 March 2023
  13. 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
  14. News Article
    Sam Hindle has 23cm of polypropylene mesh in her body and lives in constant fear that it will become unstable and cause irreversible damage. "You are in your own Battle Royale, strapped to a time bomb, and thinking when is it going to go off," she told the BBC. Sam, 46, is one of hundreds of women in Scotland who have suffered life-changing symptoms since they had a transvaginal mesh implant. After years of campaigning by the women, the Scottish government has promised it will cover the costs of mesh removal at private clinics in the UK and US. But Sam has been waiting more than two years just for a referral to the Complex Mesh Surgical Service in Glasgow to start the process. The Scottish government announced last year that it had signed a contract to allow NHS patients to visit a US expert for mesh removal surgery The contract with Gynaecologic and Reconstructive Surgery of Missouri, where Dr Dionysios Veronikis operates, follows a similar contract agreed with Spire Healthcare in Bristol. The cost of each removal procedure is estimated to be £16,000 to £23,000. But in order to access such treatment, women have to be assessed by the national service in Glasgow. Women like Sam say there are waiting years to just get referred for assessment. With further delays for appointments and then waits for surgery. Read full story Source: BBC News, 2 March 2023
  15. News Article
    A £14bn plan to reduce NHS backlogs caused by Covid is failing to meet targets, with cancer waiting times at their worst-ever levels, parliament’s spending watchdog has said. A report by the Commons’ public accounts committee said NHS England’s three-year recovery programme for elective and cancer care, agreed in 2022, was already “falling short” in its first year and expressed serious doubts that the wider plan would be achieved on time. MPs found that although the first target was to eliminate two-year waits for elective care by July 2022, there were 2,600 patients who had been waiting more than two years in August 2022, and a record 7 million people on waiting lists in total. The recovery programme was overoptimistic, the report said. “NHS England made unrealistic assumptions about the first year of recovery, including that there would be low levels of Covid-19 and minimal adverse effects from winter pressures.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 March 2023
  16. News Article
    A struggling acute trust says its failure to hit its elective care targets is directly linked to doctors’ demanding overtime rates in line with the British Medical Association’s rate cards, as national tensions around the issue intensify. University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust’s January performance report said its elective activity was down by around 1,000 cases over a two-month period, due to the issue. Last summer, the BMA published a “rate card” outlining the “minimum” hourly pay consultants should receive for additional work, such as waiting list initiatives and weekend shifts. Some accused the union of “acting like football agents” by trying to inflate their members’ pay. NHS chiefs have long been warning of the risk the rate card poses to elective recovery. But there are few examples of a trust making such an explicit link between their struggle to staff overtime shifts because of the rate card and subsequent failure to hit their elective targets, and placing a number on how many patients they were forced to add to the list because of the issue. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 March 2023
  17. 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
  18. 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
  19. News Article
    Pradeep Gill can see very little of the intense activity around him. He is leaning back in a reclining chair inside one of Heatherwood Hospital's operating theatres. Buzzing around him is the operating team, led by consultant orthopaedic surgeon Jeremy Granville-Chapman. For the surgeon and his team, this procedure is the very definition of routine. They have carried out more than 1,000 joint operations in the past 10 months. Heatherwood Hospital, part of the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, is a specialist elective hub where patients can come in for routine but life-changing surgery at a super-charged pace with theatres working at full tilt, six days a week. It is busy. But it is a good-busy, not the bad-busy we have come to associate with the NHS during this winter crisis. The site opened in March last year and Frimley's hospital executives are keen to stress the impact it has made. "As a specialist planned care facility, Heatherwood has been able to perform surgery six days a week with four out of its six state-of-the-art theatres dedicated to orthopaedic procedures," it said in a press release. "The hospital has also successfully reduced the length of time patients stay in hospital, with 40% of patients safely discharged within 24 hours." This is the practice the NHS wants to adopt as it battles a record seven-million-strong waiting list. Heatherwood can do that because the hospital is ring-fenced from acute pressures that affect other hospitals, as one its most senior orthopaedic surgeons, Mr Rakesh Kucheira, explained. "We have now realised that winter pressures are 12 months not just three months, which means the acute sites are not going to be able to do planned activity that they planned for, so we've got to create more space," he said. Read full story Source: Sky News, 9 March 2023
  20. News Article
    Thousands of patients are being forced to wait more than 18 months for treatments such as knee and brain surgery as the health service is set to miss its flagship target because of NHS strikes. NHS England last week claimed it was “on track” to hit the mandated target, but senior sources have warned that the impact of prolonged walkouts combined with unprecedented demand for emergency care means that this is now unlikely. The sources say it is probable that up to 10,000 patients will still be waiting for 18 months or more by the end of March, as a knock-on effect of the cancellation of 140,000 appointments because of strike action. More walkouts are planned over the coming weeks. Patricia Marquis, RCN director for England, said the backlog was “yet even more evidence of what happens when you fail to invest in the workforce. If ministers are serious about preventing a further exodus and cutting the backlog, they need to hear the calls of NHS leaders and come to the table and talk about pay. Only then will patients receive the care they need and waiting lists start to come down.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 February 2023
  21. News Article
    GPs are attempting to deal with up to 3,000 patients each, amid worsening staff shortages, according to new analysis commissioned by the Liberal Democrats. The research shows that the number of patients per GP has risen sharply, as rising numbers of doctors reduce their hours, or opt for early retirement. The figures, which track the number of “full-time equivalent” fully qualified GPs, show the number has fallen from 29,320 in 2016 to 27,372 last year. The trend follows a rise in part-time work, with the average GP now working a three-day week. On average, there are now 2,273 patients per fully qualified doctor, up from 1,981 in 2016, the research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows. While the total number of GPs fell by almost 2,000, the number of registered patients grew from 58 million to 62.2 million, according to the House of Commons Library. Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said the research “shows yet again how GPs and our teams are working above and beyond to deliver care to an ever-growing patient population, with falling numbers of fully qualified, full-time equivalent GPs.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 14 February 2023
  22. News Article
    Some of the country’s most senior NHS clinicians are earning a lucrative sideline running private firms that offer to cut waiting lists at their own hospitals, the Observer can reveal. Top consultants in Manchester, Sheffield and London are among directors of “insourcing” agencies that charge the health service to treat patients at weekends and evenings and have won millions of pounds of work. Some hold leadership roles at NHS trusts that have awarded contracts to their own companies, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. One deputy medical director jointly ran a firm that provided “insourcing” solutions to his own NHS trust before it was sold in a £13m deal last year. Other consultants have set up firms that they and their colleagues work shifts through themselves, often at rates above NHS price caps. The Centre for Health and the Public Interest, an independent thinktank, called for a ban on such arrangements. The General Medical Council said current conflict of interest policies did not always deliver “the transparency and assurance that patients rightly expect”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 February 2023
  23. News Article
    Changes to hip and knee surgery could halve waiting lists at one hospital within a year, say doctors. Tweaks to surgeries at the Princess of Wales hospital in Bridgend have allowed more patients to be sent home on the same day. Therefore, a shortage of hospital beds is not a barrier for them. It comes as over 37,000 orthopaedic patients are waiting over one year for surgery in Wales. Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Keshav Singhal said a number of "minor tweaks" were made to the procedure "but all of them add up to a huge effect". He said the anaesthetic and pain medication given to patients is "fine-tuned" to reduce pain and nausea after the operation and extra time is spent pinpointing any potential area of bleeding and cauterising it to "prevent wound leakage". "In day surgery we are not constrained by beds - there are no beds here," said Mr Singhal. "Patients can come in, be very well cared for in a state of the art day-surgery unit, and go home in the evening, and that totally cuts down on the inpatient beds." Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 February 2023
  24. News Article
    Ambulance crews reached emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes one hour quicker in January than December in England, figures show. They took 32 minutes on average, compared with more than 90 the month before. The target is 18 minutes but January's average was the quickest for 19 months. A&E waiting times also improved, with just over a quarter of patients waiting longer than four hours - down from more than a third in December. But Society for Acute Medicine president Dr Tim Cooksley said wait times remained "intolerable". And he highlighted the waits the sickest and most frail were facing for a bed on a ward. Nearly four out of every 10 patients waited over four hours on trolleys and in corridors. "The fundamental problem remains a significant shortage of workforce, leading to woefully inadequate inpatient bed and social-care capacity," Dr Cooksley added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 February 2023
  25. 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
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