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News ArticleThe government is setting up 19 more diagnostic centres in communities across England to help tackle the Covid backlog. Ninety one are already open and have delivered more than 2.4 million tests, checks and scans since last summer, ministers say. It is hoped the centres will speed up access to services for patients, thereby reducing waiting times. Seven million people in England are now waiting for hospital treatment. GPs can refer patients to community diagnostic centres so that they can access life-saving checks and scans, and be diagnosed for a range of conditions, without travelling to hospital. Some are located in football stadiums and shopping centres and can offer MRI and CT scans, as well as x-rays. In September, according to the government, the hubs delivered 11% of all diagnostic activity - and its ambition is for 40% to be achieved by 2025. Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 December 2022
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News Article
What ambulance strike means for calls, response times and staffing
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Ambulance services across England are set to go on strike before Christmas as thousands of paramedics and call handlers voted for action. The announcement by union Unison comes as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) confirmed 100,000 nurses across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will walk out on 15 and 20 December. The union is calling for action on pay and a big increase in staff numbers, warning that unless these things happen, services will continue to decline. Saffron Cordery, interim chief of NHS Providers, said on BBC radio four: “I think in terms of the ambulance strike, we know the challenges already of not having enough paramedics, call handlers available, because we’ve seen the challenges to ambulance handover times that we have at the moment in terms of not being able to transfer patients from ambulances into A&E departments and the challenges that brings when they can’t get back out on the road. “Additional challenges on top of that, I think, will make response times incredibly stretched.” Sources told The Independent that one option could be for services to maintain levels of staff to be able to respond to the most serious calls - category one and two calls - and deprioritise the less serious category three and four calls. This has previously been negotiated during smaller-scale strikes. However, senior sources suggested that on a larger scale it would be hard to not respond to category three calls, which might include an older person who has fallen. It is also unclear how 999 call centres would operate during strikes as this work would likely count as life-saving emergency care, The Independent understands. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 December 2022 -
News Article
Ambulance waits of 40 hours as NHS delays worsen
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
More than 11,000 ambulances a week are caught in queues of at least an hour outside A&E units in England, a BBC News analysis shows. The total - the highest since records began, in 2010 - means one in seven crews faced delays on this scale by late November. Paramedics warned the problems were causing patients severe harm. One family told BBC News an 85-year-old woman with a broken hip had waited 40 hours before a hospital admission. She waited an "agonising" 14 hours for the ambulance to arrive and then 26 in the ambulance outside hospital. When finally admitted, to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, which has apologised for her care, she had surgery. Both ambulance response times and A&E waits have hit their worst levels on record in all parts of the UK in recent months. In Cornwall, patients facing emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes are now waiting more than two hours on average for an ambulance. The target is 18 minutes. They are thought to be among the worst delays in the country but none of England's ambulance services is close to the target, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all missing their targets. Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022 -
News Article
NHS England waiting times for gender dysphoria patients unlawful, court hears
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England has acted unlawfully by making thousands of patients with gender dysphoria wait “extreme” periods of time for treatment, the high court has heard. Transgender claimants, who have suffered distress as a result of delays, want the court to declare that NHSE broke the law by failing to meet a target for 92% of patients to commence treatment within 18 weeks. NHSE figures show there are 26,234 adults waiting for a first appointment with an adult gender dysphoria clinic, of whom 23,561 have been waiting more than 18 weeks. The number of children on the waiting list is approximately 7,600, of whom about 6,100 have been waiting more than 18 weeks. In a witness statement, one of the claimants, Eva Echo, said she received a referral in October 2017 but had still not been given a first appointment, leaving her in “painful indefinite limbo”. A co-claimant, Alexander Harvey, who has been waiting for a first appointment since 2019, said the delay “means that I have to continue to live in a body which I don’t feel is mine and which does not reflect who I am”. He said he had twice tried to kill himself. In written submissions for Tuesday’s hearing, David Lock KC, representing the claimants, said delays to puberty-blocking treatment – the current waiting time for children to access services is more than two years – could cause “intense anxiety and distress” to adolescents as a result of them experiencing “permanent and irreversible bodily changes”. While NHSE accepts it has not met the 92% target across the cohort of patients for whom its health services are commissioned, it claims a breach does not give rise to enforceable individual rights. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 November 2022 -
News Article
Pritchard admits NHS behind on elective catch up
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England’s chief executive has admitted the service is behind on its commitment to increase elective activity to 130% of pre-covid levels by 2025, saying the recovery would need to be ‘reprofiled’ to catch up after this year. Amanda Pritchard told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee that NHS England would need to “re-profile some of the [elective recovery] trajectories”, as progress this year was being hampered by a combination of higher than expected covid rates, flu, workforce challenges and industrial action. She later added that the 2025 target could “theoretically” be missed, but stressed “we are a very long way from that” and indicated she believed the NHS could catch up in future years. Elective recovery plans agreed between NHSE and government last autumn said activity would recover to 110% of pre-covid levels in 2022-23. Yet published data shows many systems have so far been carrying out fewer procedures than before covid in most months. Asked by the committee’s chair Meg Hillier if she was confident the NHS would hit the 2025 activity target, first agreed for the 2021 spending settlement, Ms Pritchard replied: “I think at the moment we are absolutely aiming [to hit the target] at the end of that period of time, but we do recognise that we are going to need to re-profile trajectories to get there.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 November 2022 -
News Article
GPs tell patients to ‘get an Uber’ as NHS ambulance delays hit record level
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Some of the country’s GP are advising patients requiring urgent hospital care to “get an Uber” or use a relative’s car because of the worst ever delays in the ambulance service in England. Patients with breathing difficulties and other potentially serious conditions are being told in some cases that they are likely to be transferred more quickly from a general practice to accident and emergency if they travel by cab or private vehicle. NHS England data shows that October’s average ambulance response times for category 1 to 3 emergencies, which cover all urgent conditions, appear to be the highest since the categories were introduced nationally in 2017. Some patients who require emergency treatment may have to wait several hours for an ambulance to arrive. Dr Selvaseelan Selvarajah, a GP partner in east London, said: “If somebody is not having a heart attack or a stroke, my default advice is ‘have you got someone who can drive you or do you want to get an Uber?’ “These are patients who may have breathing difficulty or are suffering severe abdominal pain, but their life is not in immediate danger.” He said such patients would have previously been transferred by ambulance. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2022 -
News Article
NHS’s flagship £360m system to slash waiting lists delayed
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A flagship programme intended to bring down NHS waiting backlogs is to be delayed after becoming mired in bureaucracy. The £360 million federated data platform is seen as critical to reducing waiting lists, with a record 7.1 million people now waiting for treatment. When the plans were announced in the spring, health chiefs said that the system would be an “essential enabler to transformational improvements” across the NHS. Experts have warned that progress in clearing the lists has been set back by chaotic recording systems. While NHS data was found to be littered with errors, such as duplicate entries and dead patients, many patients in need of follow-up care are not recorded once they have had their first slot. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 25 November 2022 -
News Article
Eight days waiting in A&E: Inside the crisis in NHS mental health care
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
People suffering from mental illness are increasingly struggling to access help at every level of the NHS – from record numbers facing “unacceptable” delays in referrals to patients waiting up to eight days in A&E for a hospital bed. Figures seen by The Independent show almost four times as many people are waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments as two years ago. In the community, more than 16,000 adults and 20,000 children who should receive NHS care are unable to access vital services each month. Nearly 80% of those eligible for counselling on the health service are left waiting more than three months for a second appointment, which is when treatment usually begins. Health leaders say they are “deeply concerned” by the lack of resources available to handle the rise in demand – and warned that the cost of living crisis would exacerbate the issue further. Monica Smith went to A&E at Lewisham last month after her mental health deteriorated when her medication ran out and she was unable to get more. The 32-year-old said: “I was told, ‘We can’t find any beds – there’s no bed in the whole country or the whole region, so we’re going to have a bed on A&E and hopefully you’ll get a bed in the morning.’” Monica started hallucinating and was given medication to calm her down, but in the morning there was still no bed. Doctors tried to send her home, she said, but crisis services assessed her three times over the following days and each time decided she was too unwell. Instead, Monica stayed in an annex off A&E with other mental health patients. She said: “I was on this, like, mattress, like a mental health mattress on the floor.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 27 November 2022 -
News ArticleNHS England’s national cancer director has said that she is “cautiously optimistic” about reaching cancer waiting time targets by March 2023, but she refused to be drawn on what had happened to the government’s proposed 10 year cancer plan. Cally Palmer was speaking to MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee at a special one-off session on the urgent challenges facing cancer services, including workforce shortages, winter pressures, and poor performance. Latest figures from September, published on 10 November, show that 60.5% of patients began their first treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred for suspected cancer, against a target of 85%. That target was pushed back to March 2023 from March this year. Palmer told the committee on 23 November that the 85% target aimed to reduce the 62-day backlog to pre-pandemic levels. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 24 November 2022
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News Article
NHS faces ‘perfect winter storm’ with tenfold rise in hospital flu cases
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS in England is facing a “perfect winter storm” with 10 times more people in hospital with flu than this time last year, and ambulances experiencing deadly delays when arriving at A&E with sick patients. There were an average of 344 patients a day in hospitals in England with flu last week, more than 10 times the number at the beginning of last December. And as many as 3 in 10 patients arriving at hospitals by ambulance are waiting at least 30 minutes to be handed over to A&E teams. Health chiefs say the crisis is leading to deaths. The figures on flu and ambulance delays were published by NHS England on Thursday and offered the first weekly snapshot of how hospitals are performing this season. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the healthcare system in England, said: “These figures really hammer home just how stretched services already are as we head into a perfect winter storm. Significantly higher numbers of people are in hospital because of flu compared to this time last year, coupled with the fact that Covid-19 has not gone away.” He added: “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays, and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 November 2022 -
News Article
NHS Highland slammed over three year wait for bowel op
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A report by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) said the health board's own investigation into the patient's complaint was of "poor quality" and "failed to acknowledge the significant and unreasonable delays" suffered. The delays led 'Patient C' to develop a severe hernia which left them unable to work, reliant on welfare benefits, and requiring riskier and more complex surgery than originally planned. The watchdog criticised NHS bosses for blaming Covid for the delays when the patient had been ready for surgery since December 2018, and said there had been "no sense of urgency" despite "the gravity of C's situation". The report said: "It is of significant concern that the Board has failed to fully acknowledge the consequences of the delays and the adverse effects upon C's physical and mental health as a result. "The consequences for C of these delays cannot and should not be underestimated." Read full story Source: The Herald, 24 November 2022 -
News Article
The puzzle of UK’s half a million missing workers
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
For the first time, more than 2.5 million people in the UK are out of work because of a long-term health problem. The number has jumped by half a million since the start of the pandemic - but, BBC News analysis reveals, the impact is spread unevenly across the country, with some regions and types of job far more affected. For Mary Starling, there are good days and bad days. The 61-year-old is on strong painkillers, for arthritis. She needs a knee replacement - but that could mean another 18 months on an NHS waiting list. Mary is keen to return to that work - but needs her operation first. "I feel despair - but I'm resigned to it," she says. "I understand it isn't possible to magic up something, though it's wearing not being able to plan my life." The UK is in its fourth year of sharply rising chronic illness. The highest rates are among 50- to 64-year-olds, but there have also been significant increases in some younger groups. Although the link is not conclusive, the Bank of England has said record NHS waiting lists are likely to be playing a "significant role". Some of the largest increases are in people reporting mobility difficulties, such as leg and back problems, or heart and blood-pressure problems. More younger people, in particular, say they are not in work because of different forms of mental illness. But the largest increase in long-term sickness is in the catch-all "other health problems" category, likely to include some of those with "long Covid" symptoms. Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 November 2022 -
News ArticleAmbulance crews could not respond to almost one in four 999 calls last month – the most ever – because so many were tied up outside A&Es waiting to hand patients over, dramatic new NHS figures show. An estimated 5,000 patients in England – also the highest number on record – potentially suffered “severe harm” through waiting so long either to be admitted to A&E or just to get an ambulance to turn up to help them. Ambulance officers warned that patients were dying every day directly because of the delays since the service could no longer perform its role as a “safety net” for people needing urgent medical help. “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis,” said Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), which represents the heads of England’s 10 regional NHS ambulance services. Flaherty added: “Our national data for hospital handover delays during October 2022 is extremely worrying and underlines the fact that in some parts of the country efforts to reduce or eradicate these devastating and unnecessary delays are simply not working.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 November 2022
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News ArticleAt a time when it feels like the world’s perpetually on fire, we all need a therapist – but trying to find one in the USA is difficult. A study from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 6 in 10 psychologists “no longer have openings for new patients” in America. The shortage comes as demand for therapy soars: since the beginning of the pandemic, about three-quarters of practitioners have seen their waiting lists expand. In the same period, almost 80% of practitioners report an increase in patients with anxiety disorders and 66% have seen an increase in those needing treatment for depression. “I started my private practice just before Covid hit, and it was certainly filling up then,” says Dr Jennifer Reid, a psychiatrist, writer and podcast host in Philadelphia. “But the numbers have exponentially risen since that time.” Reid focuses on anxiety and insomnia, which have been “major players” in the pandemic. Early on, people with anxiety, phobias or obsessive-compulsive disorder related to germs had particular trouble, she says. Then there was the isolation and the doomscrolling. And now, she says, people are struggling to re-enter the world. “People are finding they’re having anxiety trying to re-engage in social settings in situations that were previously not as safe” at Covid’s peak, she says. Often, she says, people may need to return to their primary care doctor for a period of time, “or they just end up going without and waiting on waitlists, unfortunately”. The APA study found that the average psychologist reported being contacted by 15 potential patients every month; Reid, who combines therapy and medical approaches, says she generally has space for about one new patient every few weeks. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 November 2022
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News Article
"If we are queuing, we can't get to patients"
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Paramedics describe a health service in crisis with a lack of investment and increasing demand, of lengthy waits to transfer patients to hospitals and of a social care system facing collapse. So what does a typical ambulance shift look like? The area covered by the East of England Ambulance Service's nearly 400 front-line ambulances is vast. In 2020-21, the service received nearly 1.2 million 999 calls. Ed Wisken has been a paramedic for 13 years. An advanced paramedic specialising in urgent care, Mr Wisken says: "It is really sad to see patients who have had to wait such a long time for an ambulance - but this is just the culmination of years of underfunding and of reduced resources peaking now where demand outstrips supply." "It is upsetting to see it," he says. "It is not nice to see people who have been waiting hours and hours for an ambulance - but we have really hit crisis point now." He says the morale of fellow paramedics and other healthcare workers is currently very low. "The key is you just have to do just one job at a time and just take the patients that you see and do the best for them," he says. "If you worry about the bigger picture too much you will get frustrated and angry - but that's not going to be beneficial for yourself or your patients." Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 November 2022 -
News Article
Long Covid: What's changed, and what we know now
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
More than two million people in the UK say they have symptoms of Long Covid, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey. Many long Covid patients now report Omicron was their first infection. But almost three years into the pandemic there is still a struggle to be seen by specialist clinics, which are hampered by a lack of resources and research. So has the condition changed at all, and have treatments started to progress? NICE defines Llong Covid, or post-Covid syndrome, as symptoms during or after infection that continue for more than 12 weeks and are not explained by an alternative diagnosis. An estimated 1.2m of those who answered the ONS survey reported at least one such symptom continuing for more than 12 weeks - health issues that they didn't think could be explained by anything else. It's easy to assume that new cases of long Covid have significantly decreased, given recent research suggesting the risk of developing long Covid from the Omicron variant is lower. However, the sheer scale of cases over the past year has resulted in more than a third of people with long Covid acquiring it during the Omicron wave, according to the ONS. Patients are usually referred to post-Covid assessment clinics after experiencing symptoms for 12 weeks - however, waiting times have not improved much within the past year. The latest NHS England figures show 33% of Londoners given an initial assessment had to wait 15 weeks or more from the time of their referral, compared to 39% from a similar period in 2021. The British Medical Association (BMA) has called on the government to increase funding for Long Covid clinics to deal with ever-increasing patient numbers. The BMA says that NHS England's 2022 strategy set out in July failed to announce any new funding. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 November 2022 -
News Article
Ambulance waits quadruple in handover hotspots
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Ambulance waiting times for stroke and suspected heart attacks have quadrupled in four parts of England since before Covid-19 – whereas others have only grown by half – underlining the severe impact of long accident and emergency handovers. Response times have leapt across England over the past two years, particularly for category 2 and 3 incidents, but the data makes clear that the steepest increases are in areas where hospitals have the biggest handover delay problems. Of the 10 patches with the largest increases in average category 2 performance between 2018-19 and 2021-22, four are served by major hospitals which make up NHS England’s “cohort one” of trusts selected for the worst handover problems; and four more are on government’s list of 15 which accounted for the most long handover delays last winter. The increase in handover delays – in turn linked to delayed discharge, staffing, lack of community services and social care’s collapse – are the stand-out reason for areas with a steep rise in response times. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 November 2022 -
News Article
Extra funding announced for NHS only half of what is needed, experts warn
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS will receive an extra £3.3bn in each of the next two years, the chancellor has announced, but experts warn the cash is probably only half of what is needed to keep the health service afloat. Jeremy Hunt told the Commons during his autumn statement he had been assured the funding would mean the NHS can hit its “key priorities”. Its chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, later issued a statement welcoming the funding, saying it showed that “the government has been serious about its commitment to prioritise the NHS”. However, it was only last month that NHS England, the organisation Pritchard leads, had forecast a £7bn shortfall in its funding next year, which it warned it could not plug with efficiency measures alone. “The NHS warned it needed more money to cope with the impact of inflation on its costs,” said Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the independent thinktank Nuffield Trust. “Today’s autumn statement has provided much-needed extra cash from April over the next two years, but this is only around half of what the NHS had warned last month would likely be needed.” Hunt pledged to grow the NHS budget in 2023-24 and 2024-25 by £3.3bn in each year. But Edwards warned that would not account for the £2.5bn worth of inflation and other unexpected cost pressures the NHS has faced in the current financial year. “The impact of today’s funding announcement is that real terms health spending per head after adjusting for age will increase by less than 1% for the next two years,” Edwards added. “This is compared to the long-term average of 2.6% and comes at a time when the NHS cannot afford to stand still and is desperately trying to increase the work it can do to clear record waiting times.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 November 2022 -
News Article
NHS care backlog push at serious risk - National Audit Office
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The plan to tackle long waits in hospital treatment and cancer care in England by 2025 is at serious risk, the spending watchdog says. The National Audit Office report warned inflation and other pressures on the NHS could undermine the push. These included a lack of staff and hospital beds, which was affecting productivity, the watchdog said. But NHS bosses said they could overcome the challenges and the health service was on track to hit its targets. NHS England and the government have set a series of targets over the next three years. They include: returning performance on the 62-day target for cancer treatment to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023 ending waits of over a year and a half for planned treatment, such as knee and hip operations, by April 2023 ending waits of over a year for planned treatment by March 2025 The NAO report comes as the chancellor prepares to set out his tax and spending plans in his Autumn Statement on Thursday. Cuts to public spending are likely but Health Secretary Steve Barclay has strongly hinted the NHS will receive more money. Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 November 2022 -
News ArticleAmbulances called to serious emergencies in the East of England, which encompasses Essex, have the longest waiting times of anywhere in the UK, according to new data. The East of England Ambulance Service, which serves the county of Essex, has the longest wait times for life-threatening injuries of anywhere in the country. Ambulances took an average of 11 minutes and 12 seconds to respond to category one calls - those for life threatening injuries - in the Essex region in October. That’s up from 10 minutes 49 seconds in September, and far longer than the 7 minute target set by the NHS. This means it’s also the longest category one response time of any ambulance service in England, as compared to the average wait time for ambulances across England as a whole, category one calls were responded to in an average of 9 minutes and 56 seconds. A spokesperson for the East of England Ambulance Service said: "Our service is under extreme pressure with many ambulances delayed outside hospitals and high call volumes. "To help us respond effectively we have increased our escalation state across the Trust. We urge the public to please support us by using our services wisely and only calling for life-threatening illnesses and injuries." Read full story Source: Essex Live, 10 November 2022
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News Article
Longest diagnostic waits at highest level since Covid lockdown
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The share of referrals waiting more than three months for a diagnostic test — one of the key problems behind long waits for cancer treatment — is worse than at any point since February 2021, during the second national covid lockdown. NHS England data released this morning for September shows 12.4% of the 1.6 million awaiting a test had been on the list longer than 13 weeks. At the peak of June 2020, 32% waited more than 13 weeks, but the proportion dropped back beneath 1 in 10, in May 2021, as services ramped up activity following the impact of the major winter 2020-21 Covid wave. Echocardiography patients and those needing endoscopies had the highest proportion of patients waiting more than six weeks – these specialties jointly comprise about a third of the total national waiting list and had 48 and 38%, respectively, of their lists over six weeks. Katharine Halliday, president of The Royal College of Radiologists, said: ”Today’s cancer waiting times data is alarming. We know the longer patients wait for a diagnosis or treatment, the less their chance of survival. “Our members are clinical radiologists and clinical oncologists, and much of their work involves diagnosing and treating cancer. Today’s figures show the NHS in England would have to employ 441 radiology consultants, the equivalent of a 16% increase in the current workforce, in order to clear the six-week wait for CT and MRI scans in one month.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 November 2022 -
News Article
NHS waiting times for routine hospital treatment hits another new record high
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a record high. 7.1 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September, according to new figures from NHS England. This is up from 7 million in August, and is the highest number since records begain in August 2007. A staggering 401,537 people have been waiting for more than 52 weeks to start their treatment, according to England’s September figures. NHS medical director Sir Stephen Powis said: “There is no doubt October has been a challenging month for staff who are now facing a tripledemic of Covid, flu and record pressure on emergency services with more people attending A&E or requiring the most urgent ambulance callout than any other October. “Pressure on emergency services remains high as a result of more than 13,000 beds taken up each day by people who no longer need to be in hospital. “But staff have kept their foot on the accelerator to get the backlog down with 18-month waiters down by three-fifths on last year.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 November 2022 -
News Article
Fear and trauma - the long waits for cancer care
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
There has been a sharp rise in long waits for cancer therapy in the past four years, BBC analysis shows. The number waiting more than the 62-day target time for therapy in the past year has topped 67,000 across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland - twice as many as the same period in 2017-18. Waits are also getting worse in Wales, but data does not go that far back. The national cancer director for the NHS in England said staff were striving to catch up on the backlog of care, but experts warned the problems could be putting patients at risk. Steven McIntosh, of Macmillan Cancer Support, told the BBC that the delays were "traumatic" and people were living "day-by-day with fear and anxiety". He said the situation was "unacceptable" and could even be having an impact on the chances of survival. Describing the NHS as "chronically short-staffed", he said: "The NHS doesn't have the staff it needs to diagnose cancer, to deliver surgery and treatment, to provide care, support and rehabilitation." Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 November 2022 -
News ArticleThousands of hospital surgeries are likely to be cancelled as NHS leaders prepare for unprecedented strike action, The Independent has been told. Most operations apart from cancer care are likely to be called off when nurses take to the picket line, with NHS trusts planning for staffing levels to be similar to bank holidays. Multiple sources say they are almost certain that the upcoming Royal College of Nursing ballot will result in strike action. Results are expected to be finalised on Wednesday. “Trusts are looking at the totality of it. It’s the waiting list that is going to be hit, massive questions over waiting lists, and we’re going to lose days of activity in terms of addressing that growing pressure. “The more we see strike action the harder it is, the risk is [that] the rate of recovery [of waiting list] slows.” They added: “The unions normally provide bank holiday cover and maintain emergency service basically.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 7 November 2022
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News Article
NHS England considers substantive return to ‘payment by results’
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England is considering a substantive shift to a ‘payment by results’ model from April, in a bid to drive up elective activity. Under rules for this financial year, elective care is paid for through block contracts, with additional payments for areas that treat more patients, and supposed penalties for those that fall short. One well-placed source told HSJ there was “strong momentum” towards reviving PbR for elective care, which could mean trusts being paid purely for each unit of activity delivered, without a block contract element. There is a belief this could help drive up activity levels, which have remained below the levels recorded before the pandemic. Returning to PbR would be a controversial move, as many believe it drives competitive behaviour between providers and goes against the grain of collaboration within health systems. Other options for changes to the payment system being considered include increasing the rate of incentives and penalties. Read full story Source: HSJ, 4 November 2022
