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Found 798 results
  1. News Article
    New figures leaked to HSJ show the true volume of 12-hour waiters in emergency departments is more than four times higher than official statistics suggest. Internal NHS England figures for February and March show around one in five admissions through ED waited more than 12 hours from arriving until being admitted to a ward – equating to around 158,000 cases. The official stats published by NHSE record a slightly different, and shorter, time period, from ‘decision to admit’ to admission. There were around 39,000 of these cases in the same two months, which equates to 4 per cent of admissions through ED, and 5.4 per cent of total emergency admissions. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has long called for the official stats to reflect the total time spent from arrival in ED (as per the internal data), and for trusts to be measured and regulated on this. Senior medics have for some time been warning about the patient safety risks of long waiting in EDs and have appealed to NHS England and the government for plans to tackle the crisis. Adrian Boyle, vice president of RCEM, said: “This data show the scale of long waiting times in emergency departments and the scale of the patient safety crisis. Performance continues to deteriorate across multiple metrics meaning we are documenting a failing urgent and emergency care system without any system transformation or improvement." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 May 2022
  2. News Article
    The NHS has recorded its largest monthly increase in the waiting list for 10 months, as unprecedented challenges in urgent and emergency care continue to disrupt recovery. The elective figures published today for March presented mixed results, but much of the good news – a drop in the number of two-year waiters – had already been announced by NHS England in unvalidated figures for April. Meanwhile, the system recorded its largest monthly rise in the overall list for 10 months, with the number of patients growing by 174,847 to hit a new record 6.36 million. This is the biggest month-on-month increase since the number jumped between April and May 2021 when it rose by 181,708 to hit 5.3 million. The overall list has risen every month since May 2021, but the rises in the last four months have all been under 80,000. The NHS warned in February it expects the waiting list to continue rising until March 2024, with patients now seeking care after various covid lockdowns. Meanwhile, the number of patients waiting 12 hours from a decision to admit in accident and emergency departments reached a new high in data published today, covering April. Ambulance response times also improved slightly last month from March’s all-time low. Average category one performance – for immediately life-threatening conditions, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest - was 9:02 minutes against a seven-minute target, but still an improvement on last month’s 9:35 minutes. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 May 2022
  3. News Article
    Children’s lives are being put at risk, charities warn, as waiting times for eating disorder services soar to record highs. The number of children waiting more than four months following an urgent referral for an eating disorder was more than seven times higher at the end of 2021-22 compared to the same period in the previous year. Data showed that at the end of quarter four of 2021-22, 94 children were waiting more than 12 weeks following an urgent referral, the highest on record, compared to just 13 at the end of 2020-21. The latest NHS data on waiting times for community eating disorder services for children also showed more than 1,900 children were waiting for treatment at the end of March. Of these, 24 were waiting to start urgent treatment - up from 130 last year. Sophie Corlett, director of external affairs at Mind, said: “Our government is shamefully failing children and young people with eating disorders at the time when they need help most. Eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental health problem. Children in need of urgent NHS treatment for eating disorders should always be seen within one week yet some children are still waiting for treatment after twelve weeks. This is irresponsible and disgraceful.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 12 May 2022
  4. News Article
    A new high of 6.4 million people in England were waiting for routine NHS treatment in March 2022, as 12 hours waits in A&E hit an all time high last month and ambulance services continued to struggle. This is up from 6.2 million in February and is the highest number since records began in August 2007. A new record of 24,138 people had to wait more than 12 hours in A&E after a decision to admit them had been made in April. The figure is up from 22,506 in March, and is the highest for any calendar month in records going back to August 2010. However the number of patients being seen within four hours in April improved compared to March, with 72.3% of patients seen in this time compared to 71.6%. Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said: “Today’s figures show our hardworking teams across the NHS are making good progress in tackling the backlogs that have built up with record numbers of diagnostic tests and cancer checks taking place in March, as part of the most ambitious catch up plan in NHS history. “We always knew the waiting list would initially continue to grow as more people come forward for care who may have held off during the pandemic, but today’s data show the number of people waiting more than two years has fallen for the second month in a row, and the number waiting more than 18 months has gone down for the first time." Read full story Source: The Independent, 12 May 2022
  5. News Article
    Doctors and paramedics have told the BBC that long waits for ambulances across the UK are having a "dangerous impact" on patient safety. BBC analysis found a 77% rise in the most serious safety incidents logged by paramedics in England over the past year, compared to before the pandemic. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the 999 system is also under "tremendous pressure", doctors say. NHS England said the safety of patients is its "absolute priority". In October, nine-year-old Willow Clark fell off her bike on a country path in Hertfordshire, cracking her helmet and leaving her with a fractured skull and a nine-inch laceration across her leg. "I could see it was a really bad accident and I was 20 minutes away from home screaming for help," said her mother Sam. "These really nice people who were passing by phoned 999. "They explained she had a severe head injury and her leg was badly hurt but we were told it would be a 10-hour wait for an ambulance and we'd have to get her to hospital ourselves." When they got to A&E, Willow was immediately transferred to the trauma department. Doctors told her family that she should not have been moved because of her back and neck injuries. She later found out that Willow had been classified as an "urgent" category three case, meaning an ambulance should have arrived within 120 minutes. Coroners and lawyers have highlighted recent cases including: Staffordshire's assistant coroner issued a 'prevention of future deaths' warning after a patient in Stoke died after waiting eight hours for an ambulance. The family of a man who died after waiting nine hours for treatment has issued a legal challenge against the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service over a "chronic shortage" of ambulances. The London Ambulance service is investigating after a man died when paramedics took almost 70 minutes to respond to a suspected heart attack. Dr Katherine Henderson, an A&E consultant and president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the BBC's Today programme the problem with ambulance waits was "more serious than we've ever seen it". Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 May 2022
  6. News Article
    A website that tells patients how long they are likely to wait for NHS treatment will be made available in Scotland this summer. Humza Yousaf, the Scottish health secretary, said people queuing for tests and procedures and their doctors would be able to access information about any delays in their area using the software. Many patients living in pain are waiting years to have common operations such as hip and knee replacements. In theory, the SNP guarantee hospital treatment within 12 weeks of patients joining the waiting list, but this law was broken extensively before the pandemic and has now been breached hundreds of thousands of times. One orthopaedic surgeon, who did not wish to be named, said he was operating on patients whose joints had entirely collapsed after a two-year wait for a limb replacement made their case an emergency. Other patients who did not reach crisis faced even longer delays, he said. Dr Sandesh Gulhane, a GP and health spokesman for the Scottish Conservative Party, asked Yousaf, during a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s health committee yesterday: “Why can’t we have in the future, in the [recovery] plan, indicative waiting times which are relatively live so we can all go on a website and see how long we need to wait.” Yousaf said it was fair for patients and NHS staff to expect to have information on waiting times, and that a website to provide this was being developed. “We are working closely with Public Health Scotland, we are working closely with boards to develop the infrastructure in order to collate and publish this data,” he said. “It’s an ambition of ours to have that available in a way that is easy to find, easy to understand, both for the patient but for the health professional too.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 11 May 2022
  7. News Article
    Paramedic Moira Shaw is eyeing the frantic activity at the front doors of Edinburgh's emergency department. She is waiting for the go-ahead to hand over her patients to medics and answer the next 999 call. It can be a long wait. Last week, 1 in 10 ambulances across Scotland took more than 80 minutes to drop patients at an emergency department. BBC Scotland joined Moira and colleague Blair Paul at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh where they were among seven ambulances waiting to drop off patients. "At the moment we can be an hour waiting, we sit in the ambulance and we wait until there is a space to go in," explains Moira, who has been with the service for nearly a decade. "This is pretty much an everyday occurrence now. "It's that domino effect, so if patients are waiting to move to other areas, A&E gets clogged up and they can't take any more patients in because they are waiting to move people on." Moira said she has noticed they are attending more calls where people have not been able to get through to their GP so phone 999 instead. Another theme picked up by Moira and her colleague Blair is helping younger sicker patients who need urgent hospital treatment. "I've seen actually quite a lot of people maybe in their 40 or 50s who have got now stage four cancer and they've just not been able to get access to any treatments or anything just due to the pressures on the NHS at the moment," explained Blair. Read full story Source: BBC News, 11 May 2022
  8. News Article
    People in England are struggling to get dental treatment, as dentists close to new NHS patients, a watchdog says. Healthwatch England, the NHS body representing patients, said the problem was made worse by the rising cost of living and needed "urgent attention". It said some people were living in pain, unable to speak or eat properly, because they could not find treatment. And it warned the poorest were suffering most as they were least able to afford to pay for private dentistry. Healthwatch England said the issue was creating a two-tier system - dividing the rich and the poor - and called on the government to take action. "There is now a deepening crisis," said Louise Ansari, of Healthwatch England. "With millions of households bearing the brunt of the escalating living costs, private treatment is simply not an option - and even NHS charges can be a challenge. "This needs urgent attention." Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 May 2022
  9. News Article
    One of England’s most challenged integrated care systems (ICS) is set to miss by more than 800 patients the government’s target of eliminating two-year elective waits by July. Devon ICS currently estimates 860 patients will have waited longer than two years for planned care by July 2022, when all patients waiting longer than two years should have been treated – according to the NHS’s elective recovery plan. It is the first reported example of an ICS forecasting to miss the high-profile target which government has agreed with NHS England. The ICS, which is among the health systems with the lowest rating from NHSE, is a national outlier against the target, with around 1,500 patients currently waiting two years or more for care. The backlog has occurred despite the ICS previously being one of 12 systems given extra money for planned care through the elective accelerator programme and retaining the use of its Nightingale Hospital. Read full story (paywalled) Source: 6 May 2022
  10. News Article
    National NHS officials have called for ambulance response times for stroke cases to be “urgently reviewed”. A report on stroke services by Getting it Right First Time – an NHS England national programme – recommends modelling the impact of a change to the categorisation by ambulance services of suspected strokes. The GIRFT report notes that the time between symptom onset and arrival at hospital has increased by 41 minutes over the last seven years, yet faster access to emergency stroke care gives a better chance of survival and reduces the impact on quality of life for survivors. Strokes are currently treated as “category two” incidents, meaning they should get a response within 18 minutes. However, patients are currently experiencing much longer waits, as average response times were more than three times this in March. Since the introduction of the current system of categorisation in 2017-18, the 18 minute target for category two calls was only ever hit for a few months, at the height of the covid pandemic, when call-outs were abnormally low. However, when asked about the issue, Janette Turner, the academic who led research on the last official review of ambulance response times, warned that moving all suspected strokes to category one could lead to longer responses for the most serious calls. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 May 2022
  11. News Article
    More than 38,000 patients were put at risk of harm during March – more than 4,000 of them seriously – while they waited in an ambulance outside hospital, according to estimates shared with HSJ. The number of hour-plus delays to handing over patients from ambulances to emergency departments in March was the highest ever recorded, following steep increases since last summer. Figures collected by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), and shared with HSJ, reveal that one trust recorded a delay of 23 hours during March. Based on its detailed information about the length of handover delays, AACE has produced an estimate of the likely number of patients harmed while waiting to he handed over, using a model initially developed in research published last year. This found 85 per cent of those who waited more than an hour could have suffered potential harm. The AACE report said that patients who waited the longest were at greatest risk of some level of harm and the risk of severe harm tripled for those waiting for more than four hours compared with waiting for 60 to 90 minutes. AACE managing director Martin Flaherty told HSJ: “We expect the situation to be no better when we collate our figures for April. “The most significant problem remains hospital handover delays which continue to increase exponentially, with tens of thousands of ambulance hours being lost due to hospital handover delays, causing enormous knock-on effects out in the community, where delays in people receiving the ambulance resource they need are the obvious result. “However, the human cost, in terms of direct harm that is being caused to patients through these combined delays at hospitals and in the community, as well as to the health and wellbeing of our ambulance crews, is substantial." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 April 2022
  12. News Article
    Trusts have been told to ‘get their act together’ on health inequalities, after HSJ research suggested only a small minority have so far published data on disparities in waiting times between different patient groups. Planning guidance issued by NHS England in September 2021 said trusts’ board performance reports should include a disaggregation of waiting lists by ethnicity and deprivation group. Through freedom of information and media requests, HSJ attempted to obtain such data from the 20 trusts with the largest waiting lists, but only three currently appear to have met the requirement in full. The remainder either said they were still undertaking the work, were thinking about how to publish it, or failed to respond. Roger Kline, an academic researcher and former director of NHSE’s workforce race equality standard, said trusts should have been collecting and publishing the data for years. He said: “We know there are issues around health and healthcare of some groups of people, most notably in poor working class communities and black and minority ethnic communities. It shouldn’t be seen as an optional extra, this should be part of good public health work and good equitable healthcare provision." “This data should be on the trust website. It should be an active part of the conversations with local communities. Well done to the trusts that are pushing this forward. The ones that are not need to get their act together.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 3 May 2022
  13. News Article
    A school has brought in a dental charity to treat pupils with such bad toothache they have missed lessons. Staff at Trinity Academy Grammar in West Yorkshire have had to take pupils to hospital as they were in agony but unable to access an NHS dentist. The Department for Health said an extra £50m funding had been given to NHS dental services for more appointments. Charlie Johnson, headteacher of the school in Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, said as well as being forced to take days off, some students had been left in tears during lessons due to toothache. After becoming concerned, Mr Johnson said he had contacted public health officials who said there was a shortage of local NHS dentists taking on patients. The school was put in touch with Dentaid, a UK charity which normally provided dental treatment to people in developing countries who cannot access it, or to vulnerable people such as the homeless. As a result, a mobile clinic was brought to the school and volunteer dentists found around one in 10 of its 900 pupils needed treatment for conditions such as decay, cracked teeth and abscesses. The school said it was "frustrating" it had been forced to step in to provide dental treatment, but added that parents often found it "impossible" to access help. The British Dental Association said the fact that Trinity Academy had been forced to call on a charity for help illustrated that NHS dentistry was on its "last legs". Chairman Eddie Crouch said: "We salute these volunteers, but this isn't the Victorian era. "A wealthy 21st Century nation shouldn't be relying on charities to provide basic healthcare to our children." Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 April 2022
  14. News Article
    At least 200,000 people missed out on essential surgery as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, with many enduring “misery and daily pain” as a result, a conference has heard. Both scheduled and emergency surgery levels dropped by 20% during the pandemic, suggesting there is now significant pent-up demand for treatment, according to the national clinical lead in surgery, Prof Deborah McNamara. Almost 343,000 people are waiting to see a surgeon for the first time, 100,000 of whom have been on a waiting list for more than 18 months, she told the conference on outcomes from the pandemic at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). This was only the start of delays for patients, she pointed out, as they have to wait again for their procedure to be carried out. Currently, more than 71,000 patients are waiting for surgery, a fifth of whom have been on the list for more than a year. Long-waiting patients needing complex surgery have been disproportionately affected, she said, as the system focused on treating “quick-win” procedures such as endoscopies. The amount of day-case work carried out by hospitals is back to 84 per cent of 2017 levels, yet complex care remains at only 67 per cent, she pointed out. Patients waiting for surgery were enduring a “huge amount of misery” that remains unquantified, according to Prof McNamara. The pandemic resulted in some positive changes, she said, including shorter hospital stays, a greater role for physician associates and a generational change in the use of IT. However, it also led to greater constriction in the capacity for scheduled surgery, and greater seasonal variations in demand. Read full story Source: The Irish Times, 26 April 2022
  15. News Article
    A trust has discovered 1,800 patients who were removed by mistake from its elective waiting list. Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust chief executive Matthew Trainer wrote to colleagues in the east London health system today to “apologise for the stress this will have caused those experiencing a delay”. Of the 1,800 patients involved, 600 have been waiting more than a year and roughly 200 have been waiting for more than two years. Mr Trainer’s note explained: “The patients have been waiting to see our specialists in routine clinics in gynaecology, neurology, neurosurgery and ophthalmology.” It continued: “As we have been working through our waiting lists, we have discovered a problem with one of them that was used to deal with the backlog created by the pandemic. “It contained routine referrals that were submitted by GPs who wanted their patients to be seen by a specialist, but for whom there were no appointments available due to covid-19. Unfortunately, these patients were removed automatically from this list before they had been seen.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 26 April 2022
  16. News Article
    A woman who has been waiting three years for a hysterectomy says she feels she and other women have been pushed to the bottom of the list. Jessica Ricketts, from Barry, is one of 164,000 patients who have been on various NHS waiting lists for more than a year, compared to less than 7,000 two-years-ago. But it will take another three years to tackle the backlog. Welsh government's plan to tackle long waits is due to be published later. But for Jessica, she remains in pain with endometriosis despite six gynaecological surgeries over the past 10 years and is now waiting for the hysterectomy. "Every day there's some sort of pain and I'm in pain right now," she told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast. "My fear is that the endometriosis - because obviously I'm just waiting - is now in my diaphragm, and so I get pain on my left side. "With every day almost, which used to just be cyclical and now it's gone a lot worse." Jessica is keen to see what the Welsh government's plan to cut waiting times is, but she believes women's health "seems to be at the very bottom of the pile". She added: "I think it's even more important now than ever, to really push the women's health side of things. We have it takes on average 10 years for a diagnosis of endometriosis. "As women we have to fight to even get past the GP who is severely under-trained in this department. "And it's just seems to be that because we're women. We're told that you know, just suck it up really and carry on and it needs to be a fairer system, particularly for the women of Wales and we need to stop pushing it to the bottom of the pile." Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 April 2022
  17. News Article
    Patients who have “lost hope” of ever seeing a doctor are falling off NHS waiting lists due to poor record-keeping by the SNP government, Scotland’s public spending watchdog has revealed. Stephen Boyle, the auditor-general, said there was no record of patients who drop off the waiting list to go private or who simply give up. Humza Yousaf, the health secretary, said he was aware of “a small number of people” who had gone abroad for transplants, including one of his own constituents. He admitted there was no way of knowing the scale of the issue, or whether the organs were obtained legally. Boyle said: “I don’t wish to be blasé and say it is straightforward, but it really should not be an insurmountable problem to have a clear vision and strategy, reviewed and commented on, with an annual transparent plan to track progress. “The government themselves don’t have the complete data we think they should have to make some of the decisions about the delivery of health and social care services and reform.” Gillian Mackay, an SNP MSP, said some constituents told her that they have been put on a waiting list and “they hear nothing more about when they will be seen, or how they will be prioritised”. Boyle said the NHS needs to “manage patients’ expectations about how long they will have to wait”. He said: “Everybody who is waiting for services needs to have a clear expectation of when they will receive those services, whether it is [for] cancer, or other treatments on clinical prioritisation. There is clear missing part in transparency.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 19 April 2022
  18. News Article
    Growing numbers of patients in the UK are paying for private medical treatment because of the record delays people are facing trying to access NHS care, a report has revealed. They are using their own savings to pay for procedures that involve some of the longest waiting times in NHS hospital, such as diagnostic tests, cataract removals and joint replacements. The increase in the willingness to self-pay is closely linked to a desire for private treatments that was increasing even before Covid struck in March 2020. But many private hospitals were unable to meet that demand for much of the pandemic because coronavirus disrupted so much normal healthcare. Dr Tony O’Sullivan, an ex-NHS consultant and a co-chair of the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, said: “The government’s deliberate and sustained running down of the health service has resulted in a two-tier system. The NHS is now in a permanent state of distress, leaving patients desperate for care, and – if they can afford it – feeling as if they have no choice but to go private, undermining the very vision of equality and care a well-funded NHS was so famous for. “Hard-working people would not need to line shareholders pockets in this way if the NHS had not been underfunded, understaffed and neglected for so long.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2022
  19. News Article
    Thousands of lives are being put at risk due to delays and disruption in diabetes care, according to a damning report that warns patients have been “pushed to the back of the queue” during the Covid-19 pandemic. There are 4.9 million people living with diabetes in the UK, and almost half had difficulties managing their condition last year, according to a survey of 10,000 patients by the charity Diabetes UK. More than 60% of them attributed this partly to a lack of access to healthcare, which can prevent serious illness and early mortality from the cardiovascular complications of diabetes, rising to 71% in the most deprived areas of the country. One in three had no contact with healthcare professionals about their diabetes in 2021, while one in six have still not had contact since before the pandemic, the report by the charity said. Diabetes UK said that while ministers have focused on tackling the elective surgery backlog, diabetes patients have lost out as a result, and there is now an urgent need to get services back on track before lives are “needlessly lost”. Chris Askew, the chief executive of Diabetes UK, called for a national diabetes recovery plan. “Diabetes is serious and living with it can be relentless,” he said. “If people with diabetes cannot receive the care they need, they can risk devastating, life-altering complications and, sadly, early death. “We know the NHS has worked tirelessly to keep us safe throughout the pandemic, but the impacts on care for people living with diabetes have been vast. While the UK government has been focused on cutting waiting lists for operations and other planned care, people with diabetes have been pushed to the back of the queue.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2022
  20. News Article
    A clinical director and several senior managers have written to a trust CEO warning that patients are routinely waiting more than 60 hours to be admitted to a ward from accident and emergency, leaving staff “crying with frustration and anger”. In a letter to executives at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust, seen by HSJ, the managers say they lack support from the rest of the trust, and claim the emergency department at Royal Preston Hospital has a “never-ending elasticity in the eyes of others”. The letter, dated 30 March, is signed by clinical director Graham Ellis, two unit managers, the specialty business manager, and the matron. It says: “Whilst we have documented our concerns previously the current situation is worse than it has ever been…Our situation is increasingly precarious… “For the past few months we have on a regular basis had more than 50 patients waiting for a bed and that wait being in excess of 60 hours. “This means that at most times there is limited or no space to accommodate newly acutely ill patients causing ambulance handover delays of over four hours and delay in treatment.” Clinicians at Preston have been raising safety concerns about the ED for several years, but the letter is the first time concerns of senior managers have been made public. The letter references research which suggests patients die as a “direct result from long waits in ED”, and says there has been an increase in clinical incidents, pressure sores, detrimental outcomes, and occasions where patients “die without the dignity of privacy”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 April 2022
  21. News Article
    Operations are being cancelled across England as Covid causes “major disruption” inside the NHS, the country’s top surgeon has said, as doctors and health leaders say the government’s backlog targets look increasingly unachievable. Six million people are on the waiting list for NHS hospital care, including more than 23,000 who have waited more than two years. Boris Johnson said in February that he had launched “the biggest catch-up programme in the history of the health service”, but in the same month he dropped every domestic Covid restriction. Now record-high Covid rates are wreaking havoc with the ability of the NHS to catch up with surgery that was delayed or cancelled before and during the pandemic. More than 28,000 staff are off work every day due to Covid, recent figures show, while more than 20,000 patients are in hospital with Covid, which has dramatically reduced the number of beds and space available for planned surgery patients. “Unfortunately, Covid-19 continues to cause major disruption in the NHS, with high staff absences in recent weeks,” Prof Neil Mortensen, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, told the Guardian. “We have heard that planned surgery is being cancelled again in different parts of the country due to staff being off sick with the virus. This is understandably frustrating for surgical teams who want to help their patients by getting planned surgery up and running again. It’s also very distressing for patients who need a planned operation.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 April 2022
  22. News Article
    NHS leaders are warning that the health service is facing the "brutal reality" of an Easter as bad as most winters. Latest data shows record waits for planned surgery and in A&E, as staff plough through a backlog fuelled by Covid. The government says there is hope on the horizon. Jean Shepherd, 87, had a stroke in April last year, leaving her severely disabled and requiring round-the-clock care. At the end of February there was an outbreak of sickness at her nursing home and she needed hospital treatment. She had to wait in a wheelchair for more than 9 hours until an ambulance arrived to take her to A&E. She then spent 31 hours on a trolley between the emergency department and a secondary-care unit. "She was very distressed because she doesn't like hospitals at the best of time," says her son, Andy Shepherd. "Since the stroke, because of her cognitive ability, she doesn't understand what's happening around her." Mrs Shepherd was eventually moved to a bed in a main hospital ward, where her family says she later contracted Covid, before recovering and being discharged back to her care home two weeks later. "I appreciate that A&E departments have always been busy, but I just wasn't prepared for what greeted me at the hospital," says her son. "There were patients on ambulance trolleys literally everywhere and the staff were absolutely rushed off their feet. I remember thinking at the time that this is not sustainable." Read full story Source: BBC News, 14 April 2022
  23. News Article
    Two years ago the first wave of the covid pandemic reached its peak. The NHS had reacted with impressive speed to prepare for an influx of patients with an infectious disease that few knew much about, had no cure for, and for which there was no known vaccine. However, now the NHS goes into the Easter break in a more fragile state than in any previous winter since, at least, the 1990s. This is not just the direct result of covid hospitalisation, of course – although the distracting narrative of ‘with rather than because of covid’ has obscured how hugely damaging any kind of infectious disease that is as widespread in the community as covid is now can be to effective hospital care. For someone who has just undergone an operation, for example, the greatest threat is not from catching covid itself, but from the impact the virus may have on how quickly their wound may heal. Perhaps covid’s greatest continuing impact is on growing staff absences and the pernicious impact it is having on the long-term health of those who had the disease – even in some cases where it has been relatively mild. For the tens of thousands who have been hospitalised with covid, the consequences for their long-term health look more serious every day. Much of this new workload is ending up at the doors of primary and community care – and displacing other needs and services just when they are most required after two years of coping with the pandemic. There is usually one thing you can confidently say about the NHS, which is that in any crisis it will make sure the life-saving decisions are made on time. However, in the South West, and probably other regions too, that is not happening. People are dying because the NHS cannot – despite its best efforts – save them. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 April 2022
  24. News Article
    Long waiting times at Devon’s acute hospitals have forced commissioners to offer patients treatment 200 miles away in London in a bid to reduce the elective backlog. Devon Clinical Commissioning Group has secured extra capacity for patients requiring complex orthopaedic surgery under a new deal with the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre, located at Epsom General Hospital. The NHS-run orthopaedic centre is around 170 miles from Exeter in east Devon and 210 miles from Plymouth in west Devon. Many patients have declined to go, despite the CCG offering to cover their travel costs. It is the longest publicly reported distance patients are being sent for elective treatment in the NHS, with patients usually referred to neighbouring hospitals or integrated care systems if there is no capacity at their local provider. Nearly 1,500 patients in the Devon ICS have waited longer than two years for treatment. The latest national data for England showed nearly 23,000 patients had been waiting longer than two years in January. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 April 2022
  25. News Article
    The NHS in England is struggling to make progress on its flagship target to diagnose three-quarters of cancer cases at an early stage, MPs are warning. The Health and Social Care Committee said staffing shortages and disruption from the pandemic were causing delays. Some 54% of cases are diagnosed at stages one and two, considered vital for increasing the chances of survival. By 2028, the aim is to diagnose 75% of cases in the early stages, but there has been no improvement in six years. It means England - as well as other UK nations - lag behind comparable countries such as Australia and Canada when it comes to cancer survival. If the lack of progress continues, the committee warned that it could lead to more than 340,000 people missing out on an early cancer diagnosis. The Department of Health said it recognised "business as usual is not enough" and said it was developing a new 10-year cancer plan. But a spokesman said progress was already being made, with a network of 160 new diagnostic centres being opened.R Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 April 2022
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