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Found 1,519 results
  1. News Article
    Surgery waiting lists will triple by 2030, triggering a “population health crisis”, unless there is a huge increase in NHS capacity, according to new research. Experts from Birmingham University have said efforts to reduce hospital backlogs are not enough and that it is “impossible” for the existing frontline workers to tackle increasing waiting lists. The most in-depth analysis of the challenge facing hospital waiting lists in England has revealed 4.3 million people need invasive surgery or procedures such as endoscopy, the largest number since 2007. Of these, an estimated 3.3 million are on a “hidden waiting list”, likely to need treatment but yet to be identified by the NHS due to the impact of the pandemic. More than 2.3 million people, 53% of the waiting list, are of working age, meaning their delayed diagnoses and treatments could have an impact on the economy. Without a substantial increase in NHS capacity, the team behind the work say the total figure for those waiting for surgery in England could rise to 14.6 million by 2030. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 26 June 2022
  2. News Article
    Senior doctors have drawn up a major dossier refuting Sajid Javid’s claim that the pressures on the NHS were created by the Covid pandemic, amid continued warnings over patient safety, scarce beds and staff morale. The health secretary has repeatedly suggested that the problems around record waiting lists and ambulance waiting times have been prompted by the pandemic. Last week in parliament, he accused shadow health secretary Wes Streeting of having his “head under a rock for two years” for not seeing that the pressures stemmed from Covid. However, in a major review of evidence shared with the Observer, doctors pointed to issues around funding, bed capacity, staffing and recruitment that pre-dated the arrival of Covid. The dossier, drawn up by the British Medical Association as it gathers for its annual conference this week, finds that the UK’s health services were ill-prepared for the pandemic as a result of “historical underfunding and under-resourcing in the decade preceding the virus”. Denise Langhor, an emergency medicine consultant in the north-west of England, said that the pandemic had “laid bare” the health service’s problems, but did not create them. “Those problems and those holes already existed,” she said. “It is entirely disingenuous of this government to claim the waiting lists and the difficulties people are experiencing with NHS care at the moment are due to Covid. They have been building for a decade. “Every day, I have patients that I wish I could have treated sooner. It’s an awful thing as a doctor to be trying to look after patients on a corridor, and knowing they are not getting the standard of care that you want to give them. “Frequently it feels like we’re operating by choosing the least worst option rather than the best option.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 June 2022
  3. News Article
    A drive to ‘transform’ access to urgent, emergency and planned care will be added to the goals of the NHS long-term plan, a document leaked to HSJ has revealed The long-term plan for the NHS was originally published in January 2019. Last September, NHS England said it was reviewing the commitments made within the plan, with senior officials warning that many of them could not be met after the damage of the pandemic. HSJ has seen a document prepared for the most recent meeting of the NHS Assembly which sets out NHSE’s approach to the refresh. Strategic developments expected include better joined-up community based and preventive care, transform access to urgent, emergency and planned care, improve care quality and operations, and tackle health inequalities, improve population health and develop a sustainable health service through greater collaboration. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 24 June 2022
  4. News Article
    Polling by the Royal College of General Practice (RCGP) as part of a campaign to make NHS GP services sustainable for the future found that 42% of 1,262 GPs and trainees who took part said they were likely to quit the profession in the next five years. A workforce exodus on this scale would strip the health service of nearly 19,000 of the roughly 45,000 headcount GPs and GP trainees currently working in general practice. RCGP chair Professor Martin Marshall warned that general practice was a profession in crisis - with the intensity and complexity of GP workload rising as the workforce continued to shrink. He warned that 'alarming' findings from the RCGP poll must serve as a stark warning to politicians and NHS leaders over the urgent need for solutions to begin to tackle the crisis facing general practice. Four in five respondents told the RCGP they expect working in general practice to get worse over the next few years - while only 6% expected things to improve. Nearly two in five respondents said GP practice premises are not fit for purpose, and one in three said IT for booking systems is not good enough. Professor Marshall said: 'What our members are telling us about working on the frontline of general practice is alarming. General practice is significantly understaffed, underfunded, and overworked and this is impacting on the care and services we’re able to deliver to patients. Read full story Source: GP, 22 June 2022
  5. News Article
    A leading NHS hospital failed to publicly disclose that four very ill premature babies in its care were infected with a deadly bacterium, one of whom died soon after, the Guardian has revealed. St Thomas’ hospital did not admit publicly that it had suffered an outbreak of Bacillus cereus in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of its Evelina children’s hospital in late 2013 and early 2014. It occurred six months before a well publicised similar incident in June 2014 in which 19 premature babies at nine hospitals in England became infected with it after receiving contaminated baby feed directly into their bloodstream. Three of them died, including two at St Thomas’. Leaked documents show that both the first outbreak and newborn baby’s death were investigated but never publicly acknowledged by the NHS trust that runs the hospital. GSTT insists that it did not acknowledge the baby’s death publicly in any reports because it believed the child had died of other medical conditions, not the bacteria. However, it declined to say if it had told the baby’s parents that it had become infected with Bacillus cereus. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 June 2022
  6. News Article
    Systems and processes in place around patient safety failed in terms of the work of a Belfast-based neurologist, an inquiry has found. Dr Michael Watt was at the centre of Northern Ireland’s largest ever recall of patients, which began in 2018, after concerns were raised about his clinical work. More than 4,000 of his former patients attended recall appointments. Almost a fifth of patients who attended recall appointments were found to have received an “insecure diagnosis”. The final report following the Independent Neurology Inquiry found that problems with Dr Watt’s practice were missed for years and opportunities to intervene were lost. It makes 76 recommendations to the Department of Health, healthcare organisations, General Medical Council and the independent sector. “While one process or system failure may not be critical, the synergistic effect of numerous failures ensured that a problem with an individual doctor’s practice was missed for many years and, as this inquiry finds, opportunities to intervene, particularly in 2006/2007, 2012/2013, and earlier in 2016 were lost,” the inquiry found. Read full story Source: The Independent, 21 June 2022
  7. News Article
    Government will pick five or six ‘integration frontrunner’ areas ‘to lead the way in developing and testing radical new approaches’ to speeding up discharge from acute hospitals. Along with NHS England, ministers today wrote to local NHS and council directors asking for bids to take part by 30 June. They said there was “a need to take a more fundamental look at [how the] system currently manages the discharge of patients, their post-acute care, and their access to high-quality social care”. The “discharge integration frontrunner sites” will focus on exploring “new service models, such as the delivery of a more integrated model for intermediate care across existing health and social care”, and “designing and testing new enabling arrangements, which might include new funding models, more integrated workforce models, or the deployment of new technologies”, their letter said. They said speeding up hospital discharge was “just one” potential benefit from integration and indicated that “future phases” of frontrunners may focus elsewhere. But delayed discharge has been a major pressure on the system over the past year, particularly last winter, and the letter says: “Delayed discharges are one very visible signal that the health and care system remains fragmented and too often fails to deliver joined-up services that meet people’s needs.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 June 2022
  8. News Article
    The COVID-19 crisis has both divided and galvanised Canadians on healthcare. While the last three years have presented new challenges to healthcare systems across the country, the pandemic has also exacerbated existing challenges, most notably the high levels of errors and mistreatment documented in Canadian health care. According to a 2019 report from the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, Canada was already facing a public health crisis prior to the pandemic: a crisis of patient safety. As the report details, patient safety incidents are the third leading cause of death in Canada, following cancer and heart disease. Few studies calculate national data on this topic, but a 2013 report found that patient safety events resulted in just under 28,000 deaths. Many Canadians who have experienced these errors have shared their experiences with media in an effort to raise awareness and demand change. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has created a moment of dual crises. First, the pre-existing crisis of patient safety, and second, healthcare overall is now at a breaking point after three years of COVID-19, according to healthcare workers. Edmonton physician Dr. Darren Markland, for example, recently closed his kidney specialist practice after making a few "profound mistakes." In an interview with Global News, he explains he could no longer work at the current pace. He is not alone in this decision. Across the country, there have been waves of resignations in health care, leaving some areas struggling with a system that is "degrading, increasingly unsafe, and often without dignity." Read full story Source: MedicalXpress, 17 June 2022
  9. News Article
    An 80-year-old woman with coeliac disease died within days of being fed Weetabix in hospital, an inquest has heard. Hazel Pearson, from Connah’s Quay in Flintshire, was being treated at Wrexham Maelor hospital and died four days later on 30 November from aspiration pneumonia. Although her condition was recorded on her admission documents, there was no sign beside her bed to alert healthcare assistants to her dietary requirements. Coeliac disease is a condition where the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues after consuming gluten, a type of protein found in wheat, rye and barley, causing damage to the small intestine. The hospital’s action plan to avoid similar fatal incidents lacked detail and had “narrow vision”, the coroner said. The hospital’s matron, Jackie Evans, told the inquest that changes, including placing signs above the beds of patients with special dietary requirements, had been implemented since Pearson’s death. But Sutherland raised concerns that the hospital had yet to carry out a formal investigation into what went wrong. She said: “The action plan lacks detail. What has happened locally is commendable, but it lacks detail and it has narrow vision.” She added that the plan that had been put in place was “amateurish with no strategic vision”. The assistant coroner said she would be unable to make a decision on a prevention of future deaths report until the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) provided a witness to answer further questions about changes. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 June 2022
  10. News Article
    Next week’s rail strikes will ’probably end up killing people’ as they will prevent staff working for already struggling ambulance trusts from getting to work, a senior NHS leader has told HSJ. Both London Ambulance Service Trust and South Central Ambulance Service Foundation Trust have moved to ”Reap 4”, This is the highest level of alert, meaning they are under extreme pressure. Ambulance trusts are already experiencing high demand amid soaring temperatures and continuing problems with lengthy handovers at the accident and emergency departments. Fears are now growing that next week’s rail strikes will push services to breaking point as many ambulance staff travel to work by public transport. The three days of rail strikes – on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday next week – will see many lines with very limited services. Tube services in London will also be hit by a strike on Tuesday and the London Overground and some tube lines will be affected on rail strike days. A senior leader closely involved in southern England’s emergency and urgent care services told HSJ: “Next week’s rail strikes will probably end up killing people because they’ll prevent ambulance trust staff getting to work.” Other ambulance trusts are understood to be monitoring the situation closely. Trusts in REAP 4 (REAP stands for resource escalation action plan) normally take a series of measures including diverting more staff to frontline duties, asking some patients to make their own way to hospital and concentrating on reaching the most serious patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 June 2022
  11. News Article
    Bristol's NHS commissioning group is one of many across the country which is "causing harm" to people with thyroid problems by limiting the provision of a drug, a new report says. Analysis from the Thyroid Trust says that 58 per cent of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups in England are withdrawing, refusing or reducing prescriptions of T3 for people with underactive thyroids - against national guidance. People who have thyroid problems can suffer from depression, crippling fatigue, weight gain and muscle weakness, which can be alleviated by the drug. But the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG does not permit prescribing the drug for new patients, according to the report. One Westcountry woman told the Express that she had her T3 prescription withdrawn, which caused her significant problems. Former police officer Carole Morgan-Anstee, 62, told the website she went through "hell" after her T3 was stopped. The Somerset woman was prescribed the drug after suffering symptoms including chronic fatigue and hair loss for 15 years. But after being treated with T3 for five years, her endocrinologist told her he had been ordered to stop prescribing it for her. He reportedly said the problem was that her local Bristol North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG had began cutting back on T3 supplies. Carole said: "I was really upset. It was hell. My treatment was completely within the guidelines and he knew how ill I would get if they took it away. The Thyroid Trust report says: "Around the country most Clinical Commissioning Groups have policies in place which are causing harm to patients by denying treatment. In those cases where this has occurred, patients have resorted to the private sector or to informal means, such as buying the medication online, or even travelling abroad where it is sometimes available to buy over the counter, to source the medicine they need which the NHS should be providing. Read full story Source: Bristol Post, 15 June 2022
  12. News Article
    The NHS is facing a major exodus of doctors of ethnic minority backgrounds due to persistent levels of racism faced at a personal and institutional level, a ground breaking study has revealed. Nearly one third of doctors surveyed have considered leaving the NHS or have already left within the past two years due to race discrimination, with 42 per cent of Black and 41 per cent Asian doctors in particular having considered leaving or having left. The survey paints a picture of institutional barriers to career progression, dangerously low levels of reporting of racist incidents and a growing mental health burden on ethnic minority doctors. With more than 2,000 responses from doctors and medical students across the UK, the BMA – a professional association representing all doctors in the UK – believes that this survey is one of the largest of its kind to document the experience of racism in the medical profession and workplace. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA chair of council, said: “The NHS was built on the principle of equality of care for patients whoever they are, but this report shows that the NHS is shamefully failing in this principle for its own doctors, with those from ethnic minorities reporting alarming levels of unfair treatment and racial inequality at work. Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 June 2022
  13. News Article
    The NHS has a low bed base, and NHS England is reviewing ‘how we right-size our capacity’ across hospital, community and ‘virtual’ services, Amanda Pritchard has said. The NHSE chief executive addressed the annual NHS Confederation this week and said: “The NHS has long had one of the lowest bed bases among comparable health systems. And in many respects this reflects on our efficiency and our drives to deliver better care in the community. “But it was true before the pandemic, and it remains true now that we have passed the point at which that efficiency actually becomes inefficient. “So the point has come where we need to review how we right-size our capacity across the NHS. That will of course look at the whole picture of hospital, community and virtual capacity.” Ms Pritchard also highlighted the current pressures on the emergency care system, which has widely been linked to slow discharges from hospital and insufficient social care provision. She cited the “unacceptable rise in 12-hour waits for admission from [accident and emergency]” which “underlines that the issue is flow”, and said “we know we will need to make more progress before winter”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 June 2022
  14. News Article
    There’s little question that US hospitals—up against COVID, patient surges, and labor and supply shortages—have become less safe for patients during the pandemic, as preventable events and complications have become more common. Leaders with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said as much, earlier this year, in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine: “Many indicators make it clear that health care safety has declined,” they wrote, noting, “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.” Despite such frank assessments, CMS is now at odds with public safety advocates about whether to make some of the hospital-specific data behind those trends publicly available. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Fortune, 14 June 2022
  15. News Article
    The chief executive of one of the first teaching trusts in the country to have eliminated two-year waiters for elective care has said there is ‘no magic to it’ and it can be replicated elsewhere. Since the beginning of April, University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire Trust has reported zero patients waiting over two years for their elective treatment – ahead of NHS England’s target of July 2022. According to the latest data, there are now 42 trusts that have eliminated 104-week waits and UHCW is the largest trust to have done this. UHCW chief executive Andy Hardy said that in order to achieve this the trust had been “relentless” in its focus on waiting times and had set up “bootcamps” to help managers understand how referral to treatment works. Mr Hardy said in an interview with HSJ: “It really does come down to a laser-like focus on waiting times, both at an executive level, down to a group level, and down to speciality level. It can be replicated. There’s no magic to it.” He said: “We use data to drive our organisations away from bad decisions and I have a weekly access meeting with the chief operating officer to look at where we are against all access targets, but obviously we focus on waiting times." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 June 2022
  16. News Article
    Health boards are avoiding publicising their Long Covid services to avoid a rush of patients, an expert has claimed. Edward Duncan, a professor of applied health research, has been evaluating rehabilitation services in Scotland for the past eight months. The latest ONS figures showed 155,000 Scots had long lasting Covid symptoms. Prof Duncan said the current situation was contributing to a "trickle" of patients accessing treatment in some regions. He is working with Robert Gordon University, the University of Dundee and Long Covid sufferers to work out the best way to maximise recovery and quality of life for patients. It comes after patient groups accused the health service and government ministers of pretending the illness has disappeared. Prof Duncan said: "Staff in some health boards have said to us that they are purposely not publicising the pathway, because they fear that if they do, they will have so many referrals that they will not be able to meet demand." "There is a lack of proactive publicity, despite the fact that in late 2020 every health board said that these services were there for patients who need them." "We know from other research that patients are going to primary care and being told by their GP that they don't know where to send them." Read full story Source: BBC News, 14 June 2022
  17. News Article
    NHS patients are being put in danger and waiting lists are getting even longer due to a £9bn maintenance backlog and a major lack of capital funding that has left some parts of hospitals “extremely dilapidated” and unfit for patients, health leaders have warned. Boris Johnson promised in 2019 to “build and fund 40 new hospitals”. But the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), the government watchdog, later gave the project an “amber/red” ranking, meaning its delivery “is in doubt with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas”. At the same time, the NHS in England is facing a £9bn maintenance backlog. Half of that sum, which is up from £6.5bn just three years ago, is required to tackle failings classed as posing either a “high” or “significant” risk to patients and staff. Now health leaders are warning that without an urgent injection of capital funding, patient safety is at risk and the waiting list for care – worsened by the pandemic – “will grow even larger”. Speaking to the Guardian, Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the crisis had become extremely serious. Patient safety as well as the ability of the NHS to tackle record waiting lists is being “severely hampered”, Taylor warned, because the UK has been “plagued” by one of the worst records for capital investment in healthcare across all OECD countries over the past decade. One NHS trust chair in London told a survey, carried out this month, that “cramped” space means the trust is not “building up our capacity to deal with waiting lists”, and conditions for patients in some wards were “not fit for purpose”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 June 2022
  18. News Article
    Ministers, including the health and social care secretary, are bashing managers and exploiting the culture wars to try to ‘explain away’ the crisis in the NHS instead of facing up to the problems that 12 years of Conservative-led government have created, NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor has told HSJ. During a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with HSJ, MatthewTaylor also raised concerns about the Messenger review and called on local system leaders to speak out if they thought NHS England was setting unrealistic financial targets The Confed CEO told HSJ: “When you’ve been in government 12 years, to acknowledge the scale of the problems which now exist, problems which clearly reflect decisions made across those 12 years, is a hard thing to do politically. “If you can’t recognise that the fundamental reasons [underpinning why] we face this yawning capacity gap are to do with, particularly, the decade of austerity, but [also] other failings to address capacity issues like workforce and capital, then you have to look for other culprits and you end up manager bashing and talking about wokery, because it becomes a way to explain away the reality that the patients and the public see.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 14 June 2022
  19. News Article
    Adult mental health patients in England have spent more than 200,000 days being treated in “inappropriate” out-of-area placements – at a cost to the NHS of £102m – in the year since the government pledged to end the practice. The Royal College of Psychiatrists, which carried out the analysis, says such placements, in which mental health patients can be sent hundreds of miles from home, are a shameful and dangerous practice that must stop. The government said it would end such placements by April last year but, in the 12 months since, 205,990 days were spent inappropriately out of area, at a cost equivalent to the annual salaries of more than 900 consultant psychiatrists, the college found. Dr Adrian James, the college’s president, said: “The failure to eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements is a scandal. It is inhumane and is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year that could be spent helping patients get better. “No one with a mental illness should have to travel hundreds of miles away from home to get the treatment they desperately need.” He said investment was needed in local, properly staffed beds, alternatives to admission, and follow-up care in the community as well as government backing “to address the workforce crisis that continues to plague mental health services”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2022
  20. News Article
    The NHS needs reform rather than more money, the health secretary has said, while admitting that record-high waiting lists will continue to rise before they fall. Sajid Javid said the health service already had the resources it needed and did not require more to care for patients effectively. “The NHS now has locked in the resources it needs. It doesn’t need any more money. What it needs to deliver for more people is not money. It needs reform,” he said. In an interview with the Times, he compared the NHS to the now defunct video rental chain Blockbuster, arguing that it needed to be dramatically restructured in order to continue delivering healthcare free at the point of use. “You want to have a system that, yes, it’s got the values of 1948 but looking at delivery towards 2048,” he said. The health secretary’s remarks on funding for the health service follow a damning report that showed the NHS had lost almost 25,000 beds across the UK in the last decade. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the drop had led to a sharp increase in waiting times for A&E, ambulances and operations, and was causing “real patient harm” and a “serious patient safety crisis”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 June 2022
  21. News Article
    A number of hospitals are insisting that patients keep wearing masks despite instructions from NHS chiefs to drop the rules. National coronavirus guidance which insisted on face coverings has now been scrapped, with health officials leaving it to local organisations to draft their own policies. However, several hospitals have called on patients and staff to continue to wear masks and face coverings on their sites. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has repeatedly called on NHS trusts to drop restrictions in hospitals which are limiting operational capacity. Last month, he threatened to name and shame hospitals that do not lift social distancing measures and restrictions on visitors. A letter from health chiefs said that patients visiting accident and emergency (A&E) departments, hospital outpatient appointments and GP surgeries no longer needed to wear masks “unless this is a personal preference”. Hospitals have now begun issuing guidance for their local communities, with a number saying they intend to keep insisting on people wearing masks. The Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS trust issued a notice to patients and staff saying: “We are still asking patients, visitors, staff and anyone working at one of our hospital or community sites to continue to wear a mask, gel hands and social distance while in our buildings despite the lifting of national restrictions." “This is to keep vulnerable people as safe as possible.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 8 June 2022
  22. News Article
    Nursing leaders are to write to Northern Ireland's Secretary of State Brandon Lewis over the failure to establish an Executive and the risk this poses to patients. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) congress has passed a motion calling for all political parties and the UK Government to commit to the immediate formation of a fully functioning Executive and Assembly. Fiona Devlin, chair of the RCN Northern Ireland board, brought the matter to the congress and said the move represents the deep level of concern in the profession. “There is a responsibility to speak up when patients are coming to harm,” she said. “The health service is about to completely tip over the edge. We felt we did everything we could to communicate our concerns before the elections, and since then, nothing has changed. “The system is crumbling minute by minute, we have the worst waiting lists in the UK, our emergency departments are completely overstretched, primary care and the independent sector are in crisis. “Patients can’t be decanted out of ambulances into emergency departments because there’s no room in the hospitals and they’re dying in the back of ambulances. Read full story Source: Belfast Times, 8 June 2022
  23. News Article
    All the NHS’s 1.5m staff in England should tackle discrimination against disadvantaged groups, not just bosses and specialist diversity teams, a major review has concluded. NHS trusts will need fewer equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) teams if action against discrimination does become “the responsibility of all”, according to the report. The review of NHS leadership said the health service should adopt a different approach to equality issues in order to overcome the widely recognised disadvantages faced by certain groups of its own staff, which include lower pay and chances of promotion among Black and ethnic minority doctors compared with white medics and low BAME representation in senior managerial ranks. The inquiry, undertaken by Genl Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard, was commissioned last year by Sajid Javid, the health secretary. The report concluded that: “Most critically, we advocate a step-change in the way the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded as the personal responsibility of every leader and every member of staff. “Although good practice is by no means rare, there is widespread evidence of considerable inequity in experience and opportunity for those with protected characteristics, of which we would call out race and disability as the most starkly disadvantaged. “The only way to tackle this effectively is to mainstream it as the responsibility of all, to demand from everyone awareness of its realities and to sanction those that don’t meet expectations.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 June 2022
  24. News Article
    A government review of health and care leadership has recommended a single set of ‘core leadership and management standards’ for NHS managers. The report by General Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard calls for “consistent management standards delivered through accredited training”, according to a government statement this morning. The full document has yet to be published but the statement summarises the findings and says an “institutional inadequacy” has formed in the way leadership and management is trained and developed in the NHS. It says the report has produced seven recommendations, which have all been accepted in full by the health and social care secretary Sajid Javid, who said they must be taken forward “urgently”. Among them is a call for a more “effective and consistent” appraisal system to reduce variation in how performance is managed. This is after the review concluded a greater focus was needed on “how people have behaved [and] not just what they have achieved”. The recommendations do not include any registration system for NHS managers, despite calls from some over many years for more regulation of the roles, nor appear to include specific reform of the “fit and proper person” test, which has been discredited and under review. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 June 2022
  25. News Article
    One million checks for cancer, heart and lung disease have been carried out at new diagnostic clinics in football stadiums and shopping centres, the NHS has reported. In the past year, 92 “one-stop shop” centres offering scans, x-rays and blood tests have been opened in an effort to tackle the Covid care backlog after NHS waiting lists in England soared to a record 6.4 million patients. The NHS said it will open a further 70 centres, which will operate seven days a week and allow patients to get symptoms checked “on their doorstep” following GP referrals. The centres are staffed by nurses and radiographers who can carry out a range of diagnostic tests, including cancer scans. This means patients can get multiple tests in one visit, rather than having to make several different trips to a hospital. Professor Charles Swanton, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, said the rapid diagnostic clinics were improving access to lifesaving treatment. Speaking at the world’s largest cancer conference in Chicago, he said: “Individuals with red-flag cancer symptoms — blood in the stool, persistent cough — can bypass the bureaucratic and lengthy standard approaches to getting investigated in hospital.” However, Swanton warned that without action to address the “chronic shortage” of 110,000 NHS staff, the new centres risked “robbing Peter to pay Paul” by taking doctors and nurses away from hospitals. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 6 June 2022
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