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Found 1,519 results
  1. News Article
    Private hospitals are caring for a record number of patients paying through their own savings or private medical insurance, according to figures from the Private Healthcare Information Network. Helen, a semi-retired frontline worker in south-east England, spent nearly £50,000 of her retirement savings on major spinal surgery to get her life back after two years of debilitating pain. Helen, 56, began experiencing extreme lower back pain and leg pain in September 2021, triggered by a dog colliding with her leg in the park. Though it was not caused by the trigger, she was diagnosed by the NHS with spondylosis in November 2021, and then a pars defect (a condition affecting the lower spine), and offered scans and physiotherapy. She said six months of physiotherapy, beginning in early 2022, resulted in no improvement, and she was offered pain management and a steroid epidural, which she said also did not help. “I rarely ventured out in these two years … due to the extreme pain I was in when sitting, standing or walking. Life effectively stopped in 2021,” she said. Desperate, she booked a consultation in May 2023 with a neurosurgeon and was told she needed an operation. Helen asked whether it would be possible for the neurosurgeon, who also works within the NHS, to do it on the NHS rather than privately. A referral could be made, she was told – but the surgery was likely to involve a waiting time of 18 months to two years. “My husband and I discussed it, and he said: you’ve already had no life for the last two years, do you really want to wait another two?” She had the spinal surgery in August 2023 and is now managing her pain with over-the-counter medication, rather than the stronger painkillers she was on before. It cost her a staggering £48,345. The financial hit has been huge. “I was absolutely gutted to have to go private. This has knocked us both; we didn’t see us in our lives having to pay for something like this. We’ve managed our finances carefully and always saved where we can. But that lump sum [that we] can access when we retire … That lump sum has just gone now.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 March 2024
  2. News Article
    A large number of people in hospital beds waiting for onward care has forced an NHS trust to declare a critical incident to "protect patient safety". Isle of Wight NHS Trust said on Monday demand for its emergency departments was outstripping the number of free beds, leading to delays. People are being asked to collect their relatives as soon as they are ready to be discharged. In a statement, interim chief operating officer Victoria Lauchlan said: "We currently have a high number of people in hospital beds who are waiting for onward care arrangements in the community. "We are working as an island healthcare system to do everything we can to ensure we can help better support these people to be discharged home with a package of care or to care and nursing homes. "At this time we are asking people to help by collecting their relatives or friends as soon as they are ready to leave and helping with any additional care and support at home." Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 March 2024
  3. Content Article
    Ambulances lined up outside hospital Emergency Departments (EDs) are a vivid, and politically embarrassing, indication of inadequate capacity in the NHS. Media reports of diktats demanding that hospital CEOs meet performance targets suggest a desire for action, but are the local solutions being implemented to ease the pressure in the best interest of patient safety? The use of ‘safety cases’ in healthcare has received some interest in recent years but the conclusion drawn by, for example, Leberati and her colleagues,[1] was that while they have some potential value they are "fraught with challenge, highlighting the limitations of efforts to transfer safety management practices to healthcare from other sectors". A survey of the literature suggests that there is a danger of conflating ‘safety cases’ with ‘safety management’ or ‘quality’ systems. Part of the problem might be that safety cases are more a concept rather than a methodology: there is no script to follow. In this blog, Norman MacLeod discusses whether the the current crisis in hospital capacity can be explored through the safety case lens.
  4. News Article
    Almost £35 million will be invested to improve maternity safety across England with the recruitment of additional midwives and the expansion of specialist training to thousands of extra healthcare workers. The investment, which was announced as part of the Spring Budget 2024, will be provided over the next 3 years to ensure maternity services listen to and act on women’s experiences to improve care. The funding includes: £9 million for the rollout of the reducing brain injury programme across maternity units in England, to provide healthcare workers with the tools and training to reduce avoidable brain injuries in childbirth investment in training to ensure the NHS workforce has the skills needed to provide ever safer maternity care. An additional 6,000 clinical staff will be trained in neonatal resuscitation and we will almost double the number of clinical staff receiving specialist training in obstetric medicine in England increasing the number of midwives by funding 160 new posts over 3 years to support the growth of the maternity and neonatal workforce funding to support the rollout of maternity and neonatal voice partnerships to improve how women’s experiences and views are listened to and acted on to improve care. Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins said: "I want every mother to feel safe when giving birth to their baby. Improving maternity care is a key cornerstone of our Women’s Health Strategy and with this investment we are delivering on that priority - more midwives, specialist training in obstetric medicine and pushing to improve how women are listened to in our healthcare system. £35 million is going directly to improving the safety and care in our maternity wards and will move us closer to our goal of making healthcare faster, simpler and fairer for all." Read full story Source: Gov.UK, 10 March 2024
  5. News Article
    More than 7,300 people waited longer than 24 hours for emergency treatment in Scottish hospitals last year, with the longest wait more than 122 hours. Public Health Scotland statistics obtained by Scottish Labour through freedom of information (FoI) revealed that 7,367 patients were in an emergency department for more than 24 hours before being discharged, admitted or transferred in 2023. The longest wait in A&E last year occurred at NHS Ayrshire and Arran’s University Hospital Crosshouse, where a patient waited more than 122 hours, or the equivalent of five days. Waits of more than 88 hours were recorded in NHS Borders, and 72 hours in NHS Lanarkshire. Dame Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman, has demanded action from Neil Gray, the health secretary. “Scotland’s A&E departments are in the grip of a deadly crisis, with lives being put on the line day in and day out,” she said. “That some people have waited days — even a working week — to be seen is dangerous and disgraceful. “Hard-pressed A&E staff are working tirelessly to look after patients, but SNP mismanagement has created a perfect storm in our hospitals. Neil Gray has inherited an NHS in deadly disarray from his colleagues. “It’s time for action to be taken now to bolster A&E departments by tackling delayed discharges and investing in primary care to avoid putting further pressure on hospital services.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 11 March 2024
  6. News Article
    Distressed elderly patients are being “treated like animals” and left begging for care as NHS staff struggle to cope with overwhelmed wards and an ever-increasing ageing population, an investigation by The Independent has revealed. Scores of families have come forward to share harrowing allegations of neglect as one top doctor warns that elderly people are receiving care “well below the standards they should expect” – including long waits in waiting rooms and “degrading” corridor care. In one shocking case, a 96-year-old patient admitted to the hospital with a urinary tract infection (UTI) was allegedly left semi-naked and delirious in his hospital bed – before choking on vomit after being sedated without his family’s permission, his daughter told The Independent. Another patient, 99, was traumatised after being left in a bed next to the body of a dead woman. The investigation was sparked by the horrific story of 73 year old Martin Wild who was left so desperate for pain medication he was forced to call 999 from his hospital bed. It comes as analysis by the Independent shows the government was warned three times last year by coroners over the increasing risk to elderly patients’ lives amid fears they are not being “effectively safeguarded”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 March 2024
  7. News Article
    A fertility clinic in London has had its licence to operate suspended because of “significant concerns” about the unit, the regulator has said. The Homerton Fertility Centre has been ordered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to halt any new procedures while investigations continue. The clinic in east London said there had been three separate incidents highlighting errors in some freezing processes. This resulted in the “tragic loss of a small number of embryos” that either did not survive or became “undetectable”, which means an embryo stored in frozen liquid solution in a container cannot be found during subsequent thawing. The clinic has informed the patients affected and apologised for any distress caused. Homerton Healthcare NHS foundation trust said it began an investigation in late 2023 and immediately made regulators fully aware of it. The HFEA is now conducting its own investigation alongside the trust. In a statement, the clinic said that while the investigators had not been able to find any direct cause of the errors, it had made changes in the unit to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. All staff now work in pairs to ensure all clinical activities are checked by two healthcare professionals, competencies of staff within the unit have been rechecked, and security at the unit has been increased. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 March 2024
  8. News Article
    It has been well-documented that Covid-19 took a devastating toll on emergency departments nationwide, revealing and exploiting the fragility of our acute-care system. Less has been written, however, about the side effects of hospitals’ attempts to recover from that era — one of the most serious of which is the proliferation of boarding. As hospitals scramble to regain their footing (and their profit margins), the financial incentive structure that undergirds US medicine has gone into overdrive. Inpatient beds that might previously have been reserved for patients who require essential care but generate very little money for the hospital, are increasingly allocated for patients undergoing more lucrative procedures. The consequences of this systemic failure cannot be overstated. Four hours is supposed to be the maximum time spent boarding in an emergency department, but recent data shows that hospitals in the US are failing to meet that goal when occupancy is high (which it routinely is). "On any given shift, hallways in the emergency department are lined with patients on stretchers. Boarding leads to a cascade of harms — including ambulances diverted to hospitals far from patients’ homes, patients charged for beds they haven’t yet occupied and overwhelmed emergency medicine personnel leaving the field because of burnout," says Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician and a scholar in the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA. Many narratives around boarding focus on the patients themselves, shaming some for inappropriately using the emergency department. Proposed solutions include pushing patients to urgent-care centers or modifying “patient flow.” But the issues with boarding cannot be addressed with such minor tweaks. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Washington Post, 28 February 2024
  9. Content Article
    The NHS Staff survey is one of the largest workforce surveys in the world and is carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. It asks staff in England about their experiences of working for their respective NHS organisations. Of the 1.4 million NHS employees in England, 707,604 staff responded to the survey in 2023.
  10. News Article
    Health services for Londoners with eating disorders are struggling to cope with demand, a new report warns. Data from London's mental health trusts shows adult referrals have increased by 56% - from 3,000 to nearly 8,000 - in the last six years Child and adolescent referrals increased by 158%, from 1,400 to 4,000, in the same time period. The report has been compiled by the London Assembly's health committee. It has made 12 recommendations to London Mayor Sadiq Khan and City Hall officers, which include assessing other physical and mental health indicators as well as just patients' bodyweight as per their BMI. One consultant clinical psychologist told the committee that "almost all of the eating disorder services in London do not have the staffing levels available to safely provide the care required". Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 March 2024
  11. Content Article
    In June 2023, the London Assembly Health Committee launched an investigation into eating disorders in London, following reports that referrals for eating disorder services have increased in recent years and performance against waiting time standards dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this investigation was to understand what is driving the increase in referrals, how services are responding to this additional demand and to explore people’s access to, experiences of, and outcomes from treatment services. The Committee held two formal meetings with expert guests, including clinicians, people with experience of living with an eating disorder, and representatives from the Greater London Authority and NHS England. It also held a private session with people with lived experience of being affected by an eating disorder and received 112 responses to its survey from those with experience of an eating disorder, supporting a family member or friend with an eating disorder or those working with those experiencing an eating disorder. 
  12. News Article
    NHS leaders have welcomed the £6bn budget boost Jeremy Hunt handed the beleaguered service to help it meet rising demand, tackle the care backlog and overhaul its antiquated IT system. The chancellor gave the NHS in England an extra £2.5bn to cover its day-to-day running costs in 2024/25, after the Institute for Fiscal Studies had warned that it was set to receive less funding next year than this. Julian Hartley, the chief executive of hospital body NHS Providers, said the money would offer “much needed – but temporary – respite” and “some breathing space” from the service’s acute financial difficulties, which have been exacerbated by inflation and the costs incurred by long-running strikes by NHS staff. However, there was little to stabilise England’s creaking adult social care system, and Hunt’s budget delivered an ongoing squeeze on resources, said the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS). “Millions of adults and carers will be disappointed,” said Anna Hemmings, joint chief executive of ADASS. “Directors can’t invest enough in early support for people close to home, which prevents them needing hospital or residential care at a greater cost.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 March 2024
  13. News Article
    A patient says he felt ignored and that NHS care was lacking after he spent 14 hours on a bed in a hospital corridor. Ivan Philpotts, 77, from Norwich, was transferred between wards at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), having contracted pneumonia. He said he was left in a bed in a corridor with no access to water, was unable to eat and that his wife was unable to visit. The hospital said it had experienced a high number of patients last week. "I felt very vulnerable," Mr Philpotts said. "Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of you and you were sitting there, people walking by you. "I was there from 8.30 in the morning until 9.10 at night before I actually got into a bay. We got no communication whatsoever." The hospital trust is one of just two in England that has been carrying out a trial of a "corridor care" scheme. The Royal College of Nursing's eastern regional director Teresa Budrey said: "We're starting to normalise it and that's not OK. "There are patients who are suffering for hours, without proper privacy or equipment and you've also got nurses dealing with an expanded number of patients. "We need government minsters and employers to come together for some bigger solutions across the system." Read full story Source: BBC News, 6 March 2024 Further reading on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift
  14. Content Article
    This is my story, as a bereaved mother, about lessons I have learnt following the unexpected death of my previously well 25-year-old daughter Gaia in University College Hospital London (UCLH) in July 2021. I have written 11 patient safety lessons in the hope this helps other families be more assertive if they have a critically sick relative in hospital. Believe me, you must be pushy to be allowed into a hospital ward, even more so ITU. I went to visit my critically sick daughter at around 10am on a Sunday morning, but was not allowed on to the ward. A senior nurse told me to GO HOME using the 'Covid' excuse. I was shut out from the bedside of my critically ill only child. I have set up TruthForGaia.com to share learnings more widely. Please take a look. I hope sharing this may contribute to reducing avoidable deaths from brain conditions which can be only too easily assumed to be intoxication, especially on weekends. I believe raised intracranial pressure (high pressure in the skull) needs more awareness and training. When will UCLH hold a medical grand round on my daughter's case?
  15. Content Article
    Elective care refers to when patients receive non-urgent treatment, normally in hospital, including, tests and scans, outpatient care, surgery and cancer treatment. The NHS is currently seeing long waiting times for some elective procedures, with the Government setting an ambition to reduce elective waiting times to less than a year by 2025. Increased waiting times mean patients have to wait longer for the care they need. This can lead to patients suffering increased pain, their condition may worsen, or they may develop other illnesses associated with the reason that they are waiting for elective care. This can cause both physical harm and mental distress to patients, their families, and carers. The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) Senior Safety Investigator, Neil Alexander, blogs about the challenges facing the NHS in tackling the elective care backlog and how learning from our investigation reports may be able to help the NHS rise to this challenge.
  16. News Article
    Scores of potentially dangerous nurses and midwives could be working in the NHS and putting patients at risk as their cases sit in a growing backlog of misconduct, Hundreds of accusations against staff are being progressed without a full investigation, a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) whistleblower has alleged, risking false sanctions or rogue nurses being wrongly cleared if the cases collapse. Overall there are more than 1,000 outstanding cases against healthcare staff for a hearing, including 451 that have not even been allocated a lawyer to vet. In 83 of the more serious allegations, the accused staff have been put under restrictions but could still be working with patients. The NMC whistleblower has claimed the figures expose a hidden backlog of “under-investigated” allegations, with 451 cases against nurses and midwives still needing to be reviewed by lawyers. These could include nurses who are innocent but are awaiting a hearing, with one “stuck in the void” for eight years, the source added. The whistleblower whose allegations prompted The Independent’s investigations has raised repeated concerns to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), which regulates the NMC, over the hidden backlog, which was only uncovered through a freedom of information request. However the PSA has not used its powers to trigger a review. The whistleblower warned the public is being left at risk of harm, while nurses and midwives could face miscarriages of justice. “The NMC’s desperation to hide these figures has caused it to make dangerous decisions including creating a surge team of colleagues from across the organisation to review these cases with only minimal training,” the whistleblower said.“It is proposing to mass outsource these reviews to a firm of lawyers who have never undertaken this kind of work before.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 3 March 2024
  17. Content Article
    Using experiences of care from over 10 million people collected over the past ten years, Healthwatch England presents a bold vision for the NHS in 2030. In a new report, Healthwatch outlines what they think the NHS should be in six years and how it can get there. The vision calls for a focus on three key themes: Making the NHS easier to access and navigate. Tackling health inequalities.  Building a patient-centred culture. 
  18. News Article
    A 73-year-old patient has said he was neglected at an NHS hospital and left to cry for help in "excruciating pain" during an ordeal that lasted months. Martin Wild was admitted to Salford Royal last year due to a spinal infection and claims he was denied pain relief and left lying in his own urine. Consultant Glyn Smurthwaite said Martin was "the most neglected acute patient I have ever seen". The trust that runs the hospital has apologised for failings in his care. Mr Wild came home from Salford Royal Hospital in January after an eight-month stay because of an infection following a private spinal operation. He said he was forced to phone 999 from his hospital bed when first admitted to the acute medical ward in May 2023 after struggling to get staff to give him pain relief and his Parkinson's medication. "I was left on my own in excruciating pain, with little pain relief, and I was laying on this bed for over a week before I saw a consultant." Mr Wild was discharged despite warning staff he was not well enough and no one could look after him at home, and ended up being readmitted days later via A&E. He said his poor care continued during his second stay, and Mr Wild recalled that he was shaking so much in pain that he knocked bottles of urine on to his bed after they had been left on the table with his food. Mr Wild was left lying in the urine-soaked sheets for hours before they were changed. Read full story Source: BBC News, 3 March 2023
  19. News Article
    Thirteen more NHS hospitals have identified a potentially unsafe form of concrete in their buildings, causing closures and disruption to wards. The government has updated its list of hospitals that have confirmed reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete on their sites, with the total now at 54. This includes at least two trusts – Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Hampshire Hospitals – which in September said their sites did not contain the material, after the sudden closure of schools with the concrete sparked a wave of headlines over it. The material was used widely between the 1960s and 1980s and can be prone to collapse. The impact and risk of the concrete identified varies greatly between sites. HSJ has asked trusts who run the newly identified sites where it has been found, as well as the risks and impact from the discovery. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 February 2024
  20. Content Article
    Virtual wards provide hospital-level care to patients in their own homes. There are many different models of virtual wards. Some cover specific conditions (frailty, acute respiratory infections, heart failure wards), while others have a much broader range of patients. In April 2022, NHS England launched its national virtual ward programme with the long term aim of providing 40 to 50 virtual ward beds per 100,000 people in England. So far, every integrated care board in England has introduced virtual wards. Further aims of this programme include improving patient choice and experience, avoiding risks associated with inpatients stays and improving hospital flow by reducing lengths of stay and freeing up beds. Virtual wards have the potential to improve outcomes for both patients and the health care system. But we need high-quality data, careful monitoring and robust evaluations to understand if this is the case – and for which patients and in what contexts. This will provide learning and drive improvement.   This Health Foundation working paper analyses aggregate national data on virtual wards to describe what virtual wards currently look like across England and discuss the effects of virtual wards on patients, staff and hospital capacity, as well as the gaps in the evidence.
  21. Content Article
    It is well known that the NHS is suffering from staff shortages, with 121,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) vacancies and only 26% of the workforce stating there are enough staff at their organisation. The reasons why staff are leaving are well documented (burnout, lack of work–life balance, low pay etc), and the direct impact on patients is obvious – staff shortages are one of the main reasons why there is a backlog of care. But these headlines mask nuance. They hide the areas where staff shortages are even more acute than the average, and they obscure the indirect impact on patients. Where are these areas, what are the impacts, and will the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan help?
  22. News Article
    Staff have assaulted patients and falsified medical records following deaths, according to a shocking new report into a scandal-hit mental health hospital where Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane was a patient. Multiple incidents of staff physically assaulting patients and workers feeling too scared to report problems at Highbury Hospital have been uncovered by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The watchdog revealed police have investigating the deaths of at least two patients in which staff involved were later found by the hospital to have falsified their medical records in a new report, published on Friday. The news comes after The Independent revealed Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust, which runs Highbury Hospital, had suspended more than 30 staff members following allegations of mistreating patients and falsifying records of medical observations. The trust also faces a further CQC review, commissioned by health secretary Victoria Atkins, following the conviction of killer Valdo Calocane who was a patient of Highbury Hospital’s community service teams. This review is due to be published later this year. Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 March 2023
  23. Content Article
    Spina bifida is a developmental condition affecting the brain and spine, often leading to physical and cognitive impairments, and bladder and bowel issues. Widely regarded as one of the most severe conditions compatible with life, open spina bifida can result in significant morbidity, with numerous body systems and tissues affected.
  24. Content Article
    A new BMA report, “It’s broken” Doctors’ experiences on the frontline of a failing mental healthcare system", based on first-hand accounts of doctors working across the NHS, reveals a ‘broken’ system of mental health services in England. The current economic cost of mental ill health has been estimated to be over £100 billion in England alone*, but this report demonstrates that across the NHS, doctors are in an ongoing struggle to give patients the care they need because the funding is just not enough, there are not enough staff, and the infrastructure and systems are not fit for purpose. The report makes plain that without a concerted effort from central government to resource mental healthcare based on demand (which continues to grow beyond what the NHS can respond to) as well as changes in society to promote good mental health, the future looks bleak. The BMA carried out in-depth interviews with doctors across the mental health system, including those working in psychiatry, general practice, emergency medicine, and public health.
  25. News Article
    Health systems will be asked to deliver the same amount of elective activity next year as they were tasked with completing in 2023-24, HSJ understands. Local leaders have been issued with varying interim targets for 2024-25 that produce an average national threshold of 7% more activity than pre-covid levels, on a value-weighted basis. It means the target for the current year has effectively been rolled over into next, suggesting the elective recovery is a year behind schedule. Even if systems hit their thresholds next year, they will still fall well short of the central target set out in the elective recovery plan in 2022. Recent weeks have seen other elective ambitions ditched or watered down, including the prime minister’s headline pledge to bring the overall waiting list down. It is likely a result of the government accepting it cannot push more elective activity due to ongoing strikes and overspending. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 February 2024
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