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Showing results for tags 'Private sector'.
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News Article
Scars and ulcers among risks from boom in beauticians treating varicose veins
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The adverts promise beautiful legs, zero risk, and treatment in as little as 15 minutes. But unregulated injections to “eliminate” varicose veins are putting clients at risk of serious health complications, surgeons have warned. Vein removal treatments costing as little as £90 a session are being offered by beauticians without medical supervision across the UK, Observer analysis has found. Promoted with dramatic before and after photos and billed as a quick fix, microsclerotherapy involves the injection of a chemical irritant to disrupt the vein lining. This causes the vein walls to stick together, making it no longer visible on the skin. When performed correctly on finer veins, known as “thread” or “spider” veins, the procedure is generally considered safe, provided no underlying issues are present. But beauticians and other non-healthcare professionals are also offering vein treatments for people with varicose veins, which can signify underlying venous disease, analysis of promotional materials shows. In such cases, treatments should be performed by practitioners in a regulated clinic, where specialists first use ultrasound scans to assess the area. Conducting vein removal incorrectly or when there are underlying problems can lead to complications including leg ulcers, nerve damage, blood clots, stroke, allergic reactions and scarring, the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) said. Even in cases where only thread veins are visible, other problems may be present. Prof Mark Whiteley, a consultant venous surgeon and chair of the Whiteley chain of clinics, said he had seen cases of women with leg ulcers and permanent scarring after treatment for varicose veins from non-medics. In other cases, people had paid for treatment but saw no effect because the underlying cause was not tackled. “It’s totally disgraceful,” he said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 November 2022 -
News ArticleThere were 21 “wholly preventable” patient safety incidents of the most serious category at private hospitals last year, new data has shown, as NHS bosses prepare to invest up to £10bn in the sector. This is the first time that a comprehensive dataset of 'never events’ within private hospitals has been published in the UK, and comes ahead of plans to outsource both inpatient and outpatient services, routine surgery operations and cancer treatment to private providers. The audit conducted by the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), established in 2014 to bring greater transparency to the private health sector, showed that 287 out of 595 private hospitals and NHS private patient units (PPUs) provided information on Never Events between 1 January and 31 December 2019. This group accounts for an estimated 86 per cent of privately-funded admitted patient care, PHIN said. It attributed the “gaps in the data” to NHS PPUs, rather than independent hospitals. The fact that more than 300 hospitals or PPUs were unable or unwilling to hand over this data highlights the private sector’s continuing lack of transparency, said the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, a social care and health think tank. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 September 2020 Private Healthcare Information Network press release
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News Article
Babylon apology after GP app lets patients see other people's consultations
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Babylon Health is investigating whether NHS patients were among those affected by a 'software error' that allowed people registered with its private GP service to view recordings of other people's consultations earlier this month. Babylon Health has confirmed that a small number of patients were able to view recordings of other patients' consultations earlier this week. The issue came to light after a patient in Leeds who had access to the Babylon app through a private health insurance plan with Bupa reported that he had been able to view around 50 consultations that were not his own. The patient told the BBC he was 'shocked' to discover the data breach. "You don't expect to see anything like that when you're using a trusted app," he said. "It's shocking to see such a monumental error has been made." Babylon told GPonline that the app used by private and NHS patients is the same, but it had yet to confirm whether the roughly 80,000 patients registered with the company's digital first NHS service GP at Hand were among those affected. The problem is understood to have cropped up when a new feature was introduced for patients who switched from audio to video mid-way through a consultation. Read full story Source: GPOnline, 10 June 2020 -
News Article
Only six of 200 NHS private units signed up to complaints watchdog
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Just six of the English NHS’s more than 200 private patient units (PPUs) are signed up to the independent complaints adjudicator, HSJ has learned. The figures follow the publication of the Paterson Inquiry earlier this month. The inquiry’s report warned patients treated in private units, including PPUs, which are not regulated by the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS) “will not have access to independent investigation or adjudication of their complaint”. ISCAS is the main independent adjudicator for the private healthcare sector and takes on approximately 125 adjudications each year on unresolved patient complaints. Most standalone independent providers have signed up to the watchdog. However, ISCAS membership is not mandatory and it is concerned patients wishing to complain about care at PPUs will have little choice but to pursue costly legal action. The government is now considering the inquiry’s recommendation that all private patients are given the right to a mandatory independent resolution of their complaint. Read full story Source: HSJ, 26 February 2020 -
News ArticleThe Independent Inquiry into the issues raised by Paterson is yet another missed opportunity to tackle the systemic patient safety risks which lie at the heart of the private hospital business model, says David Rowland from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest in a recent BMJ Opinion article. Although the Inquiry provided an important opportunity for the hundreds of patients affected to bear witness to the pain and harm inflicted upon them it fundamentally failed as an exercise in root cause analysis. None of the “learning points” in the final report touch on the financial incentives which may have led Paterson to deliberately over treat patients. Nor do they cover the business reasons which might encourage a private hospital’s management not to look too closely. He suggests that the Inquiry report threw the responsibility for managing patient safety risks back to the patients themselves in two of its main recommendations but that it should be for the healthcare provider first and foremost to ensure that the professions that they employ are safe, competent and properly supervised, and for this form of assurance to be underpinned by a well-functioning system of licensing and revalidation by national regulatory bodies. Read full story Source: BMJ Opinion, 20 February 2020
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News Article
Scans of 1,800 patients reviewed after private contract suspended
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Ultrasound scans for around 1,800 patients have had to be reviewed over concerns about the “quality and safety” of work carried out by two sonographers employed by an independent provider. The two sonographers were employed by Bestcare Diagnostics. The company held an “any qualified provider” contract for non-obstetric ultrasound scans with Coastal West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) from April 2017. This contract was suspended in September 2018 over what the CCG said were “quality issues”. However, new information came to light in spring 2019 and the CCG decided to review all 1,800 patients seen by the pair, who worked for the company between April and August 2018. The CCG said scans for these patients were reviewed and, wherever possible, the patients were contacted. A second stage of the review will look at whether any harm was caused to the patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 20 February 2020 -
News Article
Surgeon suspended over treatment concerns
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A doctor who worked at the same private healthcare firm as rogue breast surgeon Ian Paterson has been suspended, it has emerged. Spire Healthcare said Mike Walsh – a specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery – was suspended in April 2018 over concerns about patient treatment. Almost 50 of his patients from its Leeds hospital had been recalled. The details emerged following an independent inquiry into Paterson, who is serving a 20-year jail sentence. Earlier this month, an inquiry into the breast surgeon found that a culture of "avoidance and denial" had allowed him to perform botched and unnecessary operations on hundreds of women. Spire said in a statement that it acted after concerns were raised about Mr Walsh's work at its hospital in Leeds in 2018. The company, which contacted the Royal College of Surgeons to assist with its investigation, said it had reviewed the notes of fewer than 200 patients, of which "fewer than 50" had been invited back for a follow-up appointment. "Where we have identified concerns about the care a patient received, we have invited the patient to an appointment with an independent surgeon to review their treatment," a spokesman for Spire Healthcare said. "This is a complex case and the review is ongoing." It said that Mr Walsh, who was immediately suspended after the concerns were raised, was no longer working with Spire Healthcare. The company said any patients at its Spire Leeds Hospital who had concerns about their treatment under Mr Walsh should contact the hospital. It said its findings had also been shared with the Care Quality Commission and the General Medical Council (GMC). Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 February 2020 -
News Article
‘Plug-and-play’ regtech solution enhances patient safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
With a focus on pharmaceutical supply chain regulation, Bonafi is one of the latest companies to launch within the regtech startup sector. “Companies operating in the global pharma industry must verify that those they are buying from and selling to are authorised to handle medicinal products for human use in their own countries,” explains its founder, Katarina Antill. “At present, this verification process is manual. Companies are using screenshots as proof and relying on spreadsheets to track verification activities, which increases the risk of errors.” “Manual processes are very labour intensive not least because companies must deal with multiple registries across multiple countries,” she says. “Most pharma manufacturers and wholesalers don’t have the resources to reverify their trading partners more than once a year, which is the current minimum legal requirement, and this too creates a potential vulnerability that can ultimately have an impact on patient safety and increase corporate risk. “I could see that this huge volume of manual work was a threat to patient-safety and extremely inefficient,” she adds. “Our solution gives companies much greater control over their compliance activities because they no longer have to rely on manual processes. It can also retrieve and aggregate data from multiple registers across multiple countries and has a constant monitoring and alert system, quality management dashboards, electronic signatures and workflows and will strengthen the attributes of traceability, transparency and security. It is all designed to help companies to be pro-active in their compliance activities, enabling them to go beyond compliance alone to reduce corporate risk and patient risk.” Read full story Source: The Irish Times, 13 February 2020 -
News Article
Paterson scandal: Is the NHS learning from mistakes?
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Shipman, Mid Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay, and now Ian Paterson, the breast surgeon that performed botched and unnecessary operations on hundreds of women. The list of NHS-related scandals has got longer. It's tempting to say the health service has not learned lessons even after a string of revelations and reviews. But is that fair? asks BBC Health Editor Hugh Pym. The inquiry, chaired by Bishop Graham James, makes clear there were failings at every level of a dysfunctional health system when it came to patient safety. The public and private health systems did not compare notes about suspicious behaviour by a consultant. Staff working with Paterson thought that his surgical methods were unusual but, perhaps cowed by being ignored after raising concerns, kept their heads down. Add to that the power and status of a surgeon in the medical world and, in the words of the report, Paterson was "hiding in plain sight". So could it happen again? James says it's clearly impossible to eliminate the activities of determined criminals in any profession. He acknowledges that some improvements have been made on policing. But he says that a decade on from the Paterson scandal, he is not convinced that medical regulators, with a combined budget of half a billion pounds a year, are doing enough collectively or collaboratively to make the system safe for patients. The review chair notes tellingly that while regulators spoke of major improvements which should identify another Paterson, some doctors and nurses had told the inquiry that it was "entirely possible that something similar could happen now". Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 February 2020 -
News Article
Inquiry into rogue breast surgeon to call for changes to private hospital safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An independent inquiry is expected to call for major changes in the way private hospitals supervise doctors after hundreds of women were put through unnecessary operations by a rogue breast surgeon. Ian Paterson was jailed for 20 years in 2017 after being convicted of 13 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding. But his surgical malpractice may have harmed more than 750 women over more than a decade. He carried out unnecessary surgery for breast cancer on women who did not have the disease, and put other women who did at risk by using his own unofficial technique, which left behind partial breast tissue. On Tuesday an inquiry chaired by the Bishop of Norwich, the Right Reverend Graham James, will be published and is expected to make recommendations about how doctors are allowed to work across both the NHS and private sector with minimal supervision and oversight. One key area of focus is expected to be a process known as “practising privileges”, where private hospitals allow clinicians to carry out their own activities within the hospital, similar to self-employed contractors. They effectively rent the hospital space for their work. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 February 2020 -
News ArticleThe Care Quality Commission (CQC) missed multiple opportunities to identify abuse of patients at a privately run hospital and did not act on the concerns of its own members, an independent review has found. Bosses at the CQC have been criticised in an independent report by David Noble into why the regulator buried a critical report into Whorlton Hall hospital, in County Durham, in 2015. His report published today said the CQC was wrong not to make public concerns from one of its inspection teams in 2015. “The decision not to publish was wrong,” his report said, adding: “This was a missed opportunity to record a poorly performing independent mental health institution which CQC as the regulator, with the information available to it, should have identified at that time.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 22 January 2020
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Content ArticleCorporate interests have the potential to influence public debate and policymaking by influencing the research agenda, namely the initial step in conducting research, in which the purpose of the study is defined and the questions are framed. Fabbri et al. conducted a scoping review to identify and synthesise studies that explored the influence of industry sponsorship on research agendas across different fields. The authors concluded that corporate interests can drive research agendas away from questions that are the most relevant for public health. Strategies to counteract corporate influence on the research agenda are needed, including heightened disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest in published articles to allow an assessment of commercial biases. The authors also recommend policy actions beyond disclosure such as increasing funding for independent research and strict guidelines to regulate the interaction of research institutes with commercial entities.
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Content ArticleIn January 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global health emergency. Healthcare systems around the world faced enormous pressures as hospital admissions increased. Amongst others, med-tech companies experienced a vast increase in demand for Covid-19 related products, alongside declining demand for non-essential products, and so had to adapt their supply chains to ensure the sustained, timely delivery of medical devices. In addition, teams had to navigate disruptions to global supply chains due to various border lockdowns and tighter trade and export restrictions worldwide. Prior to the unprecedented demands of the pandemic, med-tech supply chain management was not a hot topic in the news, or generally known amongst the public. However, it has recently gained traction across the news worldwide as supply chain managers have worked relentlessly to re-establish the equilibrium within this ever-changing landscape. The med-tech industry should look to continue to re-build their supply chains, so that they can be more agile and flexible, and respond to potential future issues efficiently and effectively.
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Content ArticleThe Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published an open letter calling for all hospitals to comply with the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order. The Order entered into force on 1 October 2014 and requires the performance measures of private healthcare facilities, and the performance measures and fees of consultants providing privately-funded healthcare services to be published by the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN).The CMA has asked PHIN and its members to provide a detailed roadmap outlining how the Order will be complete by June 2026. Over the next few months there will be opportunities for all interested parties to contribute to this roadmap, including consultant representative groups, insurers and other stakeholders.
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Content ArticleExtrapolation from a recent poll suggests that about 16 million adults in the UK found it difficult to access healthcare services during the pandemic, and of these, one in eight opted to access private healthcare. This could create the conditions for a two tier system, whereby those with the means to pay have access to healthcare more quickly than those who don’t. This would jeopardise the high levels of support the NHS has enjoyed since its establishment and have serious implications for equity in access to healthcare services. But this is unlikely because of limited capacity in the private sector writes Michael Anderson and Elias Mossialos in this BMJ editorial.
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Content ArticleLaura Chapman is a law student in Chicago, USA, where she’s studying to become a lawyer. She has lymphoedema, a condition that causes painful swelling in her foot that worsens throughout the day. She needs custom garments to control that swelling, but her Medicaid plan doesn’t cover them. Here’s her story in her own words. Sick Note is a regular newsletter about America's healthcare system.
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Content ArticleThe purpose of this investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) is to help improve patient safety in relation to the care of patients who have NHS-funded surgery in an independent hospital. This was initiated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, where because of increased pressure on the NHS, independent hospitals have been providing more care for NHS patients, including urgent elective surgical care and delivery of cancer pathways. The HSIB investigation reviewed the experience of a patient with a diagnosis of bowel cancer, who was booked to undergo laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery to remove part of his bowel in in an independent hospital. Following surgery, the patient made slow progress and on day eight following surgery he started to deteriorate rapidly. He was transferred to the local NHS hospital for investigation and further surgery. He died later the same day as a result of sepsis following a complication of his recent surgery.
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Content ArticleThis Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report highlights a gap between the NHS and other safety-critical industries in identifying and managing barriers to reduce the risk of serious incidents occurring.
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Content Article
Fatigue and alertness: Keeping the rail industry alert
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Techniques
Whether you work in an office or on the front line, drive your car home from work or a train full of passengers, you need to be awake and alert to do your job safely and efficiently. Managing fatigue is everybody’s responsibility. RSSB's aim is to make sure that everyone, at all levels, understands their role in managing fatigue. Based on their research and consultation with the rail industry, RSSB have put together a range of resources to help with this. -
Content ArticleRisk management has a number of accident causation models that have been used for a number of years. Dr Nancy Leveson has developed a new model of accidents using a systems approach. The new model is called Systems Theoretic Accident Modeling and Processes (STAMP). It incorporates three basic components: constraints, hierarchical levels of control, and process loops. In this model, accidents are examined in terms of why the controls that were in place did not prevent or detect the hazard(s) and why these controls were not adequate to enforcing the system safety constraints. Altabbakh et al. present STAMP accident analysis and its usefulness in evaluating system safety is compared to more traditional risk models. STAMP is applied to a case study in the oil and gas industry to demonstrate both practicality and validity of the model. The model successfully identified both direct and indirect violations against existing safety constraints that resulted in the accident at each level of the organisation.
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Content ArticleThis week Nadine Dorries MP, Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health, provided an update on the Government’s response to the Independent Inquiry into the Issues raised by Paterson.[1] Here, Patient Safety Learning reflects on this statement and the need for the Government to urgently prioritise providing a full response to the Inquiry’s findings.
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Content ArticleThis New Scientist article explores various safety incidents that have occurred in oil companies due to failings in their organisational structures. Lessons can be learnt and applied to safety in healthcare.
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Content ArticleThis blog looks at the introduction of a new safety culture at oil company Amoco in the 1990s, following the company's previous poor safety record. The author highlights the positive impact that this had on fatality numbers, and comments how a similar culture is needed for the oil company BP. Although discussing the oil industry, the issues highlighted are relevant to healthcare safety and culture too.
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Content ArticleImproving the design of technology relies in part, on the reporting of performance failures in existing devices. Healthcare has low levels of formal reporting of performance and failure of medical equipment. This paper from Tase et al. examines methods of reporting in the car industry and healthcare and aims to understand differences and identify opportunities for improvement within healthcare.
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Content ArticleThis report from the Department of Health and Social Care sets out the Government’s response to the Independent Inquiry into the Issues raised by Paterson.
