Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Long waiting list'.


More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


First name


Last name


Country


Join a private group (if appropriate)


About me


Organisation


Role

Found 774 results
  1. News Article
    NHS England has told integrated care board (ICBs) leaders they must intervene over failures in abortion services in their patches amid “unprecedented demand” for such provision, HSJ has learned. NICE guidance states people should be assessed within a week of requesting an abortion, while procedures should take place within a week of assessment. However, NHSE said in a letter to ICBs today that “significant service pressures” have driven up waiting times for surgical abortions – approximately 13% of procedures – to three weeks or longer. NHSE has told ICBs to work with providers to, by July 2024: Respond to cases of “acute service disruption” and instances where rising waiting times risk limiting access to services; Establish referral pathways and procedures to ensure smooth transfers of care between independent and NHS providers when required; Ensure contracts for 2024-25 are sustainable and follow guidance in the NHS payment scheme; and Commission services in a more managed and collaborative way, including coordination of provision locally to bring waiting times in line with NICE standards. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 March 2024
  2. 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
  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
    Patients in parts of England are facing an uphill struggle to see a GP, experts say, after an analysis showed wide regional variation in doctor numbers. The Nuffield Trust think tank found Kent and Medway had the fewest GPs per person, followed by Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes. It comes as ministers have struggled to hit the pledge to boost the GP workforce by 6,000 this Parliament. But the government said it had plans in place to tackle shortages. However, Dr Billy Palmer, of the Nuffield Trust, said: "Solely boosting the number of staff nationally in the NHS is not enough alone - the next government should set a clear aim of reducing the uneven distribution of key staffing groups and shortfalls to tackle unfairness in access for patients." The think-tank report found while the government had met its target to increase the number of nurses by 50,000 this Parliament, the rises had not been felt evenly, with some specialist nurse posts, such as health visitors and learning-disability nurses, seeing numbers shrink. Dr Palmer said minimum numbers of GPs may have to be set for local areas - and better incentives to attract them to those with the fewest. Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 March 2024
  5. 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
  6. 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.
  7. News Article
    Almost 70,000 children are missing out on mental health care they should be eligible to receive as the NHS falls short of key targets, The Independent has revealed. An internal analysis, seen by The Independent, shows in England the NHS has fallen short of a target, set in 2019, for 818,000 children to receive at least one treatment session from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in 2023. The actual number of children who received treatment in the 12 months to December was 749,833, falling short of the target by around 9%. The figures came as the government announced this week it would expand the number of early access mental health hubs for children to cover 50% of the country by 2025. However, campaigners urged ministers to commit to covering the entire country to help “turn the tide on the crisis” in children’s mental health services. The NHS analysis shows, as of December, CAMHS in the South West was furthest away from its targets with 78% of children seen out of those eligible. In London, 80% of the target was achieved and in the North West 105%. Laura Bunt, chief executive at YoungMinds, said: “Referrals to mental health services are at a record high with more young people than ever in need of support with their mental health. We know that many young people are struggling in the aftermath of the pandemic, facing intense academic pressure to catch up on lost learning, a cost of living crisis and increasing global instability. “Every young person should be able to access mental health support when they need it, but too many don’t get it until things get much worse. Services continue to be significantly underfunded and the number of young people receiving treatment falls woefully short of what is needed. To turn the tide on this crisis, the government must prioritise young people and their mental health by investing in prevention and early intervention.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 March 2024
  8. 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?
  9. News Article
    NHS waiting lists will take more than three years to be reduced to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis. Despite recent reductions in the waiting list in England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said that it is “unlikely that waiting lists will reach pre-pandemic levels” by December 2027 – even under a “best-case scenario”. The latest figures show that the waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen for the third month in a row. An estimated 7.6 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of December, relating to 6.37 million patients, down slightly from 7.61 million treatments and 6.39 million patients at the end of November, according to NHS England figures. Cutting NHS waiting lists is one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s top priorities. However, the PM admitted earlier this month he would not meet his promise to reduce waiting lists. However, the new IFS analysis highlights how the NHS waiting list was already growing before the pandemic, but it rose “rapidly” during the crisis. The IFS report suggests a range of scenarios about how the waiting list could look in December 2024. Under a “more pessimistic scenario”, waiting lists will remain at the same elevated level while an “optimistic scenario” would see them fall to 5.2 million by December 2027.
  10. Content Article
    This Institute for Fiscal Studies briefing, outlines what has happened to NHS waiting lists (in England, given that health is a devolved responsibility) over the last 17 years – the period for which consistent data are available – and present new scenarios of what could happen to waiting lists over the years to come. It focuses on the elective waiting list – the list of people waiting for pre-planned hospital treatment and outpatient appointments. This is what most people mean when they talk about NHS waiting lists, but it also considers a range of other NHS waiting lists and waiting times. Alongside this report, IFD has updated their interactive online tool that allows you to produce waiting list scenarios under your own assumptions.
  11. News Article
    Long A&E waits have got worse at more than one in five acute trusts, despite an improving trend nationally. Around 30 acute trusts have reported an increase in long accident and emergency waits, bucking the national trend. According to data covering the nine months to December, the proportion of waits more than 12 hours from time of arrival has improved to 6.3%, down from 8% during the same period in 2022. However, 28 out of 119 acute trusts reported a rise of up to 3 percentage points. HSJ’s analysis, which used published and unpublished data, showed 11 of these trusts had worsened despite improving their headline performance against the four-hour target. Adrian Boyle, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the emphasis on the four-hour target “incentivises focus on the people who are being sent home, and takes effort and attention away from the people who are being admitted to hospital”. He added: “The harms of long waits are greatest for people being admitted to hospital. We are disappointed by the current lack of focus in the planning guidance to help our most vulnerable patients.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 February 2024
  12. Content Article
    Eating Disorders Awareness Week takes place 26 February - 3 March 2024 Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that affect an estimated 1.25 million people in the UK. There are many unhelpful myths about who eating disorders affect, what the symptoms are and how to support people in recovery. Alongside a current lack of appropriately trained staff and capacity in mental health services, this can make it challenging for people with eating disorders to access the help and support they need. Patient Safety Learning has pulled together ten useful resources shared on the hub to help healthcare professionals, friends and family support people with eating disorders. They include awareness-raising articles, practical tips for patients and their loved ones, and clinical guidance for primary, secondary and mental health providers.
  13. 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
  14. News Article
    The number of people in the UK who have avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (Arfid), in which those afflicted avoid many foods, has risen sevenfold in five years, figures show. The eating disorders charity Beat received 295 calls about Arfid in 2018 – comprising 2% of its 20,535 inquiries that year. However, it received 2,054 calls last year, which accounted for one in 10 of its 20,535 requests for help. Many were from children and young people or their parents. Andrew Radford, Beat’s chief executive, said: “It’s extremely worrying that there has been such a dramatic increase in those seeking support for Arfid, particularly as specialist care isn’t always readily available.” Patchy provision of NHS help meant many people were experiencing long delays before accessing support, he added. Eight in 10 eating disorder service providers did not state on their website whether or not they offered Arfid care, research by Beat found. “All too often we hear from people who have been unable to get treatment close to home or have faced waits of months or even years to get the help they need,” Radford said. Arfid is much less well-known than anorexia or bulimia. It is “an eating disorder that rarely gets the attention it deserves”. The sharp increase in cases should prompt NHS chiefs to end the postcode lottery in care for Arfid and ensure that every region of England had a team of staff fully trained to treat it, he added. “Unlike other eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia, Arfid isn’t driven by feelings around [someone’s] weight or shape,” Radford said. “Instead, it might be due to having sensory issues around the texture or taste of certain foods, fear about eating due to distressing experiences with food, for example choking, or lack of interest in eating.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 February 2024
  15. Content Article
    The Scottish Government needs to develop a clear national strategy for health and social care to address the pressures on services, says a review by Audit Scotland. Significant changes are needed to ensure the financial sustainability of Scotland's health service. Growing demand, operational challenges and increasing costs have added to the financial pressures the NHS was already facing. Its longer-term affordability is at risk without reform.
  16. News Article
    Scotland's NHS is unable to meet the growing demand for health services, a spending watchdog has warned. A review by Audit Scotland said the increased pressure on the NHS was now having a direct impact on patient safety and experience. The watchdog also claimed there was no "overall vision" for the future of the health service. The annual report on the state of Scotland's health service highlighted that the NHS was facing soaring costs, patients were waiting longer to be seen and there were not enough staff. Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, said this had "added to the financial pressures on the NHS and, without reform, its longer-term affordability". He added: "Without change, there is a risk Scotland's NHS will take up an ever-growing chunk of the Scottish budget. And that means less money for other vital public services. "To deliver effective reform the Scottish government needs to lead on the development of a clear national strategy for health and social care. "It should include investment in measures that address the causes of ill-health, reducing long-term demand on the NHS." Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 February 2024
  17. News Article
    Patients are facing delays stuck on hidden waiting lists that do not show up in the official figures in England, a BBC News investigation reveals. The published waiting list stands at 7.6 million - but the true scale of the backlog is thought to be much higher. This is because patients needing ongoing care are not automatically included in those figures - even if they face major delays. NHS England said hospitals should be monitoring and counting such cases. But BBC News found evidence suggesting this is not always the case. The problem affects patients receiving ongoing care, as well as those removed from waiting lists even before starting treatment. BBC News has spoken to patients waiting months and even years for vital treatment, such as cancer care, spinal treatment and others at risk of going blind because of deteriorating eyesight. Hospitals are meant to return patients facing unnecessary delays to the waiting list to ensure they are counted in the backlog figures. But of 30 NHS trusts asked by BBC News how regularly this was happening, only three could provide figures. Karen Hyde, from Insource, a company that helps hospitals manage waiting lists, said the guidance was "commonly ignored". "This is a huge issue. The NHS does not incentivise hospitals to keep a close eye on these patients. "We know there are long waits for those on the waiting list. For those not on the official waiting list, it is likely to be even worse - but the figures are not published." Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 February 2024
  18. Content Article
    This is an independent review commissioned by NHS England, chaired by Siobhan Melia, Chief Executive, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, to support the improvement of the culture within the ambulance service. The review considers the prevailing culture within ambulance trusts in England. It considers the core factors impacting cultural norms and offers actionable recommendations for improvement. Based on insights from key stakeholders, this review has identified six key recommendations to improve the culture in ambulance trusts.
  19. News Article
    The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for a bed on a ward after being seen in A&E in England was 19 times higher this winter than it was before the pandemic, figures show. There were nearly 100,000 12-hour waits in December and January - compared with slightly more than 5,000 in 2019-20. A decade ago these waits were virtually unheard of - in the four winters up to 2013-14 there were fewer than 100. The King's Fund said long delays were at risk of becoming normalised. It said the pressures this winter had received little attention compared with last winter, despite no significant improvement in performance. During December 2023 and January 2024, 98,300 patients waited more than 12 hours for a bed on a ward after A&E doctors took the decision to admit them. The Northern Ireland branch of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said the pressures were "unsurmountable" and it was having a detrimental impact on patients. Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 February 2024
  20. News Article
    The family of a man who needlessly died after a 12-hour delay in surgery have called for changes at a troubled NHS trust as regulators expressed alarm about patient safety and waiting times. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) upgraded the surgery department at the Royal Sussex county hospital in Brighton from “inadequate” to “requires improvement” at a time when it is at the centre of a police investigation into dozens of patient deaths, allegations of negligence and cover-up. In their report, the regulator expressed concern about already long and lengthening waiting times, repeated cancelled operations and staff shortages that could compromise safety. The inspection report comes as the Guardian can reveal the trust apologised and settled with the family of Ralph Sims, who died aged 65 after heart surgery in April 2019 when doctors failed to act appropriately to a drop in his blood pressure. Sims, who was a keen runner, suffered a drop in blood pressure and developed an irregular heart rhythm eight hours after surgery to replace an aortic valve at the hospital. An internal investigation into Sims’ treatment acknowledged that hospital staff failed to “recognise the significance of the fall in blood pressure”. University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust, which runs the hospital, accepted that the father of three should have returned to surgery to identify the cause of his deterioration. Instead, medics decided that he should be observed overnight. Due to another emergency case, an angiogram was not carried out on Sims until just before noon the following day – 12 hours after the drop in pressure. The delay caused irreversible – and avoidable – heart muscle damage, leading to his death five weeks later. The family said: It added: “Whilst the trust has apologised to our family it feels hollow. Ralph’s death was entirely unnecessary, and despite the issues in his care, it took the trust several years to apologise.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 February 2024
  21. News Article
    England’s largest hospital trust has written to GPs warning their patients face 15-week waits for routine MRIs, ultrasound and CT scans. Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust in central London said it was prioritising suspected cancer and other “urgent cases”, meaning “unfortunately waiting times for routine patients are now an average of 15-16 weeks for an appointment against a target of six weeks”. This is much worse than national averages, which December figures showed were 3.2 weeks, 2.5 weeks and 3.3 weeks for MRI, CT and ultrasound waits respectively. It its letter to GPs in Lambeth and Southwark – its main patches – GSTT said: “Current imaging referral demand outstrips capacity, despite these services consistently delivering near 120 per cent levels of activity compared to 2019-20. “The radiology service is exploring multiple routes to increase imaging capacity, including increased weekend working, insourcing and outsourcing contracts, but there is still a significant shortfall of slots every week.” In particular, it said primary care staff should expect long waits for the reporting of routine MRI scans. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 February 2024
  22. News Article
    NHS England is in negotiations with ministers to formally push back the target to eliminate 65-week waiters, HSJ has learned. Discussions about the target are on-going as part of negotiations around the delayed 2024-25 planning guidance. It has been clear for months the March deadline to virtually eliminate 65-week waiters would be missed. It has emerged some trusts with the largest waiting lists already appear to be working to a September deadline. The news follows prime minister Rishi Sunak being forced to finally admit this week that his flagship NHS pledge from last January, that the waiting list would be falling by this year, had failed. This was something NHS bosses have warned of since summer. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 February 2024Choose Single File...
  23. News Article
    An investigation has been launched after a woman died days after being found unconscious underneath her coat while waiting in A&E for seven hours. The 39-year-old woman is understood to have first attended A&E at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham on the evening of 19 January complaining of a severe headache. She was triaged and then observed by nurses three times. Her case was escalated but she was not seen by a doctor before being discovered. When the woman was called to see a doctor, she did not respond. It was assumed that she had left A&E because she had waited so long. She was discovered and transferred to intensive care but died three days later on 22 January. A source familiar with the hospital told LBC, which first reported the incident, that the A&E department could have up to 80 patients waiting at a single time and that wait times could be as long as 14 hours. Dr Keith Girling, the medical director at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, said: “I offer my sincere condolences to the family at this difficult time. An investigation, which will involve the family, will now take place and until this has been concluded, we are unable to comment further.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 10 February 2024
  24. News Article
    The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E hit a record in January of almost 180,000 people. Worsening pressures on A&E come as prime minister Rishi Sunak has officially missed his pledge, made in January last year, to cut the NHS waiting list. NHS England began publishing previously-hidden data on patients waiting 12 hours or more last year, after reports by The Independent. The latest figures for January show 178,000 people were waiting this long to be seen, treated or discharged after arriving from A&E – a record since February 2023 when the data was first published. In that month, 128,580 people waited more than 12 hours, and in December there were 156,000. The number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to actual admission has also risen, from 148,282 in December to 158,721 last month – the second-highest figure on record. Dr Tim Cooksley, past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, warned: “Degrading corridor care and prolonged waits causing significant harm is tragically and increasingly the expected state in urgent and emergency care.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 February 2024
  25. News Article
    Cancer waiting times for 2023 in England were the worst on record, a BBC News analysis has revealed. Only 64.1% of patients started treatment within 62 days of cancer being suspected, meaning nearly 100,000 waited longer than they should for life-saving care. The waits have worsened every year for the past 11. Macmillan Cancer Support chief executive Gemma Peters called the figures "shocking". "This marks a new low and highlights the desperate situation for people living with cancer," she said. "Behind the figures are real lives being turned upside down, with thousands of people waiting far too long to find out if they have cancer and to begin their treatment, causing additional anxiety at what is already a very difficult time. "With over three million people in the UK living with cancer and an ageing population, this is only set to rise." The records go back to 2010, shortly after the cancer target was introduced. However, improvements have been made over the course of 2023 in how quickly patients are diagnosed with 72% told whether they have cancer or not within 28 days of an urgent referral. Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 February 2024
×
×
  • Create New...