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Found 1,487 results
  1. News Article
    Patients at the hospital that treated killer Valdo Calocane were discharged too soon and released in a worse state into the community, the NHS safety watchdog has found. Serious failings by Nottinghamshire Hospital Foundation Trust in keeping patients and the public safe have been identified in a review from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). More than 1,200 patients are waiting to be seen by community services, the report found. Meanwhile, several hundred who are receiving treatment did not have a clinician overseeing their care,the CQC found. The review was launched by the government following the conviction of killer Valdo Calocane, who was under the care of the NHS trust’s community services. The CQC review said patients reported that crisis services are either “useless” or detrimental to their health. The three broad areas of concern, highlighted in the CQC’s report, were: High demand for services was leading to long waiting times for care and a lack of oversight of those waiting. The trust does not have enough staff to keep patients safe in the community and within some hospital services. Senior leaders at the trust do not have clear oversight of the risks and issues within the service. Read full story Source: The Independent, 27 March 2024
  2. Content Article
    Following the conviction of Valdo Calocane in January 2024 for the killings of Ian Coates, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care commissioned the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to carry out a rapid review of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) under section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. As part of the review, CQC were asked to look at 3 specific areas: A rapid review of the available evidence related to the care of Valdo Calocane An assessment of patient safety and quality of care provided by NHFT An assessment of progress made at Rampton Hospital since the most recent CQC inspection activity In this report, CQC detail the findings of parts 2 and 3. They will publish a separate report on part 1 in relation to the care of VC in summer 2024.
  3. News Article
    A senior mental health nurse suffered “degrading and humiliating” treatment while she languished for 10 days on an unsuitable NHS ward during a mental health crisis, The Independent has been told. Rachel Luby, 36, was admitted to Basildon Hospital A&E in Essex on 5 January this year after attempting to take an overdose of over-the-counter medicine following a traumatic assault. This, she claimed, was the start of weeks of horrific care she endured while waiting for a mental health bed. It culminated in her being restrained and forced into a caged van “like an animal”. She revealed her story after The Independent reported on a warning from top emergency doctors that self-harming and suicidal patients who go to A&E are not being treated with compassion because staff are overwhelmed. Ms Luby, an award-winning nurse, said she waited more than a week and a half in a general hospital before she was moved to a bed on a mental health ward. Ms Luby was able to leave the ward and find medication to overdose again, despite staff allegedly assessing her as a risk. In a second incident, she went to the bathroom and attempted to take her own life. She told The Independent: “I feel that this is something I will not recover from. I will not ever reach out for help in the future. “If this is the treatment that I’m getting as a nurse, then what the heck is happening to those that don’t have the voice or education that I have? It horrifies me to think what is happening to people that are far more vulnerable than me.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 27 March 2024
  4. News Article
    Senior bosses have shared concerns about the closure of the NHS gender identity clinic for young people, leaked emails seen by BBC News reveal. Hospital executives voiced worry about the cancellation of appointments, patients lacking information and poor communication with the new services. In one email, the service's director, Dr Polly Carmichael, said cancellations could potentially put patients at risk. The controversial Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), which is run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is due to close later this week. Its closure was announced in July 2022, after an independent review said a "fundamentally different" model of care for young people with gender-related distress was needed. It will initially be replaced by two new regional hubs; a London-based southern hub and a north of England hub. Additional hubs are expected to open in the coming years. However, BBC News has spoken to staff at the existing service who say, just days before the 31 March closure, they have been unable to answer basic questions from patients about the future of their care. They say they still do not have enough details about how the new services will operate or when some provisions will be fully operational in the new clinics. Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 March 2024
  5. News Article
    Public satisfaction with the NHS has dropped again, setting a new low recorded by the long-running British Social Attitudes survey. Just 24% said they were satisfied with the NHS in 2023, with waiting times and staff shortages the biggest concerns. That is five percentage points down on last year and a drop from the 2010 high of 70% satisfaction. The findings on the NHS, published by the Nuffield Trust and King's Fund think tanks, show once again that performance has deteriorated after a new record low was seen last year. In total, since 2020, satisfaction has fallen by 29 percentage points. Of the core services, the public was least satisfied with A&E and dentistry. The survey also showed satisfaction with social care had fallen to 13% - again the lowest since the survey began. The major reasons for dissatisfaction were long waiting times, staffing shortages and lack of funding. Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 March 2024
  6. Content Article
    Public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, according to analysis of the latest British Social Attitudes survey (BSA) published by The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust. Just 24% of people are satisfied with the way the NHS is running, a fall of 5 percentage points from 2022 and a 29 percentage point drop since 2020. Despite these record lows, the overwhelming majority of survey respondents expressed high levels of support for the principles the NHS was founded upon, in particular that it should be free of charge when needed. Nearly half of those surveyed also support the government increasing taxes and spending more on the NHS.
  7. News Article
    Government’s standards watchdog has launched a review into accountability in public bodies, warning that problems are too often not dealt with quickly and effectively. Over the next few months, the Committee on Standards in Public Life will look at “where public bodies should focus their attention to maximise the likelihood of problems being uncovered and addressed before issues escalate and lives are damaged”. In a letter to the prime minister about the review, CSPL chair Doug Chalmers said the committee had been “struck by how, when failures occur within public institutions, it repeatedly seems to be the case that indicators of emerging issues were present, but missed, with the result that the window to respond appropriately, before problems escalate, has often also been missed”. In its announcement of the review, CSPL said it had seen “several examples of major failures within public institutions” in recent years where “opportunities were missed to address issues before they escalated”. “We are asking, when things go wrong in public bodies, why does it take so long for problems to be recognised and the leadership to respond appropriately and, most importantly, what needs to change?” Rather than reinvestigating previous incidents, the committee will look at how to encourage more effective accountability within public bodies “so that problems are addressed before catastrophic failure”, Chalmers said. As part of the review, CSPL has opened a consultation today inviting members of the public to submit evidence on why public bodies might fail to act quickly when problems arise, along with suggestions on how to tackle problems better and examples of good practice. The consultation closes on 14 June. Read full story Source: Civil Service World, 25 March 2024
  8. News Article
    Norah Bassett was hours old when she died in 2019, after multiple failings in her care. What can be learned from her heartbreaking loss? The maternity unit at the Royal Hampshire county hospital in Winchester was busy the evening when Charlotte Bassett gave birth. When the night shift came on duty, a midwife introduced. “She was very brusque,” Charlotte, 37, a data manager, remembers. “She said, ‘We’ve got too many people here. I’ve got this and this to do.’” Charlotte tried to breastfeed Norah, but she wasn’t latching. The midwife told Charlotte to cup feed her with formula. She didn’t stay to watch. Charlotte poured milk from a cup into Norah’s rosebud mouth. Blood came out. It was staining the muslin. The midwife didn’t seem concerned. “I was drowning my child, who was drowning in her own blood. And there was no one there to say: this isn’t normal,” Charlotte says. The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (now HSSIB but at the time known as HSIB), which investigates patient safety in English hospitals, produced a report into Norah’s care in 2020. One sentence leaped out to Charlotte and her husband James. “An upper airway event (such as occlusion of the baby’s airway during skin-to-skin) may have contributed to the baby’s collapse.” In other words, it was possible that Charlotte might have smothered her daughter. “So Charlotte spent four years in agony,” says James, “thinking it was her.” Dr Martyn Pitman remembers the night Norah died, because it was unusual. A crash call, for a baby born to a low-risk mother. It played on his mind, because eight days earlier, on 4 April 2019, Pitman, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, had presented proposals for enhanced foetal monitoring to a meeting of the maternity unit’s doctors and senior midwives. Pitman, 57, who is an expert in foetal monitoring, felt the proposals would prevent more babies suffering brain injuries at birth. “We’re not that good at detecting the high-risk baby, in the low-risk mum,” he says. Another doctor would later characterise the meeting as “hideous … hands down the worst meeting I’ve ever been to. Martyn … was being set upon.” A midwife felt the animosity in the room was “personal towards Martyn”, and was “appalled” by the “unprofessionalism that I saw from my midwifery colleagues”. James and Charlotte join an unhappy club: a community of parents whose children died young, after receiving poor care, and were told their deaths were unavoidable, or felt blamed for them. “I’ve spoken to so many families,” says Donna Ockenden, who authored a 2022 report into Shrewsbury’s maternity services, “who have been blamed for the eventual poor outcome in their cases. This has included being blamed for their babies’ death.” She has also met the families of women blamed for their own deaths. “This never fails to shock me,” she says. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 March 2024
  9. News Article
    A&E staff are unable to properly look after the most vulnerable mental health patients or treat them with compassion because emergency departments are so overwhelmed, top medics have warned. An exclusive report shared with The Independent shows more than 40% of patients who needed emergency care due to self-harm or suicide attempts received no compassionate care while in A&E, according to their medical records. The data, collated by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), prompted a warning from top doctor Dr Adrian Boyle that mental health patients are spending far too long in A&E – where they are cared for by staff who are not specifically trained for their needs – before being moved to an appropriate ward. Dr Boyle, who is president of the RCEM, said there had been some progress in improving care for a “historically disadvantaged” group, but added: “Patients with mental health problems are still spending too long in our emergency departments, with an average length of stay of nearly 10 hours and this has not really improved. “An emergency department is frequently noisy and agitating, the lights never go off and cannot be described as an environment that promotes recovery.” When a patient goes to A&E after a self-harm attempt, they should receive an assessment by a clinician into the type of self-harm, reasons for it, future plans or further suicidal thoughts. The college said it indicates a “significant gap” in the NHS’ ability to provide holistic care for mental health patients with complex needs and warned “urgent” improvements are needed. Read full story Source: The Independent, 25 March 2024
  10. News Article
    An NHS watchdog has apologised to 29 doctors at Scotland's biggest hospital for not fully investigating their concerns about patient safety. A&E consultants at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital wrote to Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to warn patient safety was being "seriously compromised". They offered 18 months' worth of evidence of overcrowding and staff shortages to back their claims. But HIS did not ask for this evidence. The watchdog also did not meet any of the 29 doctors - which is almost every consultant in the hospital's emergency department - to discuss the concerns after it received the letter last year. Instead, it carried out an investigation where it only spoke to senior executives at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde before then closing down the probe. HIS has now issued a "sincere and unreserved apology" to the consultants and upheld two complaints about the way it handled their whistleblowing letter about patient safety. One consultant who signed the letter told BBC Scotland: "We'd exhausted all our options and thought HIS was a credible organisation. "We offered to share evidence of patient harm. We were shocked that they ignored this and didn't engage with us as the consultant group raising concerns." Another consultant added they were "shocked at their negligence." Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 March 2024
  11. Content Article
    The aim of this study was to quantify the difference in weekday versus weekend occupancy, and the opportunity to smooth inpatient occupancy to reduce crowding at children's hospitals. They study found that hospitals do have substantial unused capacity, and smoothing occupancy over the course of a week could be a useful strategy that hospitals can use to reduce crowding and protect patients from crowded conditions.
  12. News Article
    A campaigner in Norfolk says the "deaths crisis" at the county's mental health trust is getting worse. Bereaved relatives met the mental health minister, Maria Caulfield, to discuss failings at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT). The trust says it is on a "rapid, and much-needed journey of improvement". Mark Harrison, from the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, said: "We judge people by what they do, not what they say." Members of the campaign group met Ms Caulfield and other MPs in Westminster on 12 March and demanded an independent public inquiry into the trust. It came after a report last summer which found that more than 8,000 mental health patients had died unexpectedly in Norfolk and Suffolk between 2019 and 2022. At the meeting, it was agreed Ms Caulfield would meet bosses at the NSFT. The health select committee will also be asked to conduct an inquiry into the trust as part of a broader public inquiry. But Mr Harrison said he had little confidence anything would change. "The deaths crisis is just out of control and it's accelerating," he said. "We have been doing this for 10 years. Every time somebody promises to do something, it doesn't come to anything." Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 March 2024
  13. Content Article
    Currently, it is estimated that more than one in five people in the UK are living in poverty. This King's Fund analysis reveals that people living in poverty find it harder to live a healthy life, live with greater illness, face barriers to accessing timely treatment, and die earlier than the rest of the population. The analysis looks at the link between poverty and each of the following: prevalence of ill health difficulties accessing health care late or delayed treatment poorer health outcomes. The long read argues that while the NHS can, and should, do more to make timely care accessible to deprived communities, wider government and societal action is needed to address the root causes of poverty.
  14. News Article
    William Wragg, the Tory chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), has belatedly intervened in the growing crisis over the failure of the Prime Minister to appoint a new Parliamentary Ombudsman to replace Rob Behrens who quits the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman on 31 March 2024. In a letter published on the committee’s website, Mr Wragg asks Sir Alex Allan, the senior non executive director on the Parliamentary and Heath Services Ombudsman board, what measures will be taken to keep the office going and what is going to happen to people who, via their MP, want to lodge a complaint to the Ombudsman. He also raises whether reports can be published and complaints investigated. The letter discloses that recruitment for a new Ombudsman began last October and a panel chose the winning candidate at the beginning of January. Since then the Cabinet Office and Rishi Sunak, who has to approve the appointment, have not responded. The silence from Whitehall and Downing Street means no motion can be put to Parliament appointing a new Ombudsman, who then appears before the PACAC for a pre appointment hearing. PACAC has only a couple of weeks to set up the hearing. Read full story Source: Westminster Confidential, 12 March 2024
  15. News Article
    Hospitals are cynically burying evidence about poor care in a “cover-up culture” that leads to avoidable deaths, and families being denied the truth about their loved ones, the NHS ombudsman has warned. Ministers, NHS leaders and hospital boards are doing too little to end the health service’s deeply ingrained “cover-up culture” and victimisation of staff who turn whistleblower, he added. In an interview with the Guardian as he prepares to step down after seven years in the post, Rob Behrens claimed many parts of the NHS still put “reputation management” ahead of being open with relatives who have lost a loved one due to medical negligence. The ombudsman for England said that although the NHS was staffed by “brilliant people” working under intense pressures, too often his investigations into patients’ complaints had revealed cover-ups, “including the altering of care plans and the disappearance of crucial documents after patients have died and robust denial in the face of documentary evidence”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 March 2024
  16. News Article
    Local NHS organisations are facing intense “pressure” from NHS England’s national and regional teams to cut staffing numbers to improve the service’s financial outlook for 2024-25. Multiple sources have told HSJ that first draft financial returns submitted by the 42 integrated care systems indicate a combined deficit of around £6bn for the service. The £6bn figure is likely to fall substantially as NHS England meets individually with integrated care systems with the worst numbers. The need to reduce the number is prompting “horrible” conversations about service cuts, according to HSJ sources. One local leader in the South East region said the need to reduce staffing numbers constituted a “very significant part of the pushback on first-cut numbers”. A senior source in the Midlands added: “We’ve got virtually no workforce growth in our plan now… and we’ve still got a deficit. To get to breakeven we’d have to be looking at quite a significant workforce reduction.” Another leader in the South of the country said there was “big pressure” to get down to pre-pandemic staff numbers, “despite [the] increases in acuity, demand and backlogs as a consequence of covid”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 March 2024
  17. News Article
    A trust which last year was ordered to pay a whistleblowing nurse nearly £500,000 must now give a surgeon £430,000 to compensate him for the racial discrimination and harassment he faced after raising patient safety concerns. Tribunal judges previously upheld complaints made by Manuf Kassem against North Tees and Hartlepool Foundation Trust and have published a remedy judgment this week setting out the levels of damages the NHS organisation must pay. The judgment comes just over a year after a former senior nurse at the trust was awarded £472,600 for unfair dismissal after she warned high workloads had led to a patient’s death. Mr Kassem raised 25 concerns regarding patients’ care during a grievance meeting in August 2017. He alleged patients had “suffered complications, negligence, delayed treatment and avoidable deaths”. A trust review concluded appropriate processes were followed in the 25 cases. However, the tribunal ruled Mr Kassem was subjected to detriment after making the protected disclosure. According to the judgment, Mr Kassem was subsequently removed from the on-call emergency rota and his identity as a whistleblower was revealed by clinical director Anil Agarwal. In September 2018, he was the subject of a disciplinary investigation following several allegations against him made by colleagues and others, which concerned “unsafe working practices,” “excessive working hours,” and “potential fraudulent activity.” The investigation lasted 17 months and none of the allegations against Mr Kassem were upheld or progressed to a disciplinary hearing. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 March 2024
  18. 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
  19. News Article
    A mental health trust linked to thousands of unexpected patient deaths repeatedly failed to act on coroners' safety warnings, campaigners say. BBC News has been given exclusive access to new evidence from coroners' reports gathered by a campaign group. It wants a criminal investigation into why so many patients died at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust - and has sent police the evidence. Campaigners, including patients and bereaved families, claim it is failing to make vital safety improvements despite promising to do so. Last summer, a report found more than 8,000 mental-health patients had died unexpectedly in Norfolk and Suffolk between 2019 and 2022. This is defined as the death of a patient who has not been identified as critically ill or whose death is not expected by the clinical team. The new evidence, based on 38 coroners' prevention of future death (PFD) reports since 2013, suggests there were repeated warnings more patients could die unless safety issues were addressed, including: dangerously poor record-keeping and communication family concerns being ignored unsafe levels of staffing at the trust. And campaigners say the trust's failure to improve safety has led to more deaths. Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 March 2024
  20. 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
  21. 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
  22. 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.
  23. 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
  24. 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
  25. 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
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