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Found 391 results
  1. News Article
    Dozens of trusts have been hit with financial penalties after regulators questioned their claims to be compliant with maternity safety standards. The maternity incentive scheme, run by NHS Resolution, gives trusts “refunds” on their payments to its clinical negligence scheme if they meet 10 safety-related criteria, which trust boards must declare against each year. The 10 requirements include appropriate staffing, reviewing deaths using a national tool, and board oversight of maternity services. However, NHS Resolution can investigate if concerns are raised — for example in a Care Quality Commission inspection — and these conflict with the trust’s submission. The payments to trusts can then be withdrawn, or withheld if they have not already been paid. HSJ analysis of data shared by NHS Resolution found 24 trusts had to make one or more repayments in the first four years of the scheme, which started in 2018 and was relaunched after the pandemic. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 June 2025
  2. News Article
    The backlog in routine hospital treatments in England has reached its lowest level for two years. Data for the end of April showed the waiting list dropped to 7.39 million, down from 7.42 million in March. But it is nine years since the NHS has met its target of 92% of patients being seen in 18 weeks – currently it is just below 60%. The government has made meeting the target one of its key missions for this parliament – and on Wednesday announced above-inflation rises for the NHS in the coming years to help achieve it. Responding to the latest figures, Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting, said: "We are putting the NHS on the road to recovery." And he added this was "just the start" as the extra investment announced in the spending review, which will see the NHS budget rise by 3% a year in the next three years, combined with reforms that will be announced in the 10-year plan due next month, would help build on what has been achieved. The drop in the numbers on the waiting list, which covers people waiting for routine treatments like hip and knee operations, came after March saw a rise in numbers – the first time in six months the waiting list had gone up. Although a little bit of fluctuation from month to month is normally seen, the government said it was clear the numbers waiting were on a downward trend. Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 June 2025
  3. News Article
    The trust with the highest perinatal mortality rates in the country has been told it must improve its midwifery staffing. Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust is now reporting weekly to the Care Quality Commission about staffing on its maternity wards after being served a section 29A warning notice, it has emerged. It followed inspections of its maternity and neonatal services in December and January. The trust, one of the largest in England, has already moved some neonatal care out of one of its hospitals, after issues were raised by the inspection. It was also told to provide details to the CQC about how its board is informed about unmitigated risks and how its quality review meetings are assured over midwifery staffing, according to information seen by HSJ. The trust also promised to provide assurance shifts would be filled by qualified and competent staff and that its rota would be compliant with numbers dictated by the Birthrate Plus safer staffing tool. The requirements remain in force until the CQC decides they are no longer needed. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 June 2025
  4. Content Article
    When big problems in the NHS are highlighted by comparing it to other organisations, the service often reacts in a hostile and dismissive manner. But these complaints usually completely miss the point of the comparison. Recently Diane Coyle suggested the NHS could learn from the way a Formula 1 racing team operates, but it was met with unwarranted hostile reaction by some commentators. In this HSJ article, Steve Black explores how resistance to outside comparisons hides deep flaws in NHS systems, priorities, and data use.
  5. News Article
    The ‘inability or unwillingness’ of some NHS and social care providers to work together has contributed to an ‘unimaginable’ deterioration in emergency care performance, according to NHS England The claim is made in the urgent care recovery plan for 2025-26, released by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care. The plan includes a new target to reduce 12-hour accident and emergency waits and pledges to invest £370m of capital funding in improving urgent care and mental health facilities. The plan said, “Each part of the system has responsibility for improving urgent and emergency care performance. However, blame shunting has become a feature in some poorly performing systems and can no longer be tolerated." National urgent care director Sarah-Jane Marsh told HSJ that “the duty to collaborate and work together and do the best for patients is on all trust boards, and it shouldn’t rely on some overseer to make sure that happens. It’s a fundamental part of being a leader”. Trusts will be told to ensure the proportion of patients waiting over 12 hours for admission, transfer or discharge from A&E remains less than 10%. The 45-minute “maximum” ambulance handover time will become mandatory across all trusts ahead of winter, according to the plan. Chief executive of the College of Paramedics, Tracy Nicholls, said, “The plan sets out progressive structural proposals that have the potential to enhance public safety and strengthen paramedic autonomy. However, it may underestimate key challenges, including workforce readiness, the capacity of the mental health system, and practical implications of the Right Care, Right Person model. Without urgent alignment of funding, training, and alternative care pathways, there is a real risk that paramedics could be left navigating a reform process that shifts responsibility without equipping them with the necessary tools and support. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 June 2025 Related reading on the hub: How corridor care in the NHS is affecting safety culture: A blog by Claire Cox My experience of the 'Wait 45' policy - Florence in the Machine A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift
  6. News Article
    Hospitals given “D” and “F” grades from The Leapfrog Group are rebuking the patient safety scores, arguing that Leapfrog’s grading was unfair. Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill, S.C., Huntsville (Ala.) Hospital and Madison (Ala.) Hospital said the scores are not accurate representations of their safety and quality performance. The hospitals did not report data to Leapfrog’s biannual safety grade survey — a factor they say contributed to the misleading scores. Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, told Becker’s that, of the approximately 2,500 general acute hospitals it evaluates, about 20% did not report to Leapfrog’s spring 2025 survey. Of those hospitals, more than 400 received a grade of “C” or higher. “It is perfectly possible to get a good grade and not report to the Leapfrog survey we use,” Ms. Binder said. “We use the Leapfrog survey when we have that data. We impute scores for the data when we don’t have it. I think the measures that the hospitals are concerned about are four out of the 30 measures we use in the hospital safety grade. So if these hospitals did well on more of those 30 measures, there would be no issue whatsoever. They’d be getting an “A,” “B” or “C,” but they are actually performing, in some cases, very poorly on some measures that come from CMS, so that’s an area where we would strongly encourage them to focus their attention.” In a statement shared with The Herald, Piedmont claimed that “Leapfrog’s scoring system deceives patients and rewards hospitals that either pay them or supply free data for their flawed survey, while punishing those that do not participate with inaccurate scores based on fabricated data.” Ms. Binder said this claim is “factually incorrect,” adding there is no “pay-to-play” for hospitals to participate in the survey or receive a grade. The organization also does not charge the public to access hospital safety data, she said. In April, five hospitals part of Palm Beach Health Network filed a lawsuit against Leapfrog, alleging the rankings are based on flawed methodology and damage hospitals’ reputations. The hospitals — two of which received a “D” and one an “F” — said Leapfrog penalises organisations that do not submit data by doling out low ratings. Ms. Binder described the lawsuit as an attempt to suppress critical safety information. Read full story Source: Becker's Clinical Leadership, 2 June 2025
  7. News Article
    Keir Starmer made slashing NHS waiting times one of his priorities, and his Labour government has already claimed it as one of its biggest achievements so far. But new data tells a different story - and the public aren't noticing an improvement. "The target was never particularly ambitious," says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) about Labour's plan to add two million extra NHS appointments during their first year in power. In February, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced they had achieved the feat early. He recently described the now 3.6m additional appointments achieved in their first eight months as a "massive increase". But new data, obtained by independent fact checking charity Full Fact and shared exclusively with Sky News, reveals this figure actually signalled a slowing down in new NHS activity. The data also reveals how unambitious the target was in the first place. We now know two million extra appointments over the course of a year represents a rise of less than 3% of the almost 70 million carried out in the year to June 2024. Responding to the findings, Sarah Scobie, deputy director of independent health and social care think tank the Nuffield Trust, told Sky News the two million target was "very modest". She said delivering that number of appointments "won't come close to bringing the treatment waiting list back to pre-pandemic levels, or to meeting longer-term NHS targets". Read full story Source: Sky News, 23 May 2025
  8. News Article
    NHS England has told integrated care boards they need to slow down elective referrals dramatically – nearly eliminating year-on-year growth – with high-profile waiting list targets under threat. Glen Burley, the NHS transformation executive team’s financial reset and accountability director, said the year-on-year increase in demand in 2025-26 needed to be just 0.2%, compared to a forecasted 1.8%. His letter to Integrated Care Board (ICB) chief executives, sent on Friday and seen by HSJ, set out “expectations” for ICBs on elective care demand management. It came as new data revealed the waiting list had grown for the first time in seven months. Mr Burley said: “The elective care referral to treatment and cancer expectations for 2025-2026 require a significant step up in performance from the last few years, and, given the financial constraints in the system this year, the improvement can’t simply be delivered through additional capacity.” The message reminds leaders that the single elective care target for ICBs proposed under the new national performance and assessment framework is the annual change in waiting list size. Read full story Source: HSJ, 22 May 2025
  9. News Article
    NHS leaders are being forced to consider cutting hospital beds, closing hospitals, and even reducing services for children and cancer patients, a new study has claimed. In a bid to meet savings targets from the government and reduce its £6.6 billion deficit, hospital leaders are now cutting or rationing patient care, according to think tank the King’s Fund. The study reveals NHS leaders said they have been forced to cut services thought of as not essential including hospital beds, community paediatric services, community phlebotomy, mental health support for cancer patients. Hospital leaders also claimed they may have to consolidate hospital beds for services such as stroke or critical care beds. The cuts come in a bid to meet government savings demands, called “eyewatering” by NHS leaders, to reduce the £6.6 billion deficit facing the NHS. The government has been warned it could be repeating the mistakes made under a previous Labour government that led to the Mid Staffordshire scandal, in which between 400 and 1,200 patients, from January 2005 to March 2009, were estimated to have died as a result of poor care, by the Mid Staffordshire Hospitals trust. A public inquiry into the scandal, led by Sir Robert Francis, revealed in 2013 that the failures were in part a consequence of the trust’s focus on achieving financial balance. Read full story Source: The Independent, 18 May 2025
  10. Content Article
    The NHS has faced financial pressure for more than a decade, but the signals of financial distress across the NHS have grown in recent years, and the current financial pressure on the NHS appears to be different. This matters because financial pressure can have a direct impact on patients and their care. In this long read, The King's Fund explores the decisions leaders are making locally to mitigate financial pressures, and the impact these tough decisions will have on patients. It focuses on NHS trusts as they have responsibility for the majority of spending in the NHS. It draws on analysis of secondary data sources, such as NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care accounts, and six anonymous semi-structured interviews with chief executives and chief finance officers from a range of NHS trusts. The interviews took place between March and April 2025. It makes the case for a more open, intentional approach to how the NHS can live within its means, and clarity about how this will impact the public it serves. This will be important for setting foundations for the reforms outlined in the upcoming NHS 10 Year Plan, which will inevitably have ramifications for the direction and prioritisation of NHS finances.
  11. News Article
    According to the Irish times, it comes after a series of serious incidents, including seven cases of babies suffering brain injuries during or after birth since 2024. A tenth review into maternity care at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe is now underway following the recent death of a baby. According to the Irish times, the HSE investigation, comes after a series of serious incidents, including seven cases of babies suffering brain injuries during or after birth since 2024. Six of those infants required specialist cooling treatment. Two stillbirths in 2023 are also under external review. Read full story Source: Shannon Side, 16 May 2025
  12. Content Article
    The NHS workforce is under considerable operational pressure at every level from the combined effects of record demand and shortages of capital and resource. In addition, seismic shifts are on the horizon, including the abolition of NHS England (NHSE), the expected recommendations from the second Penny Dash report on patient safety, and the upcoming 10 year health plan. The level of change the NHS is facing, as a safety critical sector, makes culture a strategic priority. To achieve the ambition behind these changes, we need an engaged, motivated workforce and a supportive, enabling environment, writes Isabelle Brown and Laura Turner. Getting the “how” right of any reform that might be introduced by the 10 year health plan is just as important as the “what” and the ”why.”
  13. News Article
    Very senior managers at the worst-performing trusts and ICBs will not receive annual pay rises from this year, under new national rules. The new very senior managers pay framework for trusts, foundation trusts and integrated care boards, published today, says some will for the first time be excluded for the annual pay uplift in 2025-26. They are: VSMs at organisations in segment five of NHS England’s new national oversight framework, except where they are “exempt” because they are less than two years into the job. Segment five is being introduced for the worst-performing organisations which are also deemed in a “diagnostic” to need the most intervention. Organisations currently in RSP – of which there are 25 – are due to “automatically” enter segment five (see list below); and Individuals who are “failing to meet their own objectives or targets” or are subject to investigation for “conduct and capability”. VSMs at segment three and four trusts will get the 2025-26 pay award, but warns “new provisions are expected to apply” from 2026-27. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 May 2025
  14. News Article
    Two maternity units in Kent have shown signs of improvements three years after a damning independent review found up to 45 babies might have survived if they had received better care, a report has said. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) report rated maternity services at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate as good, two years after they were downgraded to inadequate. The CQC said "significant improvements" had been made at both units to safety, leadership, culture, the environment and staffing levels. Tracey Fletcher, chief executive of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, said the report was "an important milestone in our continuing work to improve our services". Serena Coleman, CQC's deputy director of operations in Kent, said: "We found significant improvements and a better quality service for women, people using the service and their babies. "This turnaround in ratings across both services demonstrates what can be achieved with strong and capable leaders who focus on an inclusive and positive culture." Kaye Wilson, chief midwife for the South East at NHS England, said: "This report marks a turning point for services at East Kent and is the result of the commitment, determination and sheer hard work of midwives, obstetricians and the whole maternity team." Read full story Source: BBC News,15 May 2025
  15. News Article
    A former health ombudsman has condemned mental health services for their handling of two vulnerable young men who died in their care. Sir Rob Behrens, who was parliamentary and health service ombudsman (PHSO) from 2017 to 2024, spoke at the Lampard Inquiry, which is examining the deaths of more than 2,000 people under mental health services in Essex over a 24-year period. Sir Rob said it was "a disgrace" how Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) had failed in its care of 20-year-old Matthew Leahy, who died in 2012, and a 20-year-old man referred to as Mr R, who died in 2008. "This was the National Health Service at its worst and needed calling out," Sir Rob said. Sir Rob referred in his inquiry appearance to several reports made during his tenure, including "Missed Opportunities", which looked into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Mr Leahy and Mr R. Mr Leahy was found unresponsive at the Linden Centre in Chelmsford. He reported being raped there just days before he died. Sir Rob told the inquiry the PHSO identified "19 instances of maladministration" in Mr Leahy's case by North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust - a predecessor to EPUT - including that his care plan was falsified. The former ombudsman said there had been "a near-complete failure of the leadership of this trust, certainly before it was merged" with South Essex Partnership Trust to become EPUT. "This was an indictment of the health service," he added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 6 May 2025
  16. News Article
    NHS England is revising its new performance framework yet again, with a focus on slashing 77 indicators down to core priorities. Its board signed off a version of the NHS Performance Assessment Framework just six weeks ago for consultation. But HSJ understands engagement on that iteration was delayed as officials wanted to overhaul it again. The March version moved integrated care boards’ regulatory performance management role to regional teams, and promised to “prevent providers being bombarded with conflicting instructions”. But it still listed 77 “delivery metrics”, covering operating objectives; finance and productivity; public health and patient outcomes; quality and inequalities. New proposals expected this week will include significantly stripping the measures down, to primarily focus on headline performance and delivery asks in the 2025-26 planning guidance. That document axed numerous targets and asked, which health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said would allow more local autonomy. The new version will also seek to further clarify the changing roles of ICBs, providers, regions and the centre. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 May 2025
  17. News Article
    A Kent hospitals trust has paid out more in compensation for medication blunders than any other in England, new data suggests. Since 2019, East Kent Hospitals - which runs the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, QEQM in Margate, and William Harvey in Ashford - has handed over almost £5 million to patients affected by errors in prescribing, dispensing, administering or advising on medicine. According to figures released by NHS Resolution - the legal arm of the health service - the 10 negligence claims settled by the trust over five years cost it £4,723,658 in compensation. This sum is the highest of any trust in the country where at least five claims have been settled, and does not include legal fees, meaning the full cost to taxpayers is even higher. Medication errors, which the NHS defines as patient safety incidents involving mistakes with medicines, can include prescribing the wrong drug or dose, poor communication between hospitals and GPs, or failing to properly monitor patients on powerful medication. Read full story Source: Kent Online, 6 May 2025
  18. News Article
    Five hospitals that are part of Palm Beach (Fla.) Health Network have filed a lawsuit against The Leapfrog Group, alleging the patient safety organization’s rankings are based on flawed methodology. The complaint, filed April 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claims the rankings unfairly damage the hospitals’ reputations. “Leapfrog fails to fairly evaluate hospitals that do not complete its hospital survey, and rather than indicating that there is insufficient data to issue a grade to non-participating hospitals, it instead assigns a score equivalent to the ‘Worst Hospital’s Score’ on several measures,” Palm Beach Health Network said in a statement. “This flawed methodology does not accurately reflect hospitals’ performance on patient outcomes.” The hospitals that filed the complaint are Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach; Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach; Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center; West Boca Medical Center in Boca Raton; and St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. The complaint was filed a day before The Leapfrog Group published its latest round of hospital safety grades. Three of the hospitals that filed the complaint received an “F” grade and two earned a “D.” The complaint also alleges Leapfrog’s safety grades are “distorted by undisclosed financial incentives” and penalize hospitals that do not submit data for participation by assigning “artificially low ratings.” Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, described the lawsuit as an attempt by hospitals to suppress critical safety information from the public. “When we look at these hospitals’ results from CMS, we see preventable suffering and death far exceeding the national average, and even the national average is too high,” she said in a statement. “These hospitals may wish to withhold their hospitals’ Safety Grades from the community they serve, but Leapfrog intends to fully defend its expert, proven and long-standing methodology to prevent that from happening and publish Grades for all eligible hospitals, including these hospitals.” Read full story Source: Becker's Hospital Review
  19. News Article
    A leading health think tank says urgent and emergency care in England is performing "far worse" than before the pandemic. The Health Foundation argues that the NHS was "in distress" this winter with A&E waiting times reaching a record high. The group says it would be wrong just to blame relatively high levels of flu. The government is due to publish an urgent and emergency care plan soon. The Department for Health and Social Care said that hospitals were "feeling the strain" but that it was taking "decisive action" to prevent winter crises. The Health Foundation report on the recent winter says that the number of people waiting 12 hours or more in A&E after a decision to admit to a ward was the highest since modern records began. It topped 60,000 in January, or 11% of emergency admissions. The report says that a familiar problem remains as acute as ever – delays discharging patients from hospital who are fit to leave. This, it says, made bottlenecks worse in A&E and for ambulances trying to hand over patients and that delays for those handovers were worse than in previous winters. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 April 2025
  20. Content Article
    The health service in England has endured a punishing winter. Stark warnings about a potential ‘quad-demic’, the ‘busiest year on record’ for A&E and ambulance services, and ’jampacked’ hospitals prompted comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic.  But how bad was winter 2024/25? The Health Foundation present analysis of routinely collected and publicly available data on health service performance and the possible contributing factors.  Key points: This winter saw the NHS in distress. Only 73% of A&E patients were treated within 4 hours, similar to the last two winters, and far below the 95% constitutional standard. The number of people experiencing 12-hour waits before admission reached a new record high. Numbers of A&E diverts and ambulance handover delays were worse than over previous winters. Looking at operational performance, winter pressures and other factors, the analysis explores the extent to which disruptions to urgent and emergency care were caused by higher than usual levels of winter illnesses and/or systemic weaknesses within the NHS. Levels of flu and diarrhoea and vomiting were higher than usual. Hospital admissions for flu reached a similar peak to winter 2022/23 but took longer to fall, leading to a 50% higher total number of flu bed days. However, hospital admissions for RSV were similar to previous winters, while admissions for COVID-19 remained low. Winter A&E attendances have risen steadily each year. However, slightly fewer patients attended major A&E departments in winter 2024/25 than in 2023/24, and emergency hospital admissions fell slightly. This suggests the NHS struggled to cope with a small increase in demand from patients needing emergency hospitalisation, while also expanding elective activity in line with government commitments to improve elective performance. Bed occupancy during winter has been rising for the last 15 years, exceeding the NHS 92% threshold for the first time in winter 2017/18, highlighting a system at its limits. Since COVID-19, a substantial increase in delayed discharges is likely to have obstructed the flow of patients out of hospitals, worsening bottlenecks upstream in the care pathway from A&E into wards and from ambulances into A&E. Overall, the conditions this winter, while severe, were similar to those in recent years and not far above what the NHS can normally expect. Attributing operational problems to external factors such as winter illnesses and higher demand risks offering false comfort about the resilience of the health service. The shows the health service performing far worse than before the pandemic and reporting record or near-record levels of operational problems across urgent and emergency care. Ahead of the government’s forthcoming Urgent and Emergency Care Plan, this raises key questions about what might be behind some of the underlying issues contributing to what has now become an annual winter crisis.
  21. Content Article
    Most people acknowledge the limitations of discussing productivity in healthcare. The term productivity is taken from other sectors and easily applied to industrial settings but not to the complex, patient-centred business of caring for people. Productivity is essentially the output, in terms of quantity (and sometimes quality), produced relative to input. In its broadest sense in healthcare, productivity can encompass activities such as detecting diseases earlier, giving patients better quality of care, and getting better outcomes. However, it is often discussed in sweeping statistics and numbers. Despite recognising the limitations of productivity as a measure, people in healthcare continue to obsess about it and we really must stop, writes Jessamy Bagenal in this Lancet commentary, giving several compelling reasons why. 
  22. News Article
    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to modify several hospital quality measures and remove four others, including those focused on health equity and social drivers of health. The agency outlined the changes on 11 April as part of its 2026 proposed rule for the Medicare payment systems that cover inpatient and long-term care hospitals. The agency has proposed modifying these current quality measures: Total hip arthroplasty/Total knee arthroplasty complication rate and 30-day stroke mortality rate. Hybrid, hospital-wide readmission and mortality measures. CMS is also proposing to remove four measures from the IQR programme: Hospital commitment to health equity COVID-19 vaccination coverage among healthcare personnel Screening for social drivers of health Screen positive rate for social drivers of health Read full story Source: Becker's Clinical Leadership, 14 April 2025
  23. Content Article
    In September, at the Labour party conference, Wes Streeting said that the government would deploy ‘crack teams of top clinicians’ to hospitals in England to roll out reforms aimed at treating more patients and reducing elective waiting lists. The first 20 hospitals targeted by these teams would be in areas with the highest numbers of people off work sick. Clinical teams in these 20 hospitals were given support to tackle waiting lists – focusing on high-flow theatre lists, reducing missed appointments and one-stop clinics. The scheme extended an existing programme, ‘Further Faster’, set up under the previous government. The 20 hospitals targeted are referred to as ‘Further Faster 20’ or ‘FF20’ trusts. On 16 March, the government announced that waiting lists in FF20 trusts had, on average, fallen 130% faster than the fall elsewhere. Following this success, they said similar ‘crack teams’ would be rolled out to additional providers to boost NHS productivity and further cut waiting times. Gaining a deeper understanding as to what might be behind these differences is vital ahead of any wider rollout. The Nuffield Trust has used publicly available data to look at this claim in more detail and examine what is driving differences between reductions in waiting lists in these 20 hospitals and elsewhere. 
  24. News Article
    Ambulance services hit a crucial “interim” target for responding to the bulk of emergency calls last month, and showed marked improvements for the most serious category of incidents. Offering a glimmer of hope after another winter of long ambulance waits, average category 2 performance in March was 28:34 (minutes, seconds) – more than five minutes better than March last year. It is only the third time it has dipped below 30 minutes, which has been set by government as an “interim” recovery target, since December 2022. Waits have soared since the covid-19 pandemic, fuelled by long hospital handover delays, and a string of inquests have highlighted the calamitous impact on patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 April 2025
  25. News Article
    Public satisfaction with the NHS is at a record low and dissatisfaction is at its highest, with the deepest discontent about A&E, GP and dental care. Just 21% of adults in Britain are satisfied with how the health service runs, down from 24% a year before, while 59% are dissatisfied, up from 52%, the latest annual survey of patients found. Satisfaction has fallen dramatically from the 70% recorded in 2010, the year the last Labour government left office, and the 60% found in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic. Mark Dayan, a policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust thinktank, which analysed the data alongside the King’s Fund, said the years since 2019 have seen “a startling collapse in NHS satisfaction. “It is by far the most dramatic loss of confidence in how the NHS runs that we have seen in 40 years of this survey.” A&E is the NHS service the public is least happy about. Satisfaction fell from 31% in 2023 to just 19% last year – the lowest proportion in the 41 years the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey of the views of patients in England, Scotland and Wales has been carried out. Satisfaction with NHS dentistry has collapsed, too, from 60% as recently as 2019 to just 20% last year. More people (55%) are dissatisfied with dental care than with any other service. Similarly, fewer than a third (31%) of adults are satisfied with GP services. “The latest results lay bare the extent of the problems faced by the NHS and the size of the challenge for the government”, said Dan Wellings, a senior fellow at the King’s Fund. “For too many people, the NHS has become too difficult to access. How can you be satisfied with a service you can’t get into?” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 2 April 2025

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