Nhs

Imagine this: you take a routine trip to the doctors. Except it doesn’t turn out to be routine at all. Instead, the doctor tells you that you only have months to live. Worse still, there is no certified cure. There is a potential drug that could save your life, but it’s stuck in a regulatory tangle, waiting for approval which takes years. It might come on the market in a decade. But by then, of course, it will be too late for you. Ludicrous, surely? Yet that has been the dilemma facing too many over recent years, unable to get access to the drugs that could save their lives. Decades

If politics was science, you would call Wales the ‘control’ group, for public service reform. Here is a country where Labour are the only game in town and a socialist philosophy which places a monopolistic state provider at the centre of health care and education reigns supreme – yes, even more supreme than the pupils and patients this system is designed to serve. In fact, in devolved Wales, Labour are running the public services as Ed Milliband would like to see them; a Labourite utopia of State supremacy, with none of the so-called evils of alternative providers getting in the way of the tight grip of the State. So how

A couple of years ago, I was put on the third-generation contraceptive pill Yasmin. ‘It’s good for your skin and stabilises your weight,’ the doctor said. And it’s true. I’ve found it to be wonderful. Most of my friends are on similar types of third–gen pill, like Femodene and Marvelon; many swear by them. Out of the 3.5 million women in the UK using the combined contraceptive pill, 1 million are on third–gen versions. But things aren’t all rosy. In the past week, all British GPs have been ordered to warn anyone taking these popular pills that they are at risk of developing potentially fatal blood clots. The statistics make for

Consider these two stories. In the first the government approves new proposals to overhaul hospital outpatient care. For once there isn’t even much of a pretence that this will improve healthcare. It’s simply a question of saving money. Assuming the new proposals are implemented, many outpatients who had hitherto enjoyed (or endured) hospital appointments will be told to stay at home. Indeed they will be advised to “treat themselves”. What contact they have with a consultant will be of the “virtual” kind. Perhaps a quick telephone call if they are lucky. More likely, they will be told to download an app to their phone which will tell them how to

I blamed the pheasant casserole, but I did it an injustice. Its only contribution to the drama behind my disappearance in mid-December was a residue of lead shot in the small intestine that briefly confused the radiologist. The real villain revealed by the scan was my appendix, which had taken on the raging, bull-necked, bug-eyed appearance of Ed Balls faced with a set of improving growth figures. And so it was that I spent a week in the Friarage at Northallerton, a small ‘district general hospital’ that has survived every NHS restructuring to date and is cherished by the citizenry of rural North Yorkshire. For someone who hasn’t been hospitalised since

I blamed the pheasant casserole, but I did it an injustice. Its only contribution to the drama behind my disappearance in mid-December was a residue of lead shot in the small intestine that briefly confused the radiologist. The real villain revealed by the scan was my appendix, which had taken on the raging, bull-necked, bug-eyed appearance of Ed Balls faced with a set of improving growth figures. And so it was that I spent a week in the Friarage at Northallerton, a small ‘district general hospital’ that has survived every NHS restructuring to date and is cherished by the citizenry of rural North Yorkshire. For someone who hasn’t been hospitalised since

Everybody wants to support cancer charities, don’t they? Take Maggie’s Trust, which ‘empowers people to live with, through and beyond cancer’. The Maggie’s approach is defined by their cleverly designed modern care centres, which welcome not just people battling against cancer but their families and those who care for them. Maggie’s now plans to build a new centre, only the second in London, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield. We desperately want to stop them. Before you start shouting at the screen, let us explain. We represent another group, one that was set up to protect the heritage of Barts, rather wordily calling ourselves ‘The Friends of The Great Hall

Home The government announced proposals for the National Health Service, including a law to criminalise wilful neglect by doctors and nurses, and a scheme to post online the numbers of nurses on wards. By the end of October, 219 households had seen work completed to insulate their houses under the government’s Green Deal, launched last January. Nick Boles, the planning minister, suggested that David Cameron, the Prime Minister, might like to revive the National Liberal Party, an organisation affiliated to the Conservative party from 1947 to 1968. The Foreign Office summoned the Spanish ambassador after a Spanish ship entered waters off Gibraltar and undertook surveying activity for 20 hours. A

Jeremy Hunt has delivered his response to the Francis Report. It was as expected: monthly staffing figures on a ward-by-ward basis, minimum standards of safety for staff levels, a national safety website, and further safeguards against ministerial interference in independent regulation. listen to ‘Jeremy Hunt’s ‘blueprint for restoring trust in the NHS’’ on Audioboo

Ministers have described the deal on GP contracts, negotiated by the government and the British Medical Association (BMA), as a return to the days when GPs were family doctors. Certainly, it is a step in that direction. The contract, which will come into force next April, revives the personal link between doctor and patients aged 75 or over, and makes GPs responsible for out of hours care. The Department of Health says that GPs will also be: offering patients same-day telephone consultations; offering paramedics, A&E doctors and care homes a dedicated telephone line so they can advise on treatment; coordinating care for elderly patients discharged from A&E; regularly reviewing emergency

Home EDF Energy said it would put up prices by 3.9 per cent. BT Sport spent £897 million on the rights to show Champions League football for three years, provoking a 10 per cent fall in BSkyB shares. The rate of inflation fell from 2.7 per cent to 2.2, as measured by the consumer prices index; as measured by the retail prices index, it fell from 3.2 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Unemployment fell by 48,000 to 2.47 million. Barratts, with 75 shoe shops, went into administration. Flybe, the Exeter-based airline, announced plans to cut 500 jobs. Plans were published for an airport on an artificial island off Sheppey in the Thames Estuary,

Sir Bruce Keogh’s anticipated review into accident and emergency has been published today to a chorus of praise and boos. The Mail describes it as a ‘sticking plaster’. The Independent is cautious. The Guardian is critical. And the Telegraph and the Sun are more positive. Sir Bruce Keogh gave a masterly performance on the Today programme, which may go some way to calming fears in the press. He said that the current system, which was designed in the 70s for the 70s, is unsustainable. At the root of his analysis is the belief that the present system is inefficient because patients have to go to the NHS to receive attention,

Though the NHS made a welcome change from endless bickering about energy bills at today’s PMQs, the exchanges were just as unedifying. There is very little gain in the sort of fact war that David Cameron and Ed Miliband tried to indulge in, as there is no killer fact that can silence an opponent on the NHS. Instead, the exchanges descended very quickly into ‘let me give the right honourable gentleman the facts about the NHS under this government’, ‘we have a Prime Minister too clueless to know the facts’ and ‘once again, the right honourable gentleman is just wrong on the facts’. Each man used his own ‘simple facts’

It’s been a while since we had a nice big fat NHS row, but those who enjoy watching Andy Burnham and Jeremy Hunt fight over the ‘party of the NHS’ crown can rest assured that there’s a really bitter one coming up this autumn. NHS England has spent the past few months consulting on a change to the way clinical commissioning groups are funded that could end the current arrangement where more money per capita is spent on patients in deprived areas. The formula currently being considered would make the number of elderly people in an area a more important factor in the size of the grant that each CCG

On Monday morning, Jeremy Hunt’s diary secretary rang me to arrange a time for me to speak to the Secretary of State over the telephone. I had already received an email from his special adviser the previous week, saying, ‘The two points which the independent research make clear are central to what you’ve been saying for a long time; namely that health tourism is a huge problem with a substantial cost to the NHS and the current system is an unfair burden on frontline staff.’ When Jeremy rang, he was charming, full of praise, and eager to tackle the issue of health tourism — the exploitation of the NHS by