nhs

NHS patients face "dangerous" treatment delays due to a 10-fold increase in "crude, expensive" referral management centres, doctors have warned. The centres, sometimes run by private firms, vet GP referrals and decide if patients should receive hospital care. The British Medical Association...

The Conservative chair of the health select committee has defended the NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, in his dispute with Theresa May over health service funding. Dr Sarah Wollaston said she agreed with Stevens’ contradiction of May’s claim last Sunday that the NHS had been given...

Family doctors and medical leaders have rejected Theresa May’s demand to move to a seven-day week, with senior GPs warning that it could lead to mass resignations. Dr Kailash Chand, a former deputy chair of the British Medical Association, said GPs were so angry with government attempts to...

An increasing number of patients are having to endure long waits for operations, according to a study that provides the latest evidence of the NHS’s failure to meet waiting time targets because hospitals are so busy. Analysis by the Royal College of Surgeons found that over the past year an...

If anyone would like to sign: https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/nhs-funding-england I know there have been a lot of these sorts of thing lately, but I still think it's worth signing them because if we all get fed up and stop signing them it gives the govt an excuse to say no-one...

Referendums resolve nothing. The campaigns that precede them are mendacious. A thousand factors determine the outcomes, many of them unrelated to the question on the ballot paper. Yet there is an overwhelming case for holding another one. The next referendum should not be on Europe. We have had...

Dr Nadia Masood’s public involvement in the junior doctors’ dispute began in a layby somewhere in north-east London on 11 January. “I was driving to Essex to see my mum, who was in hospital with sepsis after having chemotherapy for breast cancer. I was listening to LBC and James O’Brien was...

The Royal Surrey County Hospital is to share in a £130m investment to update radiotherapy services. The hospital trust is one of 15 that will receive a new state-of-the-art radiotherapy machine as part of ambitious plans from NHS England. The announcement was made by NHS England’s chief...

Britain's National Health Service is being transformed into the "national hangover service" as binge drinking diverts vital resources, the body's chief in England says. Simon Stevens condemned "selfish" party-goers in a stark warning as the country gears up for one of the most alcohol-fuelled...

Morning All, Hope you all had a good Christmas and didn't get too high with all the roast potatoes and Christmas Pudding - I know I did! For the last 18 months (ish) I've been on Metformin to treat my Type 2 diabetes. My HbA1c at diagnosis was 142. When I went for my review at the end of...

Britain's leading GP says she is "profoundly concerned" about how doctors will cope with demand over the busy winter period. Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs Council, said general practice was "skating on thin ice", warning: "Something has to give". Some people wait...

The NHS will serve more than 400,000 lunches on Christmas Day in the UK. The traditional turkey meals are for patients, but tens of thousands of staff working on the big day will tuck in to their dinner in a hospital canteen. Across the UK, 12,000 midwives will have to time theirs around...

Brexit is set to cause a severe shortage of nurses in the NHS, which is already facing a chronic lack of them in many hospitals, research suggests. Britain’s decision to leave the EU could deprive the health service of nurses from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland, from which it has...

Plans set out in the draft budget for Scotland today reveal that funding for general medical services will rise by 4.4% in 2017/18. Total GMS spending will increase from £786.5m in 2016/17 to £821.4m in 2017/18. The budget also pledges £72m investment in 'improvements to primary care and GP...

AN award-winning mental health GP defrauded the NHS by diverting £153,000 to his private company. Birmingham Crown Court heard Dr Ian Walton, 59, and senior commissioning manager Lisa Hill, 51, exploited positions of trust for commercial purposes by submitting false invoices. Walton, of...

An NHS manager, his partner and three contractors, who all helped defraud Epsom and St Helier Hospital NHS Trust of hundreds of thousands of pounds for work that was unnecessary or was never carried out, have been sentenced following a fraud investigation led by NHS Protect. NHS Protect says...

The NHS in England is sending patients who are seriously ill with eating disorders to Scotland for treatment because chronic bed shortages mean they cannot be cared for in England. Vulnerable patients, mainly teenagers and young adults, are being taken hundreds of miles from their homes in...

The seven million smokers who still puff away know full well the risks they are running. Giving up – or better still, never starting – is the best way to avoid an early death. Women also know, because they have been told often enough, that if they light up while pregnantthey increase their...