Health Direct homepage- NHS news, advice, information.

Labour U turn on mixed sex hospital wards
Fri Dec 28 2007- Labour has abandoned its key manifesto pledge to eliminate the controversial practice of mixed sex wards, it has emerged.

Doctors quit dirty NHS for India
Thu Dec 27 2007- The influx of thousands of Indian doctors into the National Health Service is going into reverse. Hospitals in India are now said to be cleaner and better equipped than many in Britain and doctors are quitting the NHS to work there instead.

Patricia Hewitt cashes in on health post
Fri 21 Dec 2007- Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary who left the government six months ago, has been offered jobs with at least five companies with links to the health sector

Ministers back GP plan that sidesteps contracts
Thu 20 Dec 2007- Family doctors face working unorthodox hours in so called super surgeries under a radical pilot scheme that could turn into a nationwide blueprint for medical care.

Prostate Cancer- a health disservice
Tue 18 Dec 2007- As 2007 draws to a close it is sad to contemplate that during the year another 10,000 men in the UK will have lost their lives to prostate cancer, and that 10,000 families this Christmas will be grieving the loss of a loved one as a result.

NHS U-turn on prostate cancer treatment by NICE
Mon 17 Dec 2007- A life saving treatment will be denied to tens of thousands of victims of Britain's most common male cancer after a U-turn by the NHS rationing body NICE.

NHS frequently leaks patients' records personal medical data
Fri 14 Dec 2007- Patients' confidential medical records are regularly being accessed by people who have no right to them, research by the BBC has revealed. Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that in the last year there have been several data security breaches in the West of England.

NICE U-turn on eye drug will save the sight of thousands
Thu 13 Dec 2007- Thousands of people will be saved from going blind following a U-turn by the government's drug advisory body NICE- which will allow them to get an expensive new treatment on the NHS.

Core health standards being missed
Wed 12 Dec 2007- Both private sector and NHS-run organisations are failing to meet core minimum standards for patient care, with neither outperforming the other, says the UK health sector’s inspectorate.

Quango advisers hit out on NHS wasted cash
Tue 11 Dec 2007- The advice of a high powered board of business people set up to counsel the labour government on working with the private sector was systematically ignored by ministers and civil servants, according to a resignation letter seen by the Financial Times.

Nurses hold silent protest at sacking of colleague for talking to the media
Mon 10 Dec 2007- Thousands of health workers from across Britain have held silent protests against the sacking of a Manchester nurse. Members if Unison took to the streets wearing gags a month after psychiatric nurse Karen Reissmann, who criticised NHS cuts, was fired for speaking to the media.

50,000 people denied insulin pumps in the UK by NICE's postcode lottery
Fri 7 Dec 2007- The charity Diabetes UK is calling for more access to insulin pumps for people with diabetes as new research shows they are more effective in improving blood glucose control and reducing hypoglycaemic episodes than traditional insulin injections.

NHS patients face humiliating treatment- whatever happened to Dignity?
Thu 6 Dec 2007- Hospitals are still failing to treat people with dignity and respect as complaints reveal patients left unwashed, in soiled bedding and in humiliating open-backed gowns, the Healthcare Commission has said.

Ward cleaning is only reassurance spin admits Alan Johnson
Fri 30 Nov 2007- The £50m a year that the labour government is to spend on routinely deep cleaning hospital wards is being spent to reassure the public rather than as a provenly effective way to tackle hospital acquired infections like MRSA admitted Alan Johnson the Health Secretary.

One in 10 suffers hospital harm as blunders kill 90,000 patients
Thu 29 Nov 2007- Accidents, errors and mishaps in hospital affect as many as one in 10 in-patients, claim researchers. The report in the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care said up to half of these were preventable. Checks on 1,000 cases in just one hospital found examples of fatal surgical errors, infections and drug complications.

Dirty ambulances spread MRSA superbugs infections
Wed 28 Nov 2007- Ambulances may be spreading infections because they are not being cleaned properly, union leaders warn. An investigation by Unison found large variations in cleaning practices at ambulance trusts in the UK.

Last minute private operations cost NHS more when broken targets loom
Tue 27 Nov 2007- NHS hospitals and primary care trusts are paying private hospitals excessive prices because they treat patients at the last minute, the industry says. This is despite the availability of more than 120 independent hospitals and surgical centres that will treat patients at NHS prices or just above.

NHS underspends by record £1.8bn
Mon 26 Nov 2007- The NHS is heading for a record £1.8bn underspend this financial year, Health Direct can reveal.

Ambulances queue at full hospital at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital
Fri 23 Nov 2007- Paramedics are treating patients in ambulances outside the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and ambulances are queuing outside the hospital because of a major alert which has left it with no beds available to new admissions.

NHS database will weaken patient security MPs learn
Thu 22 Nov 2007- The man in charge of setting up the NHS medical records database has admitted that "you cannot stop the wicked doing wicked things" with information. Richard Jeavons, director of IT implementation at the Department of Health, said there were instances where staff "abuse their privileges".

Private sector sees NHS role slashed
Fri 16 Nov 2007- Alan Johnson, the health secretary, yesterday slashed a long planned expansion of the private sector’s role in the National Health Service, in effect confirming that contracts originally meant to be worth about £6bn for surgical treatments and diagnostic services are likely to amount to well under half that sum.

Labour's nanny state wants us to stop eating and drinking
Mon 12 Nov 2007- A new inquiry into lifestyle and cancer has issued several stark recommendations. They include not gaining weight as an adult, avoiding sugary drinks and alcohol, and not eating bacon or ham. Everyone must also aim to be as thin as possible without becoming underweight.

Labour tries to move 18 week hospital waiting promise goalposts
Fri 9 Nov 2007- Ben Bradshaw is trying to break the labour promise that no patient should wait more than 18 weeks from seeing their GP to completing their hospital treatment as new figures confirm that they will fail to keep their word.

Tory health bill challenges Labour on NHS improvement plan
Wed 7 Nov 2007- The health service would have a clear divide between purchasers and providers with ministers and the Department of Health having much less day to day involvement in its running under a bill published by the Conservatives.

Sicko Michael Moore film has mad view of the NHS
Mon 5 Nov 2007- The fourth estate has always had a bad name, but it seems to be getting worse. Journalism should be an honest and useful trade, and often still is. But now that journalism has more power than ever before, it seems to have become ever more disreputable.

Record number of NHS patients avoid dirty hospitals by going abroad- 29 Oct 07

Hospitals failing superbug targets as 8.2pc of patients acquire bug
Fri 2 Nov 2007- Hospital superbugs are endemic in Britain's wards and the Government is failing to meet its targets to reduce them, new watchdog figures have disclosed. Cases of Clostridium difficile increased by seven per cent in hospital patients over the age of 65 from 51,829 in 2005 to 55,620 last year – an extra 3,791 cases.

Targeted cleaning is key to defeating MRSA superbugs
Thu 1 Nov 2007- Targeted cleaning to tackle MRSA hotspots is the key to reducing hospital infections, an expert says. Microbiologist Dr Stephanie Dancer said cleaning should focus on objects which people frequently touch rather than on "catch-all blitzes".

Only 44pc recall hospital choice watchdog finds
Wed 31 Nov 2007- Further evidence that the Labour's "choice" policy is struggling as a means of driving reform in the National Health Service has come from the latest Healthcare Commission survey of how far it is being offered to patients.

Experts criticise NICE drugs advisory body
Tue 30 Oct 2007- Labour's drugs advisory body NICE is issuing poor quality guidance because it excludes experts from the drafting process, doctors told MPs.

Record numbers go abroad for health treatments
Mon 29 Oct 2007- Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs. More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year, a figure that is forecast to rise to 200,000.

Tories on attack over MRSA, C diff hospital superbugs
Fri 26 Oct 2007- Labour ministers knew about the findings of a report into 90 patient deaths from Clostridium difficile at Kent hospitals months ago, the Conservative party claimed this week.

Ministers bury bad news report on MRSA, C Difficile superbugs since May
Wed 24 Oct 2007- Once again Health Direct learns that labour's ridiculous health targets are resulting in many NHS patients having an early death and or unnecessarily pain. The Financial Times discovered that there is a direct correlation between be occupancy rates and incidents of patients contracting MRSA, C Difficile and other superbugs.

Nanny state burns £500m on failed anti smoking campaigns
Mon 22 Oct 2007- The National Health Service has spent almost £500m on services to stop people smoking but with no discernible impact on either the proportion of the adult population that smokes or the numbers smoking

Quarter of NHS trusts are failing on C Difficile, MRSA superbug infections
Fri 19 Oct 2007- A quarter of hospital trusts in England are failing to meet new standards on infection control, a survey by the Healthcare Commission has found. Forty four trusts were not complying with one or all aspects of the hygiene code, standards seen as key after the recent deaths from hospital infections.

Health efficiency gains data uncertain claim MPs on PAC
Thu 18 Oct 2007- Up to three quarters of the £13.3bn efficiency gains the labour government claims to have made may be based on unreliable and inaccurate estimates, a committee of MPs has found.

NHS shakes up £12bn NPfIT IT programme
Wed 17 Oct 2007- A big revamp of the National Health Service’s £12bn IT programme is under way that will see NHS trusts given more choice of how systems are installed and which software they get.

Superbug boss Rose Gibb has record of dirty hospitals
Mon 15 Oct 2007- Asked what she intended to do about the filthy wards at her hospital, Rose Gibb insisted she had introduced an "action plan" that would "address the issues" of inadequate cleaning.

Junior doctors' training still under fire over DoH's MMC MTAS disaster
Thu 11 Oct 2007- The Department of Health yesterday reverted to more standard recruitment practices for junior doctors seeking training posts for next year after the chaos that the caused with the MTAS IT application system this year.

NHS trusts are failing to handle complaints
Wed 10 Oct 2007- Almost a third of complaints about NHS standards are not being handled properly, according to the official health watchdog. The Healthcare Commission claims in a report released today that many hospital managers, doctors and nurses do not listen to complaints or learn from their mistakes.

Labour in crisis as staff shortage blamed for £665m payout in birth errors
Tue 9 Oct 2007- Childbirth is claimed to be safer than ever. Yet the price paid by the NHS for deliveries going catastrophically wrong has risen 59 per cent to £259m – enough to fund the consultants and midwives needed to save thousands of babies and mothers from harm.

Jane Tomlinson widow asks for cancer drug review to end drugs postcode lottery
Mon 8 Oct 2007- Fundraiser Jane Tomlinson's husband and the NHS trust that treated her have called for a review of the availability of advanced trial drugs. Mrs Tomlinson's husband Mike said she found it "distressing" that she could not get access to Lapatinib, when it was available elsewhere in the UK.

New £100m Innovation health quango setup
Fri 5 Oct 2007- A £100m innovation quango is to be created, with half the money, to be spent over five years, coming from the Wellcome Trust. It marks the first adoption of a recommendation from junior health minister Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS.

Tony crony Lord Darzi's health review targets GPs and MRSA superbugs
Thu 4 Oct 2007- Lord Ara Darzi, Health Minister and author of the interim report on the NHS says that every patient who stays in hospital will be screened for the superbug infection MRSA and at least half of GP practices will open on Saturday mornings or one or more evenings per week.

NHS rated as mediocre only 17 compared with 29
Tue 2 Oct 2007- The UK and other centralised health systems with a single funder perform worse than those financed by multiple insurers, according to a consumer focused survey of European healthcare.

James Purnell fake photo- new labour spin controversy
Mon 1 Oct 2007- James Purnell, the Culture Secretary, came under increasing pressure over a fake photo last night, after two Labour MPs revealed they planned in advance for it be altered. The MPs, who featured alongside Mr Purnell in the doctored photograph, revealed that they had discussed how he would be merged into the shot after he failed to turn up for a photocall on time.

Stalinist Brown's superbug plans ignore scientific evidence claims Lancet
Fri 28 Sep 2007- Labour government plans for tackling superbugs, such as MRSA, have been condemned by a leading medical journal for not being based on scientific fact. The Lancet said there was little evidence to support hospital "deep cleans" or short sleeves for medical staff as recently mentioned by Health Direct.

Allergy epidemic gets poor care in the UK
Thu 27 Sep 2007- Poor care and confusing advice is being used to deal with an allergy epidemic in the UK, experts have said. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee warned there were not enough specialist services and that food labelling was inadequate.

Gordon Stalinist Brown pledge on NHS funding and MRSA superbugs
Wed 26 Sep 2007- Hospitals are to use new “deep-clean” techniques in which wards are stripped and subjected to steam cleaning and high-strength disinfectant in an attempt to reduce outbreaks of MRSA and C difficle superbugs.

Foundation trusts increase cash as patient care declines
Tue 25 Sep 2007- Foundation trusts, a flagship of the labour government’s National Health Service reforms, are building a growing cash mountain that they appear unable or unwilling to invest in improved services. The sums involved are up by more than £300m from about £1bn at the end of the last financial year to £1.32bn in the first three months of this year.

Sex virus carried by 1 in 10 girls under 16 years old
Thu 20 Sep 2007- One in 10 girls aged under 16, the age of consent, has a sexually transmitted disease that could lead to cervical cancer, a government agency has found.

Labour govt overpays private groups £222m for outsourced NHS treatments
Wed 19 Sep 2007- The Labour government is overpaying private hospital operators by more than £200 million to carry out surgery for NHS patients. In an effort to cut waiting lists, labour launched a programme in 2005 to outsource some routine surgery to the private sector.

Labour lead halved as voters feel pinch
Tue 18 Sep 2007- Gordon Stalinist Brown’s opinion poll lead has halved in the space of a month, making an early election much less likely, according to the latest Sunday Times-YouGov poll of more than 1,800 people.

MRSA to force ban on doctors' white coats
Mon 17 Sep 2007- Doctors will be banned from wearing their traditional white coats as part of a drive to protect patients from contracting MRSA and C Difficle superbugs in hospital, Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary announces.

Ben Bradshaw is confident of achieving 18 week target
Fri 14 Sep 2007- Ben Bradshaw was forced to defend the incompetence of his Department of Health this week after a detailed analysis by the Financial Times found that fully a quarter of the population would have to wait longer than the basic 18 weeks between referral by a GP and treatment which labour promised.

A terrible way to treat our doctors- Financial Times Comment on MMC
Thu 13 Sep 2007- Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is a suitably Orwellian name for a Stalinist new system for training doctors in the National Health Service. The phrase is a perfect example of newspeak. To oppose a "modern" system is to be a conservative, if not a reactionary.

Gordon Stalinist Brown's careless health spending will end up wounding the PM
Wed 12 Sept 2007- The amount of taxpayers' money spent on the National Health Service has more than doubled in the last five years. The annual cost of our system of universal public healthcare is now approaching £100bn - more than £1,500 a year for every man, woman and child. But is our money being spent wisely?

Man who helped NHS to spend £46bn says it wasted the money and needs more
Tue 11 Sept 2007- Sir Derek Wanless says billions of pounds poured into the NHS has not made it more efficient. The money poured into the NHS has failed to produce a more efficient service, or to reduce unhealthy lifestyles. As a result even more cash will be needed in the future.

The NHS is a service, not a business
Fri 7 Sept 2007- From the letters section of the Financial Times: Sir, Margaret McCartney's view would be endorsed by the majority of the medical profession, and shows the hollowness of the labour government's stated policy of a "patient-led NHS".

NHS Postcode lottery to be challenged in the courts
Thu 6 Sept 2007- The European Commission has been asked to investigate whether a local health authority can refuse to pay for drugs when funding is available elsewhere. Tory MEP Chris Heaton-Harris claims the so called NHS postcode lottery breaks European anti-discrimination laws.

Dental students will shun NHS when qualified
Wed 5 Sept 2007- Almost one in five dental students plans to shun NHS work completely, a study has suggested. The results suggest that the new contract which was designed to make NHS work more attractive has had limited success.

New NHS complaints service launched by the Citizens Advice Bureau
Tue 4 Sept 2007- A new NHS complaints service is being launched by the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and will be rolled out across Scotland ahead of a national roll-out of the service. The confidential scheme helps patients take forward grievances about the NHS.

5,000 extra midwives are needed to cope with the increase in birthrate RCM find
Mon 3 Sept 2007- Nearly 5,000 more midwives will be needed by 2012 if the Government is to meet its target for maternity services, the Royal College of Midwives said. The college has increased its target from 3,000 because of a rising birthrate, which has exceeded government estimates, and a reassessment of present shortages..

Measles cases triple with no backup MMR vaccine stocks
Fri 31 Aug 07- Parents are being urged to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab before the start of the new school year after an unprecedented surge of measles cases was recorded over the summer holidays.

UNICEF blasts labours breastfeeding nanny state
Thu 30 Aug 07- The long term health of mothers and babies is being put at risk by UK hospitals that have failed to introduce pro-breastfeeding policies, the United Nations says UNICEF, the UN children's fund, today releases a report showing that four out of 10 maternity hospitals have not implemented guidance from the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) that was published a year ago.

Nurses don't report abuse of the elderly
Wed 29 Aug 07- More than half of nurses would not report the abuse of an elderly person in their care, according to a survey published today. The poll of NHS and private sector nurses, conducted for Help the Aged, found that a lack of training, heavy workloads and fear of confrontation or of upsetting the victim all prevent nurses taking action.

NHS deaths could be halved say doctors as 10,000 die needlessly every year
Tue 28 Aug 07- More than 10,000 people are dying needlessly each year after being denied intensive care treatment, according to senior doctors. They have written to the Health Secretary Alan Johnson, warning that many patients are dying after routine surgery because of a failure to identify them as high risk cases.

Labour's latest NHS red tape shake up costs another 140 million Pounds
Fri 24 Aug 07- The reorganisation of strategic health authorities (SHAs) in England has seen the NHS pay out more than £80m in redundancy costs, Health Direct and the BBC has learned. More than 700 staff lost their jobs in last year's shake-up, which saw the number of SHAs reduced from 28 to 10. The cost of the average redundancy package for senior managers was more than £350,000.

New nurses, doctors and physios left jobless by labours NHS budget squeeze
Thu 23 Aug 07- Thousands of newly qualified nurses are facing unemployment because of labour's NHS hospital cutbacks, with recruitment vacancies at their lowest for 10 years. New National Health Service figures have revealed how difficult it is for nurses, physiotherapists, scientists and doctors to find jobs.

Cancer survival rates- 7000 UK patients are dying needlessly every year
Wed 22 Aug 07- Cancer survival in the UK is still below the European average, despite recent improvements, a report says. Survival rates in lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer were lower in the UK compared with everywhere except eastern Europe.

GPs given ultimatum to open at night and weekends as DoH bullies BMA
Tue 21 Aug 07- Having disastrously fouled up the GPs' service contract last year the Deptartment of Heath is now aggressively bullying GPs to work weekends again. Family doctors have been warned that unless they agree to open at evenings and on Saturdays, private companies will be contracted to take over their practices.

NHS Choices website- another £14 million wasted down the drain- 13th Aug 07

Psychiatric wards at crisis point, says doctor
Fri 17 Aug 07- The crisis facing Britain's mental health wards is laid bare. Speaking exclusively, a senior consultant psychiatrist, who cannot be named, painted a picture of a service at breaking point. The wards are overcrowded, staff are overstretched and seriously ill psychotic patients are often forced to sleep on a sofa because beds have been cut to balance the books elsewhere in the NHS.

NHS dentists can cost more than private dentistry
Thu 16 Aug 07- Patients are paying less for some private dental treatment than they do on the NHS because of controversial untested changes introduced by the labour Government last year. The price for a filling on the NHS is now £43.60 but some private surgeries charge just £35, Health Direct reveals.

Scandal of filthy hospital kitchens
Tue 14 Aug 07- A searing indictment of the cleanliness of UK hospital kitchens is revealed in research showing that almost half are plagued by vermin, risk infections by storing food incorrectly or employ staff with poor personal hygiene.

NHS Choices- massive inaccuracies mar GP patient website
Mon 13 Aug 07- NHS Choices the Department of Health's flagship website is to ask primary care trusts and GP practices to correct widespread mistakes on the Department of Health's flagship NHS Choices website. Half of the NHS Choices website's information on GP opening hours and a third of practitioners' names are thought to be incorrect, Health Direct and HSJ can reveal.

NICE's Alzheimer's court win condems thousands to more suffering
Fri 10 Aug 07- NICE has thwarted campaigners who have failed in their High Court bid to force the NHS to fund Alzheimer's drugs in people with early stage disease. However, the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) has been told to rewrite guidance on how the disease is assessed.

NHS Dentistry access is not improving
Thu 9 Aug 07- A shake up in NHS dentistry in England has failed to increase access to services, labour government figures show. A Department of Health report showed 28.1m people had been to an NHS dentist in the previous 24 months. This was 50,000 down on the figures on the eve of the changes in April 2006. The number of dentists in the system has also fallen.

Private surgery deal shows Labour hypocrisy
Wed 8 Aug 07- A London hospital is to become the first in Britain to privatise all surgery, prompting charges of "rank Government hypocrisy" from supporters of the NHS. Kingston Hospital, in south west London, is to hand over control of its operating theatres to a private firm under a 10-year contract which has alarmed staff.

Whistleblower Surgeon breaks cover over NHS beds crisis
Tue 7 Aug 07- Specialist wards full to breaking point. Patients with serious injuries are denied care and a health service paralysed by arguments about funding. Martin Bircher, one of Britain's most senior consultants, speaks out.

NHS managers blocked 75pc of GP referrals
Mon 6 Aug 07- Three quarters of GPs who referred patients to hospital have had their decisions blocked, a poll for The Sunday Telegraph reveals. Family doctors say that new "referral management" systems, set up to allow primary care trusts (PCTs) to overrule decisions taken in the surgery, are being used to delay and cancel hospital care, and to divert patients referred to a hospital consultant to cheaper clinics in the community.

Junior doctors still jobless in MTAS hospitals chaos
Fri 3 Aug 07- Hundreds of operations in hospitals across England will be cancelled in the chaos as 30,000 junior doctors start new jobs this week. The British Medical Association said that because of the scramble to fill posts ahead of Wednesday's deadline after the collapse of the recruitment system, consultants have been left unable to plan theatre time.

NHS pay deal cost more and brought less than planned
Thu 2 Aug 07- The introduction of the most ambitious pay reform in the National Health Service's history cost far more than expected and failed to deliver the intended increases in productivity, a study by the King's Fund health think-tank has found.

Hypocrite Stalinist Brown cuts £50m from drugs rehab budget
Wed, 1 Aug 07- The flagship labour government scheme for treating drug addicts faces swingeing budget cuts of £50 million. Plans to slash total funding by more than 12 per cent, outlined in an email leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, come less than a fortnight after Stalinist Brown tried to show off his anti-drug credentials by signalling his desire to reclassify Cannabis from Class C to the more serious Class B. The Conservatives accused the Prime Minister of hypocrisy.

GPs- Quarter of patients can't book in advance £12 million patient survey finds
Tue 31 Jul 07- A quarter of patients still cannot book advance appointments with their GP - more than two years after Tony Bliar promised to solve the problem. The results from an "unfair and biased" £12m survey of more than two million people about services at their GP surgery found doctors are still manipulating their appointments system to hit targets.

PFI- Time to set the record straight claims Financial Times
Mon 30 Jul 07- Off balance sheet accounting has a long and often dishonourable history. Just think of Enron. The Treasury now has a chance to fix one of the most inconsistent and problematic examples of its use, in the way the private finance initiative is accounted for, by using the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards as a chance to bring all PFI projects on to the public balance sheet.

MTAS disaster- Labour's botched NHS plan
Fri 27 Jul 07- The Medical Training Application System (MTAS) junior doctors appointment fiasco still produces fury in the health profession. Why? And how did labour's defective system get passed in the first place?

Johnson blocks new wave of private health clinics
Thu 26 Jul 07- The health secretary, Alan Johnson, yesterday vetoed plans for a third wave of independent sector treatment centres to compete with NHS hospitals.

C Difficile and MRSA hospital bugs remain a problem
Wed, 25 Jul 07- The number of cases of the potentially dangerous Clostridium difficile (C Difficile) is thriving, figures show. A review by the Health Protection Agency showed hospital MRSA cases had fallen by 10% in the first three months of 2007 compared with a year ago. But rates for C. difficile, which mainly strikes the elderly, rose by 22% this quarter.

Anger over NHS plan to give addicts iPods
Tue 25 Jul 07- Drug addicts are to be offered gift vouchers and prizes on the National Health Service under plans by the labour government’s medicine watchdog NICE to encourage them to stay clean.

NHS manager's payout is nearly £1m
Fri 20 Jul 07- An NHS manager has been given a redundancy package worth almost £1 million in what was described as "a lottery win rather than a payout". David Johnson, the former head of a regional strategic health authority, was one of about 70 staff who left the organisation when it was abolished as part of a restructuring programme.

Hospital cases treble since labour's extended drinking pub hours laws
Thu 19 Jul 07- Overnight visits to hospital emergency departments for alcohol related problems have trebled since the introduction of new licensing laws, according to a scientific journal the Emergency Medicine Journal. The EMJ has published research showing that significantly more people have needed hospital treatment for alcohol-related issues since pub hours were extended in November 2005.

Junior doctor shambles threatens the NHS eminent Doctors warn
Wed 18 Jul 07- Last week a labour ministerial statement confirmed that almost half this year’s applicants under the junior doctors’ career and appointments system have had their careers in UK medicine abruptly cut short.

NHS IVF clinics to help lesbians get pregnant
Tue 17 Jul 07- An NHS IVF fertility clinic is proposing to treat single women and lesbian couples who have no medical problems. The reproductive medicine unit at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Trust believes it would be discriminatory to refuse artificial insemination to women who cannot conceive because they do not have a male partner.

Do not give local authorities control of healthcare warns the Financial Times
Mon 16 Jul 07- In the name of devolution or "the new localism", a crime may be about to be committed. Despite promises from Alan Johnson, the new health secretary, of no new structural reform to the National Health Service "for the foreseeable future", labour ministers appear to be considering giving local government a bigger say in, maybe even control over, the NHS

Dementia victims being failed by NHS- NAO reports
Fri 6 Jul 07- Hundreds of thousands of elderly people suffering from dementia are being comprehensively failed by the labour government and the health service, Whitehall's spending watchdog warns. Far too few people are being diagnosed as suffering from dementia - or are being diagnosed much too late - and even then drugs and other treatments are not widely available.

Thousands of new nurses still job hunting
Thu 5 Jul 07- Almost a third of nurses - some 4,000 - had not found jobs six months after qualifying last year, according to official statistics. More than half of physiotherapists and one in five midwives were also still unemployed half a year after completing their studies, the Department of Health admits.

Hopes fade over private sector role in NHS
Wed 4 Jul 07- Private sector hopes of a sustainable role in delivering National Health Service care are receding, judging by a study commissioned by the NHS commercial directorate. The 2004 study estimated the NHS needed to buy 450,000-500,000 procedures a year if the market that has attracted overseas health groups as well as UK operators such as Bupa and Nuffield was not to "stagnate and ultimately collapse".

Seven NHS doctors held over al-Qaeda bomb plot
Tue 3 Jul 07- The suspected al-Qa'eda terrorists behind the attempted car bomb attacks on Britain were almost all foreign doctors working in the NHS, it was disclosed today. It comes as an eighth person - also a foreign doctor who has worked in the UK - was arrested in Australia in connection with the attacks.

Cynical Stalinist Brown cut budget for English hospitals- but kept Scottish health budgets
Mon 2 Jul 07- Gordon Stalinist Brown quietly slashed by a third this year’s hospital building and equipment budget in one of his last acts as chancellor. Prompted by the tightness of the public finances, the new prime minister, who has placed the NHS as his “immediate priority”, cut the capital budget of the English NHS for 2007-08 from £6.2bn to £4.2bn. The move could delay the labour government’s hospital building and reconfiguration programme in England.

Alan Johnson- NHS's new captain aka Titanic deckchair rearranger- 25 June 07

Labour's NHS reforms pushed hospital chief to suicide finds coroner
Thu 28 Jun 07- A hospital manager jumped 100 feet to her death, driven to suicide by the stress of NHS reforms. Morag Shedden Wilson, 32, stabbed herself with a kitchen knife and then jumped from a motorway bridge on the M60 into the Manchester Ship Canal. An inquest heard that Miss Wilson, who was head of dietetics at Wythenshawe Hospital, was under pressure because of reforms introduced by the Agenda for Change, a labour Government review.

BMA Doctors' survey finds public unhappy with NHS reforms
Wed 27 Jun 07- Doctors' leaders this week said the public was as disenchanted with NHS reforms as the medical profession, releasing a survey showing that only a third of patients were happy with the changes of the last 10 years. On the eve of its annual meeting in Torquay, Devon, the British Medical Association (BMA) released a study suggesting that only 34% of the public thought a decade of reform had made the NHS any better, while 42% thought there had been no improvement.

NICE's Alzheimers drug ban is abhorrent the High Court is told
Tue 26 Jun 07- The health watchdog NICE's decision to deprive 100,000 mild Alzheimer's victims of a £2.50 a day drug that can delay the onset of the disease was condemned as "abhorrent and disgusting" in the High Court yesterday.

NHS Choices- Labour wastes £14 million on another useless website
Mon 25 Jun 07- Patients are being asked to rate and comment on another NHS services website launched which they launched last week. The Department of Health is ludicrosly comparing the NHS Choices site to tripadvisor.com, which publishes travellers' holiday reviews.

David Cameron kills health 'passport' idea
Fri 22 Jun 07- David Cameron has put the final stake in the heart of the Conservatives' proposal at the last election for a "patient passport", which would have allowed patients to use National Health Service funds to contribute towards the cost of private operations.

Labour's Whitehall advisers now cost £2bn a year
Thu 21 Jun 07- The increased use of external consultants by the labour government is costing the taxpayer nearly £2bn a year and is failing to ensure value for money, according to the public accounts committee. In a report published on Tuesday, the PAC estimates that in the past three years, spending on consultants in the public sector has risen by a third from £2.1bn in 2003-04 to £2.8bn in 2005-06, with central government accounting for £1.8bn, largely to increases in the NHS.

NHS Software suppliers may seek compensation as IT chief Grainger leaves
Wed, 20 Jun 07- The NHS could face pressure from its big three IT suppliers- BT, CSC and Fujitsu- to change the £6bn contracts they have signed, following Richard Granger's departure from the helm of the world's biggest civil NPfIT project.

Hospitals losing fight to defeat MRSA, C Difficile superbugs- health watchdog warns
Tue 19 Jun 07- One in four NHS trusts is failing the latest labour government targets on cleanliness and tackling superbug infections. Figures released by the Healthcare Commission show that six out of ten trusts in England have reported failing one or more of the twenty four “core standards” on all aspects of care, on which they are assessed by the NHS watchdog.

NHS service cuts urged at non PFI hospitals
Mon 18 Jun 07- Primary care trusts wanting to reconfigure services were given a stark message in an economic analysis prepared for the NHS in London: financially, it will make sense to cut beds and services at non private finance initiative (PFI) hospitals.

GPs have no confidence in Patricia Hewitt
Fri 15 Jun 07- Family doctors delivered an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the labour Government's handling of the NHS yesterday. GPs accused ministers of "wasting a golden opportunity" to transform the health service by "squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers' money".

Cruel watchdog NICE condems 20,000 to blindness to save money
Thu 14 Jun 07- Twenty thousand people will be condemned to blindness each year following a "cruel" and "appalling" decision by the health watchdog NICE, campaigners said today. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (aka National Institute for Curbing Expenditure) has come under intense pressure to approve the drugs Lucentis (ranibizumab) and Macugen (pegaptanib) for use on the NHS.

Baby boom stretches midwives as labour underfunding continues
Wed 13 Jun 07- Midwives are delivering almost 25% more babies than experts believe is appropriate, figures released by the Conservative Party suggest. The Tories say the government's failure to anticipate a big rise in the birth rate in England has left midwives under intense pressure. They argue this could derail labour ministers' commitment to offering all women a choice of where to give birth by 2009.

Concerns raised over accuracy of PCT benchmarking
Tue 12 Jun 07- Doubts have been raised over the accuracy of the latest quarterly hospital episode statistics following reports of problems with data collection. There are concerns that primary care trust benchmarking decisions and information on patient numbers, which informs payment by results, may be out of date as third quarter results (October-December 2006) were not published until mid May.

Lung patients 'let down by NHS' BLF claim
Mon 11 Jun 07- Many people with lung diseases believe there are not enough NHS lung specialists to help them cope with their condition, a survey suggests. The British Lung Foundation questioned 3,200 patients and found many are disillusioned with what they see as the low priority given to their care. Death rates from respiratory illness in the UK are almost double the European average, says the charity.

NHS trusts fail on waiting times as more than half wait over 18 weeks
Fri 8 Jun 07- Less than half of NHS patients are receiving hospital treatment within the labour government's flagship waiting time target of 18 weeks, new figures revealed. Only 48% of patients in England are treated within 18 weeks and 12.4% have to wait more than a year for treatment, according to figures published by the Department of Health.

NHS figures show £510m annual surplus
Thu 7 Jun 07- The NHS apparently made a small surplus in 2006/07, figures unveiled by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt showed. The NHS recorded a surplus of £510 million, the data showed. However, 22% of NHS organisations are still in debt and unable to balance their books. The gross deficit of the NHS stood at £911 million, down from £1.3 billion in 2005/06.

NHS is on brink of collapse, say consultants
Wed 6 Jun 07- The NHS is on the brink of collapse and cannot be saved unless Gordon Stalin Brown intervenes when he becomes prime minister to give doctors the authority to organise a recovery, the leader of Britain's 33,000 hospital consultants claimed today.

Inspection blitz on MRSA and superbug hygiene belatedly launched
Tue 5 Jun 07- The NHS in England is facing a blitz on MRSA and superbug hygiene standards as a watchdog uses new powers to crackdown on infections. The Healthcare Commission is to go into 120 NHS trusts unannounced in the next year to check cleanliness standards and infection control procedures.

Drugmaker's proposal to NHS's NICE- we'll pay if cancer treatment fails
Mon 4 June 07- A British based drugmaker has made a groundbreaking offer to the National Health Service to cover the cost of a £25,000 cancer drug if a patient using it failed to show adequate progress. The NHS would only pay for the new drug, Velcade, when patients responded well to it, under a joint proposal from Janssen-Cilag the drugmaker.

National Audit Office asked to investigate record £500m NHS underspend
Thu 31 May 07- The NAO has been asked to investigate whether a half billion pound underspend by the NHS in England was caused by political chicanery at the Department of Health. Norman Lamb, the Liberal democrat health spokesman , called in parliament's spending watchdog yesterday after the record surplus was disclosed by the Guardian in an analysis of strategic health authority board papers.

Support staff do midwife tasks as midwifery crisis deepens
Wed 30 May 07- Extra workers drafted in to help hard pressed midwives could actually be putting mothers and babies at more risk, a report has claimed. Maternity support staff are supposed to free up midwives' time by helping with paperwork and non clinical duties. However, Kings College London found some trusts in England try to use them to care for pregnant women, even though they are not sufficiently trained. Experts stressed support staff should never replace midwives or doctors.

Private slow down expected as NHS prepares for Gordon Stalin Brown
Tue 29 May 07- Less emphasis on the use of the private sector and a slow down in market based reforms could be the hallmark of Gordon "Stalin" Brown's premiership for the NHS, according to a review of health experts by Health Direct.

GPs out of hours cover- death row shows systemic failure of service
Fri 25 May 07- The partner of a woman who died from septicaemia following flaws in out-of-hours GP care has said he is convinced it could happen again. Penny Campbell, 41, from Islington, north London, died in 2005 after consulting eight doctors in four days. A report said a major system failure in the service was a direct factor leading to Miss Campbell's death.

Hewitt battles for survival in Commons after day of criticism over MTAS flawed dreadful mess
Thu 24 May 07- The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, battled for her political reputation, if not her survival, yesterday in a packed Commons debate on a Tory motion of no confidence. It came at the end of a day which featured severe criticism from a high court judge over the junior doctors debacle, and angry scenes at the annual conference of NHS midwives.

Thousands of NHS staff avoid sex and crime CRB checks
Wed 23 May 07- Tens of thousands of people working with children and vulnerable adults in the NHS are still not being put through criminal record checks promised by the government in the wake of the Soham murders, it has emerged. A survey found that 68 per cent of health trusts in the UK are failing to vet staff who began working before the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) was set up in 2002.

Move to boost openness on NHS drugs by NICE
Tue 22 May 07- The labour government's medicines advisory body will from this autumn open to public scrutiny the work of the committees that decide whether the health service should pay for new drugs. In a ground breaking move to boost transparency, Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), told MPs that the action marked the latest in its efforts to boost transparency and that it had been a matter of "regret" that its committees had previously met in private.

Call for scrutiny of PFI equity sales says MPs' Public Accounts Committee
Mon 21 May 07- The market for sales of equity in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals should be closely watched by the Treasury, parliament's public spending watchdog said, as it raised fears that they might not be in the public interest.

Half Accident and Emergency units face axe under new labour plans- 14 May 07

Half of all Accident and Emergency units are marked for closure
Fri 18 May 07- Up to half of all hospital accident and emergency (A&E) departments face cuts or closure under plans to improve patient care, presenting Gordon "Stalin" Brown with a massive dilemma as he takes over as Prime Minister. Ninety-two out of 204 A&E departments are under threat if guidance attributed to the Department of Health by NHS trusts is followed, the Conservatives claimed.

NHS hospital bought computer parts off eBay waiting for NPfIT project
Thu 17 May 07- Patients are being put at risk because of delays in implementing the new NHS computer system, according to a study of senior managers. Parts of the £12.4 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT) are years behind schedule.

Doctors MTAS online application system may be ditched in another Hewitt U turn
Wed 16 May 07- Channel 4 interviewed the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt over the crisis surrounding the appointment of thousands of junior doctors. The new Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) was heralded by the government as an 'agent of change', designed to establish a fairer, more transparent system for recruiting the next generation of specialist medics. But for months now it's been ridiculed within medical circles for effectively deselecting some of the brightest junior doctors.

Fears over NHS cancer drug costs blocked by NICE- National Institute for Curbing Expenditure
Tue 15 May 07- Cancer doctors have told the BBC they fear the NHS will not be able to afford the new generation of cancer drugs. Specialists are already arguing that patients may have to pay for more drugs themselves, with the issue becoming pressing as new drugs are developed. But some patients offering to pay for a cancer drug are being told they would have to meet all their care costs.

NHS critic's father dies from MRSA after awful care
Mon 14 May 07- A former nurse who tackled Tony Blair over NHS failures in her daughter's treatment has lost her father to the MRSA superbug. During the 2001 election campaign Carol Maddocks confronted the Prime Minister during an appearance on the BBC's Question Time programme and told him that the health service was letting down her daughter Alice, who had a rare blood condition.

Health Direct asks did tony "purer than pure" bliar save the NHS?
Fri 11 May 07- With the long overdue announcement that tony bliar is finally to stand down as our Great Leader, Health Direct asks did he save the NHS in 24 hours? Our taxes went up to pay for extra funding for the NHS- indeed total NHS spending went up 124%. The question is then- has the service doubled in value/ productivity or service availability and the answer is clearly no.

Thousands of NHS patients still facing ordeal of mixed sex wards
Thu 10 May 07- Hospital patients are suffering the indignity and embarrassment of being cared for on mixed-sex wards - a decade after the labour government pledged to abolish the practice. Almost one in five NHS trusts is continuing to treat patients admitted for routine treatment alongside members of the opposite sex in breach of government rules.

NHS's NPfIT upgrade creates false patient records
Wed 9 May 07- A software upgrade under the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has led to hundreds of incorrect duplicate patient records being created every day at NHS sites in Greater Manchester. A team has been formed to prevent patient data being lost. The emergency action raises questions about how well NPfIT systems are being tested before going live.

Labour rewards failure as NHS pays private companies for failed PFI bids
Tue, 8 May 07- Private companies that fail to win hospital building contracts are set to pocket millions of pounds in "compensation" from the NHS. Hospitals negotiating private finance initiative (PFI) schemes could be forced to pay almost 2 per cent of the total contract costs to short-listed private companies which fail to secure deals, under proposals being discussed by the Department of Health (DoH).

Doctors admit NHS treatments must be rationed- BMA
Mon 7 May 07- British doctors will take the historic step of admitting for the first time that many health treatments will be rationed in the future because the NHS cannot cope with spiralling demand from patients. In a major report that will embarrass the government, the British Medical Association (MBA) will say fertility treatment, plastic surgery and operations for varicose veins and minor childhood ailments, such as glue ear, are among a long list of procedures in jeopardy.

Tony Bliar's NHS legacy- Health Direct reviews 10 years of wasted opportunities
Fri 4 May 07- In the week that Tony Bliar celebrates his 10 years in charge of the NHS, Health Direct along with the political parties looks at what damage he has done to our national treasure. The three main political parties have come out fighting over what 10 years under a Labour government has meant for the NHS.

NHS maternity services are at crisis point
Thu 3 May 07- The crisis at the heart of Britain's maternity services is revealed tonight in a BBC Panorama programme that shows a catalogue of shortages and cutbacks. When a reporter posing as a volunteer tells a midwife at Barnet Hospital, Herts, that a woman who has been left in a corridor is crying, she is told to "tell her to get a life".

Deadly NHS superbugs continue rising with C difficile again up
Wed 2 May 07- More hospital patients in England are getting the deadly Clostridium difficile bug, figures show. Health Protection Agency (HPA) data showed 55,681 cases were reported among over 65s in 2006 - up 8% in a year. MRSA cases continued their downward trend, but they are not falling quickly enough to meet Labour's target next year.

NHS hit by first staffing fall in decade
Tue 1 May 07- The number of National Health Service workers fell last year for the first time since comparable records began in 1996 - a year before Labour came to power. Health unions and opposition politicians blamed the drop on government mishandling of NHS finances, but there was disagreement over the extent of the fall for front line services as labour's dodgy accounting was again called into question.

Contender for greatest of all Labour's NHS failures- MTAS Junior Doctor application system
Mon 30 Apr 07- The crisis that is leading highly qualified junior doctors to head abroad is the result of one of the National Health Service's all-time great administrative cock-ups. It is has left 30,000 junior doctors bitterly disillusioned and angry. But it also has big potential implications for patient care.

Junior doctors details data exposed online in MTAS fiasco
Fri 27 Apr 07- Adding insult to injury? The intimate details of thousands of junior doctors are left wide open on the internet. The Medical Training Application Service or MTAS is a computer system where student and junior doctors try to apply for jobs - an IT system which they were repeatedly assured by Labour ministers was secure.

Setback for NHS on treatment centres as one in five PFI projects unprofitable
Thu 26 Apr 07- Nuffield Hospitals, the not-for-profit private hospital operator, has pulled out of negotiations to provide operations for NHS patients using mobile operating theatres in the West Midlands. The news comes at the same time that new research shows that almost one in five private finance initiative projects are still not making their owners money, a survey of almost 100 of them has shown.

Postcode lottery of death rates in NHS hospitals
Wed 25 Apr 07- The large disparity in mortality rates in NHS hospitals is exposed today in research carried out for The Daily Telegraph. Patients are twice as likely to die in hospitals with the highest mortality rates than in those with the lowest, according to a report from Dr Foster Research, the independent health information company.

NHS free at point of use is a political mirage Doctors warn
Tue 24 Apr 07- A National Health Service largely free at the point of use is becoming a mirage, according to Doctors for Reform, a pressure group that would like the NHS to move from a tax-funded model to a system of social insurance with top up payments. The report shatters the NHS's founding principle that health care should be free for all at the point of delivery.

NHS University- an embarrassing failure to deliver value for money says Labour government review
Mon 23 Apr 07- The NHS University (NHSU) the internal training and education body which cost £72m and was scrapped after less than two years, delivered 'too little too late', according to a scathing report that the labour government tried to suppress. A review carried out during the organisation's short existence warns that the Department of Health would suffer 'significant embarrassment' if anyone probed the value for money provided by the NHSU.

NHS consultant contract attacked by NAO watchdog
Fri 20 Apr 07- Patients have not seen any improvement in the care they get under the new consultant contract, a watchdog says. The National Audit Office said despite pay rising by 27% to £110,000, doctors were not providing more flexible care or spending more time with patients.

Indian hospitals are better than NHS hospitals
Thu 19 Apr 07- A political row has broken out over the state of Britain's hospitals after a retired consultant complained that his wife received far better treatment in India. Opposition parties accused Labour of running down the NHS and failing to put patients first.

Doctors' morale hits record low new poll claims
Wed 18 Apr 07- A survey of more than 1,400 doctors found that 69% would not recommend a career in medicine. The same number said morale fell in the last year. The study for Hospital Doctor magazine found that many doctors blamed Labour government targets and reforms for their ill-feeling. Some 54% of those surveyed by Hospital Doctor said morale was "poor" or "terrible" with only 2% of doctors described their level of morale at work as "excellent".

Labour cuts are squeezing life out of NHS- RCN
Tue 17 Apr 07- The NHS is having the "life squeezed out of it" by cuts imposed because of deficits, says the UK's nurse leader. Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, warned the NHS was at risk as wards are closed, jobs lost and services slashed. "The situation is so serious that the progress we've made could soon be reversed or, sadly, lost altogether."

Patients die in ambulances with no paramedics on board
Mon 16 Apr 07- NHS Patients are dying directly because low skilled helpers are being sent out to handle life threatening 999 calls, ambulance whistleblowers have warned. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that in some areas of the country only 35% of ambulance service staff are fully trained paramedics. Ambulance staff say pressure to meet the government’s eight-minute target for responding to life-threatening calls has resulted in “technicians” being sent instead.

Labour voting areas get most PFI NHS cash
Fri 13 Apr 07- Questions have been raised about hospital building projects as it emerged 85p out of every £1 spent has been invested in Labour areas. Many hospital build projects have been funded through PFI. Official figures showed that of the 47 hospitals built since 1997, 33 served areas represented by a Labour MP. That compares to 10 in Tory and two in Liberal Democrat territories.

Trust to shut award winning maternity unit despite pledge
Thu 12 Apr 07- An NHS foundation trust is planning to close an award-winning midwife-led maternity unit despite the government last week promising every woman the option of such a delivery. Heavily pregnant women in north Derbyshire will have to travel up to 21 miles on country roads because of plans to close the Darley Dale unit and cut community midwife numbers from 50 to 33

Patients 'not getting choice of hospital'-Choose and Book broken promise
Wed 11 Apr 07- Fewer than half of NHS patients are being granted new rights to more choice over where they have operations, more than a year after the policy was introduced. A Government survey found that four out of 10 people referred to hospitals by GPs recalled being offered a choice of where to have their treatment. Since Jan 1 last year, all NHS patients referred for most non-emergency treatments should be offered a choice of at least four hospitals.

Patients feel pain as PFI Patientline deal backfires with hospital phone charges up 160%
Mon 9 Apr 07- Patientline, provider of hospital bedside telephone and television units, said it is to increase by 160 per cent charges to NHS patients for outgoing calls. The company was criticised by medical providers for the emergency measure, taken to compensate it for deepening losses incurred since it signed a 2002 private finance initiative deal with the Department of Health.

Ambulance staff falsified response times figures to meet NHS targets
Fri 6 Apr 07- Ambulance control room staff changed response time figures, improving the trust's performance against government targets, an Audit Commission investigation has revealed. Managers and the board at the former Wiltshire Ambulance Service trust, now part of Great Western Ambulance Service trust, put pressure on the control room to meet targets 'at all costs' but failed to manage staff effectively or properly follow up concerns about the number of figures being manually altered on the computerised control system, says the report, published last week.

Hewitt's home births promise is premature, warn Tories
Thu 5 Apr 07- Labour's promise that healthy women who choose to can have their babies at home was undermined yesterday by fears of a shortage of midwives and lack of funds. Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, announced that from 2009 all women would be able to choose where they had their baby - in hospital, in a midwife-led unit or at home. But the Conservatives said there was "no substance" behind the plans and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said that the plan would need an extra 3,000 midwives.

Hewitt U turn and apparent apology for Doctors' MMC chaos
Wed 4 Apr 07- Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has apologised to junior doctors over the continuing recruitment crisis. A new online system for selecting doctors for training posts has been heavily criticised for failing to select the best candidates. Ms Hewitt said the scheme had caused "terrible anxiety" for junior doctors which shouldn't have happened. The government has now offered doctors one interview but the British Medical Association said it was "unacceptable".

Takeover of first NHS hospital- Good Hope in Birmingham becomes the Heart of England
Tue 3 Apr 07- The first takeover of an insolvent National Health Service hospital by one of Labour's flagship foundation trusts will formally take effect next Sunday, the health service announced at the weekend - paving the way for similar solutions for a number of other, effectively bankrupt, NHS institutions.

Labour's dentistry health reforms 'have failed directly'
Mon 2 Apr 07- Radical Labour Government reforms to improve patient access to NHS dentists have failed, it was claimed. The charity Citizens Advice said there is “huge inequality” in access to dentists in England and Wales, and urged action to deal with “dentistry deserts” in many areas including some parts of Hampshire and Lancashire. It claimed two million people are forced to put off treatment or go private because they can't find an NHS dentist.

More than half of NHS Staff wouldn't be treated at their own hospital
Fri 30 Mar 07- Fewer than half of NHS staff members would be happy to be a patient at their own hospital, according to an official survey by the health service regulator. More than a quarter, 27 per cent, said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: "I would be happy with the standards of care provided if I was a patient in my trust".

Hewitt U turn as hospital trusts to be free of Labour's RBA rule
Thu 29 Mar 07- An accounting rule that has plunged more than two dozen hospital trusts into an irrecoverable financial position is to be ditched, Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, announced yesterday. Now "absolutely confident" that the National Health Service would record a small surplus at the end of this financial year, Ms Hewitt said it could now use part of the £450m contingency reserve that strategic health authorities had built up to find the £179m needed to end a rule that the health department had long accepted was "unsustainable".

Reckless NHS recruitment blamed for cash shortage
Wed 28 Mar 07- NHS planning has been a disastrous failure, leading to an uncontrolled boom in the workforce followed by a bust in budgets, a report by MPs says. The health service set out in 1999 to recruit 20,000 more nurses by 2004 but hired 67,878 — 340 per cent over target. It also recruited twice as many GPs as planned and 69 per cent more health professionals, such as physiotherapists.

NHS crisis is forcing cuts to maternity care, charity warns
Tue 27 Mar 07- Support for pregnant women is being cut because of the NHS's financial troubles, a healthcare charity has warned. The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) says it is receiving "increasing reports" that NHS antenatal classes, breastfeeding services and postnatal visits are being cancelled.

Treatment delays give patients new cancers
Mon 26 Mar 07- Cancer patients who have had tumours removed are dying because they are waiting so long for for follow-up radiotherapy that their tumours return, a government report has found. After surgery, patients should receive radiotherapy within 28 days, according to the Royal College of Radiologists. However, in some areas, patients are waiting three times as long. In Kent, for example, the waiting time for breast cancer patients who have had tumours removed by surgery is three months.

Labour's not fit for purpose, irrational, arbitrary drugs policy attacked again- 19 Mar 07

Risks of taking drugs- tobacco and alcohol 'are more dangerous than LSD'
Fri 23 Mar 07- Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs including the hallucinogen LSD and the dance drug ecstasy, according to a new scale for assessing the dangers posed by recreational substances. Drug specialists say the current system for ranking drugs - class A for the most dangerous to class C for the least dangerous, as set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act - is "not fit for purpose, irrational, arbitrary and lacking in transparency".

MPs expose lack of control over NHS billions
Thu 22 Mar 07- A devastating insight into financial mismanagement at all levels of the NHS- from Labour ministers down to hospital bureaucrats- is provided by a committee of MPs. The report by the all party Public Accounts Committee exposes how billions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being poured into a health system with inadequate financial controls and low levels of accounting expertise. The MPs conclude that NHS structures are so inadequate that the Department of Health has no idea what the effect of last year's total deficit of £570 million is having on patient care.

Warning over cuts to subsidies on drugs advice
Wed 21 Mar 07- Looming cuts to funding for independent prescription advice for doctors could undermine the best use of medicines in the UK, a senior medical figure warned yesterday. Sir Charles George, director of the British Medical Association's BMJ Group, which publishes a range of guides for doctors, said: "We're worried that a number of sources of information about good prescribing have disappeared."

The cost of NHS hospital parking- £95m
Tue 20 Mar 07- NHS hospitals were yesterday accused of exploiting the "most vulnerable" after they were found to have made more than £95 million in parking charges last year. Patients attending for treatment and relatives or friends visiting people in hospital were charged up to £3.50 an hour despite paying to build car parks through their taxes.

Junior doctors recruitment fiasco- "this is a fight we cannot afford to lose"
Mon 19 Mar 07- Some 12,000 people took part in Saturday's march through central London. That represents more than one in three junior doctors in Britain. Consider that another one in three or four was working or asleep between nightshifts, and that most doctors have not been on a march before, and you will understand the scale of the anger.

NHS workforce falls by 11,000
Fri 16 Mar 07- The number of people working in the NHS fell by 11,000 in the last quarter of 2006, official figures reveal. Health unions said the loss across the UK, revealed in Office for National Statistics, would "inevitably have a negative impact on patient care". Total full and part time NHS staff numbers are estimated by the ONS as being 1,222,000.

Handling of GPs' out-of-hours service is 'shambolic' claim MPs
Thu 15 Mar 07- The labour Government's handling of out-of-hours services for GP patients is condemned as "shambolic" by an all-party committee of MPs. The best interests of patients had not been served by the new system, the public purse had suffered and Saturday morning surgeries had been abandoned, the Publice Accounts Committee said.

English denied cancer drug given to Scots by NICE
Wed 14 Mar 07- Lung cancer victims in England and Wales are to be denied a life-saving drug available on the National Health Service in Scotland — at least the eighth such decision in the past two years. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) last week rejected Tarceva, which is used to treat lung cancer, on the grounds it is not an effective use of NHS resources.

Hypocrite Brown bitten over his private dental work
Tue 15 Mar 07- The chancellor has been accused of spurning the National Health Service by paying hundreds of pounds for routine dental work to a private dentist known for his celebrity clients. Gordon "Brother" Brown had root canal work done by Mervyn Druian, who runs a surgery in north London. He charges up to £650 for the procedure, compared with a standard NHS cost of £42.

Medical errors- new campaign aims to reduce deaths and costs
Mon, 12 Mar 07- A safety drive is to be launched by the government's health watchdog in the face of "alarming" figures on the harm patients suffer in hospital and elsewhere. Various studies, some using US data, estimate that there is a one in 300 chance of a hospital patient dying as a result of medical error. One in 10 is estimated to suffer harm, of whom a third suffer serious harm, while studies suggest that 600 errors are made a day in primary care with more than one in 10 prescriptions containing errors.

Doubts over bid to charge foreigners for NHS care
Fri, 9 Mar 07- A fresh drive to charge foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, for National Health Service care has been announced by John Reid, the home secretary - but well ahead of the health department being able to say how that will work in practice. Mr Reid announced pilot schemes to be run in three unidentified trusts in which hospitals and GPs will be able to check patients' eligibility for free treatment against data held by the Border and Immigration Agency. Labour still claims that from 2008 all foreign nationals will have to have identity cards with records held on a national database.

Climb down over junior doctor fiasco MMC MTAS IT system
Thu 8 Mar 07- The Labour govt backed down yesterday and agreed to an immediate review of a flawed selection system that has left thousands of able young doctors without the prospect of a job and many threatening to leave the NHS. The independent review will start today and may recommend changes to the system before the current interview round has been completed.

Doctors who face the dole as MMC's application IT system remains as fiasco
Wed 7 Mar 07- Given all the emphasis on investing in and improving the NHS, the idea of a wave of doctor unemployment seems a nonsense. Alarmingly, however, it is very much a reality. Last week, the fears of thousands of junior doctors were realised when they failed to secure interviews for trainee consultant posts under a new fast-track system called Modernising Medical Careers. The doctors who missed out are left wondering whether to try to retrain in another speciality, emigrate, or leave medicine altogether.

New hearing aid target set as patients wait up to 70 weeks
Tue 6 Mar 07- Health trusts are being told by the government to make sure people with routine hearing problems are assessed for a hearing aid within six weeks. Thousands of people in the North West of England are being forced to wait up to 70 weeks for tests to see if they need a hearing aid. Stockport has been found to be the worst area for waiting times.

Health Direct praises NHS workers' blogs as thousands of NHS staff protest over job cuts
Mon 5 Mar 07- In respect to the national day of action on Saturday that was called in support of the NHS and to protest against cuts in both patient care and staff jobs, Health Direct praises four blogs written by NHS staff. Random Acts Of Reality by Tom Reynolds an E.M.T working for the London Ambulance Service; NHS Blog Doctor by Dr John Crippen, Life in the NHS by Julie and Nee Naw by Mark Myers.

Labours NHS cash cutbacks mean that three out of four patients are denied treatment- 26 Feb 07

Full scale of Labour's NHS cutbacks revealed
Fri 2 Mar 07- The full scale of impending hospital closures was laid bare last night as it emerged that three out of four trusts are already restricting patients' access to treatment as they battle soaring deficits. Fears about the number of closures intensified as Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, sent NHS managers a guide on how best to handle decisions to shut down hospitals and units - a document that opposition politicians immediately branded a "spin" blueprint.

Why the NHS's finances will never add up under bliar's crooked books
Thu 1 Mar 07- A short letter published in the Telegraph this week highlighted the contradiction inherent in the Labour Government's attempts to improve the cost-effectiveness of the NHS. NHS hospital surgery is paid for on an ill thought out tariff basis that could cripple the health service.

1.7m will have dementia by 2051
Wed 28 Feb 07- More than 1.7 million people in the UK will have dementia by 2051, costing billions of pounds each year, experts have forecast. The grim projections are based on the most up to date evaluation of dementia. Currently 700,000 - or one person in every 88 in the UK - has dementia, incurring a yearly cost of £17bn.

Seven more PFI hospitals to go ahead
Tue 27 Feb 07- Seven more private finance initiative (PFI) hospitals, with a capital value of almost £1.5bn, were finally given the go-ahead yesterday but amid growing frustration among PFI providers at the time it is taking for the Department of Health to adjust hospital building plans to the new, more competitive, NHS market.

Hospitals told not to operate until cancer patients have waited 20 weeks
Mon 26 Feb 2007- A NHS surgeon today exposed how cash-strapped hospitals were being barred from operating on cancer patients who had not waited long enough. Wayne Jaffe laid the blame for the appalling state of affairs at the feet of Tony Bliar, with his vision of reduced waiting times and 24-hour surgery. In a withering assessment of the financial management of the health service, Mr Jaffe said that doctors were being restricted in getting waiting lists down by financial limitations and ever-changing targets.

MRSA and Clostridium Difficile up 50 per cent- the proof of Labour's failure- 19 Feb 07

MRSA and Clostridium difficile deaths up by half in year
Fri 23 Feb 07- The Health Direct blog was partly set up in response to the preventable crisis that is killing thousands of patients in the UK. We calculated back in 2004 that fewer people being killed on UK roads than by superbugs. Since then Health Direct calculates that in 2005, there were nearly 70 per cent more deaths linked to MRSA and Clostridium difficile than were people killed in traffic accidents on all of the UK’s roads.

More trusts expect deficits as NHS spending cuts bite
Thu 22 Feb 07- Patricia Hewitt's job as secretary of state for health looked safer yesterday as the National Health Service forecast a tiny overall surplus for the current financial year despite more trusts projecting a bigger gross deficit than last year.

Smoke detectives are taking over bliar's nanny streets
Wed 21 Feb 07- Thousands of council officers will be on the streets this summer, patrolling bars, restaurants and shops to police the smoking ban. Smokers' campaigning groups said the scheme would be a "complete waste of public money". The British Beer and Pub Association said the plan was "heavy handed". Local authorities have been granted £29.5 million to raise awareness about the rules.

Barking Bliar's latest drive to cut waiting times for NHS operations
Tue 20 Feb 07- Tony Bliar yesterday stepped up the drive to define his legacy by declaring that he wanted to see "the framework" in place to ensure that by the end of 2008 no one waits more than 18 weeks for an operation after seeing the GP. The target- originally announced two and a half years ago implies an average wait of eight to nine weeks. How he intends to achieve this breakthrough without providing any extra money was not explained.

Disillusioned doctors say Labour decade of reform has failed NHS
Mon 19 Feb 07- Most doctors believe that Labour has failed to reform the NHS and that funding by taxation alone will not improve the quality of care. An online poll of more than 3,000 doctors carried out for The Times offers the most striking picture yet of the level of disillusionment within the profession. Most say that the billions of pounds injected into the service since 2002 have not been well spent and that services have not improved.

Cash crisis hits sexual health STD clinics
Fri 16 Feb 07- Sexual health clinics are struggling to hit labour government targets due to a lack of funding. Despite sexual health being one of the Government's top NHS priorities, plans are not always implemented on the ground, a new report claims.

Clash of NHS targets- MRSA and cash underfunding or clean hospitals
Thu 15 Feb 07- The labour government's NHS waiting targets and wish to tackle the spread of hospital acquired infections like MRSA are in direct conflict, according to a leading expert. Professor Hajo Grundmann, currently based at Groningham University Medical Centre in Holland, maps the incidence of MRSA across the European Union.

NHS paying bills late in struggle to balance books, say suppliers
Wed 14 Feb 07- The National Health Service is delaying paying bills and cutting orders for supplies as it tries to balance its books, according to the trade associations whose members supply the service with everything from scanners to diagnostic tests. Ray Hodgkinson, director-general of the British Healthcare Trades Association, said that while the picture was highly variable "some of our members are having real trouble getting money out of NHS trusts".

Doctors who ban surgery for fat smokers are right, says nanny Hewitt
Tue 13 Feb 07- Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has given her blessing to the policy of denying operations to smokers until they kick the habit. Endorsing a position adopted by some health trusts, the minister also voiced support for doctors who order patients to lose weight before treatment.

Pregnant mothers are turned away due to midwife cash shortages
Mon 12 Feb 07- A dire shortage of midwives is forcing maternity units to turn away expectant mothers, a survey has found. Figures show that centres across England closed temporarily for a total of 170 days last year, during which time women would have had to go elsewhere for help.The survey, collated by the controversial research organisation Dr Foster, found that 24 of the 39 maternity units forced to close had to do so for periods of 24 hours or more.

Bed closures healthy sign for NHS, says Patricia Hewitt
Fri 9 Feb 07- Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, was criticised yesterday for claiming bed closures were a sign of "success" as new figures showed NHS trusts will end the year more than £1 billion in the red. The scale of the health service's financial crisis emerged as Miss Hewitt delivered a presentation to the Cabinet on NHS "reconfiguration"— plans which will lead to the closure of dozens of maternity units, casualty departments and community hospitals.

Labour govt warns PCTs over lack of funding for dentistry capacity
Thu 8 Feb 07- Patients may have to resort to emergency care, or find an alternative practice, because their dentists have fulfilled their annual contracts too soon. The Department of Health has warned primary care trusts to have 'clear lines ready in case of media interest' if patients are left without a dentist in the closing weeks of the financial year.

NICE faces inquiry by Commons MPs group
Wed 7 Feb 07- The Commons health committee has announced terms of reference for a broad inquiry into the work of NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The committee said it wanted to examine "why Nice's decisions are increasingly being challenged" after recent controversial recommendations that the NHS should not use certain costly cancer drugs and should restrict the use of drugs to treat Alzheimer's to those with moderate forms of the disease.

Bird flu- health officials finally propose big rise in antiviral drugs for pandemic
Tue 6 Feb 07- Health officials are proposing up to a sixfold increase in the UK's stockpile of antiviral drugs as they reinforce preparations against a possible flu pandemic in the coming months. Based on computer simulations of the likely spread of the virus, experts believe it may be worth increasing stocks of the drug Tamiflu, made by Roche, the Swiss based pharmaceutical group, from the current 14.5m courses to 60m 90m, or up to one and a half packets for every UK resident.

NHS chief rules out review of £12bn IT system
Mon 5 Feb 07- There is to be no independent review of the National Health Service's controversial £12bn information technology programme according to the head of the NHS, although significant changes in the way it is implemented appear to be on the way. David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, said nothing "has led me to believe that we are wildly off course" or that "a major review of the programme is required at this particular stage"

Final nail in NHS's coffin as all treatments are devolved to private health care sector- 29 Jan 07

NHS disintegration continues as health trust may hand most roles to private companies
Fri 2 Feb 07- Hillingdon primary care trust in London may become the first to hand over almost all its core functions to the private sector, including the commissioning of millions of pounds of care for National Health Service patients. The move, which is likely to provoke bitter opposition from the health service unions, would see the private sector taking over not just the provision of community services but the assessment, planning, contracting, procurement and performance management of £258m a year's worth of health care for its local population.

Dental patients hit as dentists funding fails to add up
Thu 1 Feb 07- Dentists are turning away patients because miscalculations by the Department of Health have resulted in local health authorities running out of money in the dental budget. The problem has arisen because dentists have been treating more patients who are exempt from dental charges than had been anticipated under the new dental contract which came into force last April.

BMA team 'stunned by GP contract' as a bit of a laugh
Wed 31 Jan 07- GPs were so stunned by the terms offered to them when negotiating their new contract in 2004 that they thought it was a "bit of a laugh", a doctor has said. Dr Simon Fradd, who was one of British Medical Association's GP negotiators, said they were shocked by the approach taken by the labour government. They could not believe that the labour govt was stupid enough to offer GPs the chance not to do evening and weekend work for only a 6% pay cut, he said.

MPs want greater scrutiny of PFI hospitals to prevent more waste
Tue 30 Jan 07- Hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) must be subject to much "closer and sustained scrutiny" if millions more pounds are not to be wasted, the Public Accounts Committee said. Estimated capital costs for 17 PFI schemes approved by the end of 2005 have more than doubled - up by some £4bn to £13bn.

Only 9% want medical treatments decided by MPs
Mon 29 Jan 07- The public wants politics left out of treatment decision, says survey. Decisions on NHS treatments should be made by clinicians, public representatives and managers - and not politicians, according to a MORI poll for the NHS Confederation. Asked which groups people felt should decide on the availability of NHS medicines 70 per cent said clinicians. Just 9 per cent thought MPs should make judgements, while 6 per cent thought councillors should be involved.

Warning of obesity risks to entire generation
Fri 26 Jan 07- An entire generation of children now at primary school is heading towards increased rates of serious health problems, an influential committee of MPs says. It criticises the departments of Health and Education and Skills for doing too little to stem the "alarming" obesity epidemic. At least one primary school child in seven is now classed as obese.

Bliar effect is hurting Labour a new ICM poll confirms
Thu 25 Jan 07- Declining public trust in Tony Bliar is dragging down wider public support for Labour, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published this week. It shows that the Conservatives have secured a lead in policy areas that once helped Mr Blair win three commanding general election victories.

Conservative's Cameron would hand power back to GPs
Wed 24 Jan 07- Many centralist targets for the National Health Service would be scrapped under a Conservative government as more purchasing power was handed to family doctors, David Cameron, the Tory leader, said yesterday. The policy would encompass a full-blooded return to GP fundholding- the practice of giving family doctors budgets to buy care on behalf of their patients, which Labour originally abolished but is now partially reinstating through it's latest policy wheeze of practice based commissioning (PBC).

Health Direct backs Keep our NHS Public!
Tue 23 Jan 07- The NHS stands at a crossroads. For nearly 60 years Britain has enjoyed a National Health Service that strives to be comprehensive, accessible and high value for money. Now the labour government reforms threaten both the ethos of the NHS, and the planned and equitable way in which it delivers care to patients.

PFI firms make £23bn profits from NHS
Mon 22 Jan 07- The private sector will make £23bn in profits and interest over the next 30 years by building NHS hospitals, campaigners have calculated. Under the private finance initiative, a company builds a hospital and then gets "rent" from the NHS for a set term. A report by the Keep Our NHS Public claims the Labour government is carrying out "patchwork privatisation" of the NHS.

Public sick of Labour's spin as Brown tries to sell the NHS off- 15th Jan 07

Labour accused of omitting research that shows public sick of spin
Fri 19 Jan 07- Labour was accused yesterday of glossing over criticisms about its performance made in a public opinion poll. A 21-page document on the poll's findings, published on the Cabinet Office website as part of Tony Blair's policy review, revealed concerns over state interference in people's lives. But the Conservatives claimed that almost 90 pages of the more critical findings by Ipsos MORI had been "deleted" from the text.

Consultant attacks neglect on wards
Thu 18 Jan 07- A senior doctor claims that patients are at risk on hospital wards after watching elderly relatives develop "needless" and "distressing" complications. Dr Katherine Teale, a consultant anaesthetist at Hope Hospital, Salford, spoke out after two family members developed bed sores and a third lost six per cent of body weight following prolonged nausea. In an article in the British Medical Journal, she described the "invisible barrier between the nursing station and the patient areas" while visiting relatives and friends in hospitals across the country.

Catalogue of abuse in NHS care homes
Wed 17 Jan 07- The NHS faces being stripped of its responsibility for learning disability services after inspectors today issue the second damning report in six months into the care of some of the most vulnerable members of society. People with learning disabilities had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse at a hospital in London, according to an investigation by the Healthcare Commission.

Brother Brown can’t cure this paralysed NHS, so he plans to privatise it
Tue 16 Jan 07- The former Granada boss Sir Gerry Robinson recently spent six months trying to reform Rotherham general hospital. The result was shown in three hours of fly on the wall television on BBC2 last week. It was rightly put after the watershed: as politics it was certificate 18. At the end of each day Robinson could be seen slumped in the back of his car, his face buried in his hands. A tycoon sobbing in a limousine is the perfect icon of Labour’s health service.

Tories claim labour government has lost faith in SHAs' control of the workforce
Mon 15 Jan 07- The shadow health secretary has accused the government of losing confidence in the ability of strategic health authorities to manage workforce planning. Andrew Lansley has written to health secretary Patricia Hewitt in response to the leaked Department of Health pay and workforce strategy for 2008-11. The document, revealed in Health Direct last week, forecast a shortage of 14,000 nurses and a glut of 3,200 consultants by 2011.

MRSA out of control- Labour more concerend with spin than cleanliness- 8th Jan 07

MRSA superbug claims may surge against NHS
Fri 12 Jan 07- A flood of MRSA compensation claims could finally be realised as lawyers turn to workplace safety legislation to pursue hospitals. To date it has been hard to pin the blame on the NHS, as it is never known exactly when a person becomes infected. But recent successes have prompted a rethink in how lawyers tackle cases, with many making use of laws governing the control of hazardous substances.

NHS hospitals may never achieve MRSA superbug targets
Thu 11 Jan 07- The NHS is not on track to meet its MRSA target and perhaps never will, a leaked government memo says. In November 2004, then health secretary John Reid pledged MRSA rates would be halved by April 2008. But the memo, sent to ministers by a Department of Health official, said it would only be cut by a third by then. It also reportedly recommended ways to handle the news in the media. Dr Mark Enright, from Imperial College, said the target was "unrealistic".

Maternity wards cash cut amid boom in birthrate, say midwives
Wed 10 Jan 07- The NHS is responding to a boom in the birthrate by cutting spending on maternity services, the Royal College of Midwives said after a survey of more than 100 heads of midwifery in hospital trusts across Britain. It found that two thirds of maternity units were understaffed and most were trying to save money by employing fewer qualified midwives and taking on maternity support workers instead.

Labour "rising star" Andy Burnham promoted to tackle NHS reforms
Tue 9 Jan 07- Andy Burnham, the health minister responsible for delivery and quality, was pitched into the heart of the battle over the labour government's health service changes last week as he took over responsibility for system reform, following the departure of Lord Warner.

NHS faces big risks from back pay claims under Agenda for Change reviews
Mon 8 Jan 07- NHS staff claims for back pay under the Agenda for Change (AfC) contract are the 'biggest risk' to the Department of Health's pay and workforce strategy. The draft strategy, seen by HSJ, claims that there are currently nearly 11,000 back pay claims outstanding from lawyers acting on a no-win, no-fee basis, as well as trade unions representing NHS staff members, with the number rising by about 200 claims a month.

The Happy New Year message to NHS staff is 36,000 job cuts predicted by the Labour Govt 2nd Jan 07

Report on NHS staffing angers unions as it predicts 36,000 NHS jobs lost this year
Fri 5 Jan 07- The National Health Service is set to shed more than 36,000 jobs this year before facing "very volatile" changes in its workforce that could leave it with thousands more hospital consultants than it can afford to employ, according to a leaked document from the Department of Health. At the same time, however, big cuts in nurse and medical training budgets last year and this year could mean the service will be short of 14,000 nurses, 1,200 family doctors and 1,100 junior hospital staff by 2011.

Public mistrust of labour's statistics remains high
Thu 4 Jan 07- Seen as curmudgeonly bearers of bad tidings, statisticians are rarely top of anyone's Christmas card list. As the joke goes, a statistician loves to work with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant. Yet those who can bring themselves to cast aside their trademark gloom can identify positive trends in 2006: the economy is growing, alcopop consumption is declining, we are recycling more, and we are giving more to charity

NHS hospitals told to delay operations to ease health service's debt underfunding
Wed 3 Jan 07- The New Year has only just begun but it is clear that the next three months are not a good time to become ill as the NHS can not cope with Labour's underfunding of the health services as patients in some parts of the National Health Service are for the first time facing minimum waits to be seen and treated as managers attempt to balance their books. Suffolk, Hertfordshire, North Yorkshire and Kingston are all imposing various forms of minimum wait, with some primary care trust chiefs saying their organisations may follow suit as the NHS battles to recover from last year's £536m plus overspend.

Labour leader defends hypocritical charges over NHS closures in her constituency
Tue 2 Jan 07- Cabinet minister Hazel Blears has defended her decision to take part in a protest over plans to close part of a hospital in her constituency. The proposals for Hope Hospital in Salford, Greater Manchester, are part of the controversial NHS shake up throughout the country. Ms Blears, Labour chairwoman, said: "My first and foremost job is to represent Salford and the people of the area." It is very rare for a minister to directly oppose labour government policy.

Please note- Respect given where respect is due.
Whilst we applaud and respect the NHS staff that work and deliver incredible results to patients under pressure from ridiculous amounts of red tape in adverse conditions, we deplore the armies of paper pushers that the Labour government is creating in their desperate attempt to justify the huge amounts of tax that they are wasting on the NHS.

We are a "not for profit" organisation who believes that in the new era of openness under the Freedom of Information Act that it is in the interests of all parties to be open and honest about the value for money that the new Labour reforms are achieving for all of the billions of pounds that they are costing.

Please have a look at our free online blog for a compete listing of all of our NHS stories.

Official Health Direct Blog- NHS advice, news, information, spin.

Health Direct 2007 News.