Health direct 2006- NHS news and advice on Labour spin.

This Health Direct weekly NHS news review is written in a contra blog-like layout in advancing chronological order with the latest news at the bottom of the page, however the overview links are in the usual date format:

Choose and Book- the supposed "brave new world"- 2 January 06

Most patients in England gained a historic new right this week - to be treated in a private hospital at National Health Service expense. The arrival of "patient choice" - the right to choose, initially from at least four hospitals, and by 2008 from any hospital prepared to meet NHS standards and prices - is a symbolic moment in the Labour government's endeavour to use market forces to drive up health service performance. Unfortunately the IT Choose and Book system that was supposed to underpin the whole process has just been put back by a whole year.

The Postcode lottery was revealed when a leading trust stopped the routine procedure- Cardiac catheter ablation that cured Tony Bliar of a heart murmur citing it's financial deficit and the need to hit the government's six month waiting list targets.

Then at the end of the week we had two stories analysing the chances of the Labour govt meeting it's 18 week target for patient treatments. As Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at York University said "What these figures show,” he said “is that of the three elements needed to get to an overall 18-week target, one (the outpatient wait) is falling far too slowly, one (the wait for diagnostics) may well rise before it falls, and the third (the time spent on the waiting list before an operation)] is going in the wrong direction.

Money and IT dominate the week's health direct news- 9 January 06

In it's desperation to get Doctors on it's side the Labour govt announced a new 'bribe' to encourage GPs to take up practice-based commissioning which will doom the whole policy to failure, according to the leading pressure group for GP commissioning. However, the National Association for Primary Care said the new nationally set financial incentive will mean PBC will 'sink before it has even got going'.

Not to be outdone the Welsh health service suffered a huge embarrassment when Jonathan Osborne, an ENT consultant in North Wales, resigned as chairman of the Welsh consultants' committee. He highlighted the unprecedented cash shortage for hospitals in Wales. Most NHS trusts are millions of pounds under funded and the news of ward closures, non-availability of services, job cuts and stubbornly high waiting lists are daily breakfast news to the people of Wales.

The Scots had their own problems when hundreds of patients have been put at risk after a computer glitch caused parts of their medical notes to disappear and become attached to other patients' records. The errors were caused by faulty software in the controversial GPASS computer system used by more than 80% of GPs in Scotland.

Lastly, a survey reveals a growing number of clinicians are worried about roll-out of national IT systems. Support among the key target users of the world's largest civil computer programme, the IT-based modernisation of the NHS, has largely dissipated despite a major communications drive in recent months, according to a new survey.

Only 1% of those who responded to the largest survey yet carried out into the views of doctors on the national programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) rated progress as "good" or "excellent". Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Embarrassing warnings by Health Select Committee and experts views of the new Labour health plans- 16 January 06

The authoritive British Medical Journal published a report highlighting staff shortages in radiotherapy units across the UK which are leading to long waits for cancer patients and may be reducing their survival chances

A report launched by sexual health charities showed an alarming lack of local NHS planning to improve sexual health in England, despite considerable central Government funding being made available to do so- with up to half of PCTs failing to mention plans to improve key STD areas such as faster access to sexual health services.

The effects of the health service funding crisis- 23 January 06

Patient treatment is suffering as a result of labour govt under funding claims a survey of chief executives of NHS trusts which also reveals the depth of concern among healthcare professionals about the destabilising impact of wide-ranging govt reforms. The spiraling cash crisis in the NHS has already forced two thirds of hospitals to close wards and will soon start directly affecting patient care, health chiefs warn.

The Royal College of Nursing also warned that health managers have been freezing jobs, cancelling training and cutting up to 4,000 posts as they struggle to reduce ballooning deficits that have swelled to £1.2bn with operations cancelled, appointments deferred and wards closed,

With all of the media attention currently focusing on the sex offenders lists and the recruitment and use of pedophiles in our schools system, we highlight the loopholes in the health recruitment system for sex offenders that allows staff to be employed in front-line children's services for up to six months before their records are revealed but these do not cross-reference with either the sex offenders register or local police information.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt repeated her warnings that hospitals will close- January 30

Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, called for the end of the "handout culture" in the NHS this week and demanded that financial management be put ahead of clinical objectives and that poor performers will result in closures.

She also signaled that a swathe of hospital closures and reconfigurations was necessary step to get the National Health Service back into financial balance. The health secretary's admission that big changes would be needed in the way services were delivered in some parts of the country came as she announced she was sending "turnaround teams" into the 18 NHS organisations facing the greatest financial risks.

PFI Hospital building schemes face major cuts as the NHS’s £12bn hospital building programme in England faces a cut of up to 40 per cent, according to leaked documents. Although the department has repeatedly denied there is a review or moratorium on new PFI hospitals under way, it has now admitted to a “reappraisal”

Bliar confirms his NHS health failures- 6 February 06

Tony Bliar admits that billions of Pounds that he has poured into the NHS have not made it the world class service he promised. He reveals that the postcode lottery still affects the kind of treatment they get. Tony Bliar admits his NHS failures

The latest figures for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were released, revealling that the NHS is highly unlikely to achieve the goal of cutting rates by 50 per cent within the next two years. MRSA still rising as hit squads go in to failing hospitals as half of all hospitals in England are failing to control the MRSA superbug in line with government targets in spite of a drive to improve awareness and ward hygiene. These figures only cover the traditionally quiet summer months- so worse is yet to come.

Lung Cancer Patients' Charter set up to combat NHS bias- Lung cancer is the UK's biggest cancer killer but sufferers are still not getting the care and attention they deserve, campaigners say with only 6% of cancer funds going to this disease. Patients who want more done to combat the disease have drawn up a Lung Cancer Patients Charter to set minimum standards for treatment.

Half of elderly care homes give people the wrong drugs claims CSCI watchdog The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) found that thousands of elderly people in care homes are being given the wrong medicine, someone else's medicine or doses that are dangerous. Nearly half of all care homes in England fail to meet minimum standards for managing medicines prescribed by GPs, says the independent watchdog.

Lastly, 'over-performing' surgeons turn away non-emergency cases in the latest NHS cash crisis. One of the Labour government's most successful flagship hospitals has been forced to ban non-emergency surgery after doctors cut long waiting lists by carrying out 'too many' operations. Flagship hospital halts operations in NHS cash crisis Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Bliar breaks yet another promise- 13 February 06

The move to bring back "Matron", a key policy in the Government's reform of the NHS, has been dealt a blow by a hospital trust that is considering axing half of its "modern matron" posts. Hospital trusts to cut modern Matron jobs in cash crisis Under cost-cutting plans to deal with a deficit of about £2 million, Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is considering losing 185 staff over two years, which it hopes will be absorbed in natural wastage.

The tantalising prospect that Cancer care could be transformed within 20 years from a fatal disease to a manageable condition like diabetes, experts was announced this week. Cancer- we can control it but you can't afford it But the cost of ensuring that cancer is no longer a death sentence could not be funded under the current National Health Service, they will argue.

The scandal of the week- Labour breaks it's manifesto pledge as another promise goes up in smoke- Tony Bliar has broken another manifesto promise as his MPs voted to ban smoking in all pubs, restaurants, private clubs and most workplaces across Britain by the summer of next year. Ironically, care homes and hospitals will be exempt form the smoking ban.

The number of people with sexually transmitted diseases has soared over the past 10 years, creating a health crisis that threatens to overwhelm the NHS. Cases of Syphilis have risen by 1,400 per cent over the past 10 years, from only 141 cases in 1995 to 2,254 in 2004. The huge rise in STDs prompts calls for sex tests for all on high street

Another reminder that Ministers need to be careful about the pace of reform of the National Health Service came when Sir Michael Lyons, acting chairman of the Audit Commission warned. "It would be very easy to say slow it all down," Commission warns Health ministers to keep careful watch on pace of reforms Sir Michael said in an interview with the Financial Times as huge changes are taking place in the way the NHS works. Organisations are reporting deficits running into tens of millions of pounds with the service in England likely to overspend this year by several hundred million. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NICE's primacy confirmed in Herceptin cancer drug High Court case- 20 February 06

A mother fighting for the NHS to supply her with the Herceptin cancer drug that could save her life loses NHS Herceptin drug court case in the High Court. The judge ruled that Swindon Primary Care Trust (PCT) had acted legally in deciding that Ann Marie Rogers, 54, was not "an exceptional case".

This "win" for the bureaucrats confirms NICE's primacy as the main road block in the development of new treatments and drugs for the NHS aka Nice Blight.

The depth of the health changes and it's effect on front line health professionals occurred when annoyed health staff have joined a new waiting list in Wales where Welsh Health Authority staff have to wait more than a year to get back pay- which has arisen from the restructuring "Agenda for Change" exercise.

Labour Ministers are pursuing “meaningless and unambitious” health targets that will fail to rid Scotland of its reputation as the sick man of Europe, one of the country’s leading economists has warned. Dr Andrew Walker, a health economist at Glasgow University and a former NHS manager, has condemned as “useless” eight of the Scottish executive’s 14 key health targets.

Doubts are being raised about the future of new PFI hospitals which are being built using private money. Billions of pounds have been spent on PFI projects to date, but many more are still in the pipeline. Are Labour's bad habits of moving the goal posts in the middle of a game about to score a spectacular own goal by Ministers making the future financing of the all of the proposed new NHS capital building projects too risky for potential financiers? This effectively stops the whole new NHS building programme.

The number of deaths linked to the hospital superbug MRSA has risen by nearly a quarter, in only 2 years. MRSA deaths double under Labour- latest statistics report from The Office for National Statistics data revealed that between 2003 and 2004 the mentions of MRSA, on death certificates increased by 22% to 1,168. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the number of deaths has more than doubled. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Health Direct welcomes the Department of Health (DoH) to our blog- 27 February 06

This was the week when we received official confirmation that the Department of Health is activity monitoring our Health Direct blog. In case you don't understand the health issues here's an analogy that football fans up and down the land recognise only too clearly:

Your team is languishing in the lower reaches of the division when amid great fanfare and razzmatazz a new board of directors takes over promising to save the club by buying several new players to propel the club towards the playoffs.

To placate the grumbling sell out crowds they also promise to rebuild the stadium for the brave new world in a higher league.

To help pay for the ground improvements the cost of the season ticket is doubled- and the board forgot to mention that the overall seating capacity would be reduced.

As the Board are such skinflints rather than finance the building of the new stands from the ongoing cashflow and their own pockets they resort to paying for the construction with their credit cards hoping to hide their debts.

The new foreign star striker scores a few goals but his goals per game productivity ratio are less than the old carthorse who we’d had for the past few seasons.

As the new midfield generals- who were signed on long term contracts costing astronomical weekly wages are so good the board worried that these new players would show up the poorly performing existing players. Thus the board decreed that henceforth all of our midfielders will play without any bootlaces.

The hard pressed new central defenders who were supposed to underpin the whole team’s transformation don’t link up properly- and one even managed to get himself suspended for a year.

The new goalkeeper is useless at saving penalties. Whenever we give a penalty away- which we seem to do with alarming frequency he can’t decide whether to listen to the crowd, his managing director- or rely on his own experience to save the spot kick.

Consequently the goalie stands rooted to the line hoping that the ball will hit him- which it never does as the kicker invariably flicks the ball around him. Pleasing no one.

The board keep promising to buy new players for the club but the contract negotiations seem to take ages and the supporters have precious little to show for all the media stories linking the club to fantastic new world class wingers.

In desperation, the board starts meddling in the team selection for games and eventually sacks the new manager. Which results in an expensive payoff.

All the while cash is draining out of the club as it’s antiquated administration and auditing systems utterly fail to control the club’s resources.

As a supporter- do you think that this board deserves your vote at the next AGM?

I want to save my local club rather than see it being led by lying incompetents and sink into a financial morass which may lead to it’s closure. Forcing us to travel twenty miles to support the next football club. How environmentally friendly and joined up thinking is that?

The black hole in public sector pensions is almost four times larger than originally estimated, Whitehall accounts show as the unfunded black hole in NHS pensions schemes grows to £26.8 billion. This follows a change in the way the Government works out the cost of its retirement schemes. Labour Government documents show that since last year the amount of annual provision needed for public sector pensions has risen from £24.2 billion to £81 billion. For the NHS the Treasury figures disclosed that the provision for the NHS pension schemes this year are some £26.8 billion, rather than the £7.8 billion in the previous year's figures.

The National Health Service is heading for a record overspend at a time of record growth, according to the latest returns from hospitals and health authorities. Senior executives said yesterday the service in England was heading NHS overspend climbs to record £790m at the end of January - up from the £620m that was forecast in only December.

A report of a joint study by the Healthcare Commission, the National Audit Office and the Audit Commission warns that "Without clearer leadership from Departments there is a risk that the Labour Government's target to halt the rise in obesity in children under 11 will not be met." Obesity reports Labour failure of leadership to keep its promise The report investigates the strength and efficiency of that part of the delivery chain that aims to reduce obesity in children between the ages of 5 and 10.

Why is NHS productivity falling- yet Labour claims it could be rising? The Office for National Statistics started a fierce disagreement over output and productivity in the National Health Service this week as it launched a consultation into the issue. The ONS reported that different techniques could show NHS productivity rose by 1.6 per cent a year between 1999 and 2004 or that it fell by 1.5 per cent a year. Official figures show a decline of close to 1 per cent a year.

Speculation is mounting about the future of Sir Nigel Crisp, the National Health Service chief executive and permanent secretary of the Department of Health as ministers appear to lose confidence in him. Is Sir Nigel Crisp- the NHS's CEO about to fry? As the health service heads towards a record £790m overspend, Sir Nigel appears to have lost much of the confidence of health ministers and the support of his top tier of "field management" - many of the 28 chief executives of the strategic health authorities. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

One again we see the wheels coming off Labour's centralised NHS planning- and their incompetence delivers chaos- 6 March 06.

Acute and primary care trusts have been left unable to finalise their business plans just a month before the start of the new financial year. Nineteen foundation trust applications will be delayed. One chief executive said he found it ‘incredible’ that the government ‘could have got the tariff so wrong for the second time in a row’. DoH in a ‘complete and utter cock-up’ over Payment by Results (PbR) Health managers have reacted with disbelief and fury after the Department of Health withdrew the national tariff for Payment by Results (PbR) and admitted that the sums behind it did not add up. Last week the DoH withdrew the tariff - due to go live in April - admitting that ‘underlying errors in the calculation’ had been identified.

It is an irony that many of the questions junior doctors must answer when they fill in the new form to apply for hospital jobs relate to their leadership skills and ability to work as part of a team as Junior Doctors' new IT MMC recruitment system is a disaster. The form is part of a new applications procedure, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), which involves no human interaction whatsoever. Hospitals are banned from holding interviews, having to rely instead upon a computer "dating" system that supposedly matches the applicant to the job.

Early signs that a big overspend in the National Health Service in England is starting to affect patient care came with the waiting list figures for January as NHS overspending increases waiting times for patients. Although the total list rose by only 7,600 in the month, up 1 per cent, the number of patients waiting between three and five months for treatment has jumped by 36,600- 25 per cent. In other words, while the number of patients waiting has only risen slightly, the wait has increased.

The Ministry of the bloomin' obvious blows £334m on PR- you know when you’ve been quangoed. Nanny state blows £334m on PR, spin and waffle. Government advertising, once synonymous with serious matters of public safety, is now campaigning to regulate the minutiae of daily life. A television commercial warns of the risks of undercooking the Christmas turkey, while a leaflet reminds holiday makers to keep out of the midday sun. Next up is a poster campaign against dropping chewing gum in the street.

As Health Direct suggested the previous week: Sir Nigel Crisp carries the can as he collects his chips- and ennoblement Tony Bliar was accused of trying to pass the buck for the NHS debt crisis to civil servants after its chief executive was forced to resign and take responsibility for this year's record overspending. Sir Nigel Crisp, 54, the Department of Health's top civil servant, stunned Whitehall by announcing his resignation after reports of a breakdown in relations with Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary.

Compulsory redundancies in the NHS were announced yesterday, despite record investment in the service as Wards closed and staff cut as NHS cash crisis bites. Unions predicted that more job cuts would follow after hospital trusts announced ward closures, the cancellation of 24-hour care and staff redundancies. The Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, facing an £8.1 million shortfall, said 300 staff would have to go and some departures would be compulsory. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

The new consultants' contract in Scotland cost almost NHS staff contracts cost four times original estimates, Audit Scotland found, with no clear evidence it has yet improved patient care. The deal for hospital specialists was a UK-wide one and despite some distinct features of the Scottish health service, National Health Service auditors said there was no reason the picture should be any different in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Half of NHS hospitals 'failing MRSA targets' and are falling behind the target to cut rates of the MRSA superbug by 50% by 2008, the Labour Government said. The Department of Health said the NHS was still not progressing fast enough in cutting rates of the killer infection.

A suspicious silence is blasting out of Whitehall. We hear about the National Health Service (NHS) in deepening financial crisis; we know its chief executive has quit; we read the hospital wards are closing to save money – but no minister is explaining why. Labour's silence as NHS reform is dying of neglect Scanning the headlines, it is reasonable to conclude that Tony Bliar’s NHS “reform” programme is sinking – and that, soon, someone will have to bring this sorry adventure to an end if financial crisis is to be averted.

The UK public is finally waking up to the disaster that Labour is creating in the NHS as Public pessimism about NHS grows sharply for Labours reforms. Public perceptions of the National Health Service have become sharply more pessimistic over the past three months, with an opinion poll showing the highest level of voter disillusion with the sector in four years. According to the latest results of the quarterly Deloitte/Ipsos MORI delivery index, some 22 per cent of people said they expected the NHS to get better over the next few years while 44 per cent expected it to get worse.

NHS care records IT roll-out raises patient safety fears The first go-live in the South of England of a pivotal part of the NHS's £6.2bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has caused significant disruption at a hospital in Oxford and put the safety of patients at potential risk, according to NHS documents. Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre filed a "serious untoward incident" report with the government's National Patient Safety Agency after the fraught implementation at the hospital of a Care Records Service for sharing electronic records nationwide. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

The budget this week ignored the NHS- the sole mention being when brother Brown decided to ignore his own pay review board’s recommendations and capped the salary increases for nurses and doctors at 2%.

The Labour lying spin machine keeps saying that they are adding an extra £6 billion pounds of our tax payers money into the NHS this year. However this line of “debate” completely ignores the fact that thousands of NHS staff is being sacked because the trusts don’t have the funds to pay them.

Either patient care is going to suffer greatly. Or 9 years of Labour funding has been wasted on huge amounts of bureaucracy and red tape. There may be lots of paper pushers filling in Brown's endless forms, but voters can see when wards and hospitals are being closing down.

Even the NHS in Bliar’s own constituency announced this week that it is cutting 700 jobs.

Sir Jonathan Michael, a top NHS executive, who spoke at a healthcare symposium at London's City University pointed out that the NPfIT NHS plan is evolving but one-size-fits-all is a fundamental flaw in the NHS's IT-driven modernisation. The flaw Michael sees in the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is its centralised, standardised approach at a time when the health service is decentralising. The chief executive of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, Michael wants IT support for the specific ways people work in particular parts of his organisation, such as the accident and emergency department.

Patricia Hewitt puts her job on the line in defence of NHS reforms and finances and pledged to press ahead with market-based reforms. The reforms might seem to be going “too far and too fast”, she said, but were “absolutely necessary” and “the only route to safeguard the NHS”. Her pledge to press ahead came as it emerged that hundreds of jobs are likely to be cut from NHS Direct, the flagship telephone and web-based helpline as competition from others for services it hoped to provide threaten to plunge it into a deficit later this year.

Thousands of Dentistry practitioners are likely to reject the contract offered by the government and quit the National Health Service to treat only patients prepared to pay, according to a survey of NHS primary care trusts meaning that 500,000 children are set to lose their NHS dental treatment in dentistry chaos. The trusts, which provide GP and dental care locally, have admitted that thousands of children will be hit. Some have already written to patients warning them that from April 1 both adults and children will be obliged to find another dentist unless they are prepared to pay for treatment or buy insurance.

If the National Health Service was listening to the Budget speech yesterday it should have been quaking in its boots as Brown's budget ignored the NHS- which slips down the waiting list. The chancellor machine-gunned the House of Commons, not just with his usual battery of statistics but with his priorities - ones he clearly sees as shaping his inheritance when, as he hopes, he steps into the prime minister's shoes.

Thousands of health jobs go in NHS cash crisis with the ultimate irony as NHS hospitals serving Tony Bliar's Sedgefield constituents announced 700 job losses yesterday, bringing the total cut over the past fortnight to more than 4,000, according to figures compiled by the Guardian. Conservatives accused the government of allowing the health service to sink under financial pressures caused by ministers' mistakes. They forecast job losses in England might top 15,000 as staff are made to pay for Labour government errors.

Would Nye Bevan approve of Labour's NHS chaos? Sixty years after the national health service bill, a new white paper is needed to make good recent damage. March 21 2006 was the 60th anniversary of the postwar Labour government's white paper, the national health service bill. What would a new white paper for the NHS today look like? We do not need to reinvent the wheel. The weaknesses of the original NHS were serious and they have been skillfully exploited in the drive to privatise it, but the basic design was good; it deserved to be improved, not surrendered to the ideologues of private enterprise. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

The old, the mentally unwell and cancer patients lose out in budget cuts- 27 March 06

Madness- Britain's mental health time bomb New figures reveal one in five people will need treatment. Which is why experts are calling £20m cuts in services 'cruel and insane'. Health authorities are secretly cutting millions of pounds in funding for psychiatric services, despite alarming new evidence of a crisis affecting an estimated one in five people in Britain. In a move branded "the real madness" by health experts, debt-ridden NHS trusts are slashing budgets and cutting care for the mentally ill.

Doctors opt to have private operations out of NHS Hospital consultants are spurning the National Health Service by paying for medical insurance so they can be treated privately if they become ill. A survey of 500 consultants, commissioned by Bupa, the health insurer, found that 41% of senior hospital doctors have invested in private health cover.

Older people are failed by deep rooted cultural attitudes in NHS according to a new report by three independent watchdogs published. It suggests that "deep-rooted cultural attitudes to ageing" in local public services are hampering wider Government plans to improve health, social care and local council services for older people. The report has been produced jointly by the Healthcare Commission, the Audit Commission and the Commission for Social Care Inspection.

A national screening programme aimed at Bowel cancer screening tests is to be cut in NHS cash crisis. The tests could save more than 1,000 lives a year from bowel cancer. The project, which would pick up the disease in patients before they developed any symptoms, was due to be rolled out across the UK in two weeks time. Bowel cancer is a major killer in Britain, and is diagnosed in 34,000 patients a year, claiming 16,000 lives annually.

One CEO when asked whether a demand to break even would affect patient care, he admitted ‘Of course it will. I cannot see how we can take a sum like that out without it affecting services. It is about minimising the impact on patient care."

The saddest April Fool joke of all- D Day for Dentists- 1,000 dentists expected to quit NHS in contract row. Unfortunately, not an April Fool: an exodus of about 1,000 dentists from the NHS in England was predicted last night by the chief executives of primary care trusts, who take over untried and untested management of the service from today. The NHS Confederation provided the first hard evidence of how patients will be affected by a dentists' contract that came into effect at midnight. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Doctors for Reform's report reviewing Labour failures and offers a solution to the chaos- 3 April 06

Gordon Brown to blame for NHS crisis- new poll finds. Gordon Brown is being blamed for the financial crisis in the National Health Service, which has resulted in hospitals laying off staff and closing wards, according to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph. His credentials as prime minister-in-waiting are being undermined by a growing impression that he is not spending enough on the health service, and his own personal popularity ratings are falling.

Cancer: There are life-saving drugs. So why can't we have them? Thousands of cancer sufferers are being denied life-saving drugs because of delays and bureaucracy in making them available on the NHS. The hold-ups are a matter of life and death for desperate people who have been diagnosed with cancer of the breast, colon or lung, or with a brain tumour.

The best international evidence on medical outcomes has been collected for cancer patients. It shows that British cancer patients have a significantly lower chance of survival after diagnosis than patients in other developed countries as well as poorer access to cancer drugs.

On other measures such as life expectancy, infant mortality, premature mortality and cancer survival rates the UK continues to perform poorly compared to other countries and there is a significant gap with the best performing countries.

For example the UK’s rate of infant mortality is roughly a quarter higher than in France and Switzerland. The UK’s 5-year cancer survival rates are amongst the worst in Europe and over 10 per cent lower than France, Germany and Switzerland.

Waiting lists, standing at just under one million, are far longer than in other Continental countries such as France and Germany. Many patients’ conditions deteriorate further while on the waiting list. One study has shown that 21 per cent of lung cancer patients became unsuitable for curative treatment during the wait for their radiotherapy.

Despite large spending increases and rises in the number of medical students, numbers of medical staff in this country still remains below that of other Continental countries. The latest figures show that the UK has a third less practicing physicians per 1,000 population than France, Germany or Switzerland and roughly half as many general practitioners as France.

A recent study found that while the total headcount number of midwives had increased between 1994 and 2004 the number of actual number of midwife hours worked had fallen by 14 per cent to the great detriment of mothers.

This is likely to remain the case in the medium term. Noting that the number of doctors cannot be raised as quickly as spending the OECD recently stated: “When health spending reaches 9.5 per cent of GDP in 2007/08, there will only be about 2.4 practising physicians per 1 000 population (up from 1.9 in 1999), compared with currently 3.1 to 4.1 in Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden, which have a comparable spending level and 3.4 in Germany and France, which spend slightly more.”

There are few indicators showing unambiguous improvements in outcomes over and above trend improvements that were already apparent before the surge in spending. For example, mortality rates from cancer and hear disease have declined since 1999, but only at the same rate as the existing trend.

Despite the large increases in spending performance is still poor. One Department of Health measure for average waiting times shows a 25 per cent increase since 1999-00. The Royal College of Radiologists has shown that waiting times for cancer treatment are “substantially worse” now than in 1997. The current target – a wait of 2 months from referral to first treatment – would be unacceptably long in most European countries and result in litigation in the USA.

No healthcare system is perfect. But we have much to learn from other countries.

Other countries have both a diverse range of healthcare suppliers and mixed funding systems, such as social insurance, which empower patients and offer real choice to all, including the most disadvantaged in society.

In Britain, nearly all resources for healthcare are collected through general taxation. According to the Wanless Review, tax financing provides too great an incentive for governments to limit spending, with the result that the UK has under-invested in healthcare compared to other countries over many years. Other countries have been able to spend more by raising health funds from a variety of sources.
Switzerland is one of the most attractive models of healthcare. With a wide choice of insurers and providers, the Swiss enjoy a degree of choice unrivalled outside the US. But as in Germany, efficiency is compromised as sickness funds have to contract with all providers.

In Switzerland, it is compulsory to pay for a basic insurance plan defined by law. About 100 private insurers compete for customers, offering a mandatory and comprehensive package which is set at the national level. Community rating of the compulsory package means that everyone pays the same premium in the same region with the same insurer, irrespective of their own risk. Unlike France and Germany, employers do not make contributions towards healthcare costs, which could be seen as advantageous in Britain.

Around one third of Swiss citizens receive premium subsidies and the poor have virtually all the full premium paid for them, but the principle of payment is regarded as important. Premiums vary with a wide range of deductibles, co-payments and managed care options.

Around three quarters of German citizens have mandatory insurance through a statutory system of social insurance. Some groups such as the self-employed are excluded and usually choose to purchase private insurance. High income earners can choose between statutory insurance and private health insurance.

The social insurance benefits package is laid down by law. Citizens have the right to choose their insurer and there are approximately 450 sickness funds which are independent of government. Patients also have a choice of provider. Half of all hospitals are non state-owned.

Treatment capacity is high and waiting lists are virtually unheard of since competing providers usually treat all patients. Germans enjoy high levels of healthcare and outcomes. However the system contains elements which drive up costs, for example the requirement for all insurers to contract with all willing providers.

In the absence of any other sane health funding proposal, I suggest learning from the experts who work on the front lines of the National Health Service. Their reports suggestion is to improve apon the Swiss and German models as a fair and reasonable method of delivering the health facilities and staff that are required by the public.

The National Health Service is entering a period of "creative destruction" when hospitals will need to close and services be reconfigured, the former head of the Department of Health's strategy unit warned this week. But Chris Ham, professor of health services management at Birmingham University, said there were serious doubts about whether politicians and health ministers "will be prepared to live with the consequences". He said: "My guess is that they won't." The 2001 election result in Kidderminster should be "engraved on politicians' minds", Prof Ham said.

A secret NHS plan to ration patient care with new review panels blocking choice Patients are being denied appointments with consultants in a systematic attempt to ration care and save the NHS money. Leaked documents passed to The Times show that while Labour ministers promise patients choice, a series of barriers are being erected limiting GPs’ rights to refer people to consultants.

Nanny state expands as Folic acid is added to all bread The Food Standards Agency in the UK is recommending the addition of the vitamin folic acid to all flour and bread on sale in Britain within the next year. The agency will recommend in principle that in future all brown and white flour be fortified with folic acid. Wholemeal bread will not require additional folic acid. Calcium, iron, thiamine and niacin are already compulsory ingredients in white or brown flour. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NHS cutbacks and closures- 7,500 latest roll call review NHS hospital job cuts that will run into more than 7,500 have been announced in recent weeks as the NHS struggles to balance the books. Here is a timetable of the latest cutbacks and redundancy announcements

Bliar pushes health reforms amid cash crisis The Labour government on Wednesday announced changes to the structure of the NHS as Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt brought together health chiefs to discuss the cash crisis affecting the nation’s hospitals.

Landmark High Court ruling in Herceptin patient's favour against "irrational and unlawful" NICE guidelines A breast cancer patient should have the drug Herceptin, according to a landmark ruling from the Court of Appeal this morning. Ann Marie Rogers of Swindon, Wilts, was appealing against an earlier High Court decision upholding Swindon Primary Care Trust's refusal to fund Herceptin. The Appeal Court ruling does not force local NHS bodies to fund the drug, but it said it was irrational to treat one patient but not another. Ms Rogers, 53, had said she faced a "death sentence" without Herceptin.

Top UK IT experts call for an audit of NHS (NPfIT) programme Leading computer science experts are this week writing to parliament calling for an independent audit of the NHS national programme for IT (NPfIT). The signatories, 23 of the UK's top academics in computer-related sciences, are concerned about the technical feasibility of a fully integrated national programme. Their open letter to the House of Commons Health Select Committee echoes a call last week by Computer Weekly and Health Direct for an independent audit of the project.

Patricia Hewitt has faced pressure from Labour MPs to step in and help debt-ridden hospitals amid fears that 24,000 jobs are now at risk in the NHS claims new research across the National Health Service. Alarm has grown among Labour's backbenchers as they have witnessed nearly 7,000 job losses being announced by NHS trusts across the country in the space of a few weeks. Figures published today show that the number of posts axed by hospital managers could eventually rise to nearly four times that figure. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Anatomy of a £15bn gamble- CfH's NHS IT busted flush The new NHS computer system could be the biggest IT disaster in history, warn experts. Inside a leading hospital in Oxford, expensive new computers were humming away just before Christmas when disaster struck. The Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre was at the forefront of a multi-billion-pound revolution to modernise the entire computer system of the National Health Service — and the screens had suddenly frozen.

The scheme’s ambition and potential cost were staggering. Yet Bliar gave it the go-ahead without public consultation. The government initially allocated £2.3 billion for the project and boldly proclaimed that electronic records for every patient in the country would be online by the end of last year. The costs and the delays have been mounting ever since- with the last quote being £6.2 billion.

“In the system they are building, errors can get spread and copied across the network and nobody can do anything about it,” said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University and one of the 23 academics calling for an independent review of the project. “What they are proposing is a recipe for chaos and disaster.”

Chief execs should ‘take the rap’ if the elderly are failed on dignity Chief executives could face the sack if their trusts consistently fail to treat their elderly patients with dignity, the national clinical director for older people has said. Professor Ian Philip told HSJ he wanted to see dignity breaches become as ‘totemic’ an issue for senior managers as four-hour accident and emergency waits.

Dental patients are having to use emergency dental services after their dentists left the NHS One in 10 of England's 21,000 dentists left the NHS at the start of April after rejecting a new contract and local health bosses have struggled to replace them, leaving patients to ring help-lines. Patients are then told of dentists accepting NHS patients - in some areas this is a minority - or diverted to services aimed at out-of-hours care.

Health deficits are symptoms of a deeper failure Tony Bliar once remarked that Labour's record spending increases and reform were the last chance for the National Health Service. If they did not work, the prime minister warned, waiting in the wings were politicians who would dismantle the NHS. The reality is somewhat different. There is no ideological difference between Labour and Conservative. The real difference, in Rumsfeld- speak, is that Labour ministers know what they don't know while the Conservatives don't know what they don't know.

Children's hospitals warn of £22m funding crisis in PbR Four children's hospitals have warned health ministers they will have to cut specialist services because of miscalculations in the new Payments by Results (PbR) system championed by Tony Bliar as part of his NHS reforms. The shortfall will mean cuts in services with specialist surgical procedures most at risk the trusts claim. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Angry RCN nurses drown out health minister Infuriated nurses stopped Patricia Hewitt in her tracks yesterday as they interrupted her speech and demanded their voices be heard. The Health Secretary, who was addressing the Royal College of Nursing conference in Bournemouth, had been met by more than 2,000 stony faces, a sea of white and yellow campaign T-shirts, and a welcome somewhere between cool and

Nurses threaten to strike as Bliar warns of more NHS job cuts Nurses and health workers threatened industrial action after Tony Bliar admitted yesterday that the NHS faced a "challenging" year and more job cuts. Nurses' leaders said they were considering a work-to-rule, including stopping voluntary overtime, which could plunge heath care into crisis. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of the biggest union, Unison, promised support for industrial action to protect health service jobs. He said: "We are being told that somehow jobs will disappear or be left unfilled without patients and staff feeling the pain. What utter nonsense."

RCN warns of 13,000 NHS jobs cuts in cash crisis Financial instability – the national picture: the NHS audit review shows well over a quarter of NHS organisations in England (including a third of Acute Trusts) have failed to break even at the end of the financial year 04/05. For the financial year 05/06, RCN does not believe that this is improving and estimates 27% of all NHS Trusts (and approximately half of Foundation Trusts) will report an end of year deficit

Treatment centre programme in disarray as contracts axed
The Department of Health has been forced to scrap a large swathe of its second-wave independent treatment centre programme nearly a year after it first invited private sector healthcare organisations to bid for the lucrative contracts, HSJ has learned. The ITC programme appeared in disarray this week as it emerged that seven of the 24 local schemes - all part of the multi-million-pound second- wave elective surgery contract - have been axed, with the rest being delayed by up to a year

Labour U-turn over ID card medical details
Identity cards are to carry medical details, despite repeated Labour government assurances that concerns about privacy meant it would not happen. A minister at the Home Office disclosed it wants people to put personal health information on the cards to give doctors information for emergencies. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Labour's financing "miscalculations" exposed as NHS staff count the cost- 1 May 06

Out of hours GP shake up attacked as "shambolic" as £70 million is overspent The shake-up of the out of hours health care system in England was "shambolic" and led to longer waits and higher costs, a committee of MPs has said. New providers are spending 22% more but are not meeting key targets, the public accounts committee claimed. Fewer than 10% of primary care trusts met targets on assessing patients within 20 minutes of an urgent call the National Audit Office found.

PFI profits from secondary market creates storm over unacceptable gains Some of the biggest operators in the private finance initiative were condemned this week for making gains that are "unacceptable, even for an early PFI deal" from the refinancing of Norfolk and Norwich hospital. Even as that row erupted, the focus on how money is being made out of PFI contracts is shifting to the newer secondary market in PFI - the sale of the equity investments in them. Last month the National Audit Office raised concerns about how transparent those deals are.

Watchdog brands 60 per cent profits on PFI scheme as unacceptable Some of Britain's biggest investors in the Private Finance Initiative were yesterday condemned as "the unacceptable face of capitalism" by parliament's public spending watchdog. John Laing, Innisfree, 3i, Barclays Infrastructure and Serco were accused of taking gains "unacceptable even for an early PFI deal" from a refinancing of the £158m Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

Health Direct highlighted the PFI rip off on the Norwich hospital deal last year on Monday 13 June as the National Audit Office found that the PFI building company Octagon made a 60% return on investment refinancing the Norfolk & Norwich PFI Hospital- PFI hospital company makes 60% profit in 1 year

NHS deficits "hit mental health" patients The NHS is facing a deficit of at least £600m and the mental health services are being unfairly hit by the deficits problem gripping the NHS, MPs say. The Tories said over a half of the NHS trusts providing mental health services have had to close wards despite none of them running up a deficit.

NHS pay deals add £7bn to black hole in public pensions Overspending on National Health Service pay settlements has deepened the black hole in the Labour Government's public sector pension plans - by £7 billion. Taxpayers will have to cover the cost of the enormous shortfall, caused by a Whitehall "miscalculation" as the Labour Government last week admitted that the overspend on new contracts for general practitioners, nurses, consultants and health workers was £610 million. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Labour counts the cost of it's NHS failures at the local elections- 8 May 06

The Kidderminster effect came back to haunt Labour with a vengeance at the Local Elections. Voters turn against Labour's NHS cutbacks and closures Local opposition to NHS reorganisations provided the catalyst for single-issue party candidates standing in last week’s local elections. GP Dr Jacqueline Gunsell was elected to Kirklees council on the Save Huddersfield Health Campaign ticket. She was one of three candidates standing in protest at plans to move services from their local hospital in Halifax.

A record 6 NHS hospital closures announced in one day in one county Health Direct’s blog has been chronicling the sad demise of the NHS for over two and half years, but until today we have yet to observe the record of six NHS hospitals being closed in one day in only one county. Massive cuts to health services across Gloucestershire will see 500 job losses- many compulsory, community hospitals closed and maternity services moved to help balance a £38 million deficit.

Given the chaos and political mismanagement that the NHS currently is experiencing, it is no surprise that few people are willing to pick up the poisoned chalice as the Search for new health chief goes overseas as UK candidates fail to shine The search for a new chief executive for the financially beleaguered National Health Service is to go overseas as the Department of Health struggles to attract high quality applicants to top posts. In an indication that they do not expect the search to be a short one, ministers have said Sir Ian Carruthers, the acting NHS chief executive, will have his secondment extended from July until the end of the year.

Scots top heart death rate league in NHS postcode lottery Scottish women are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those in south west England, figures show. British Heart Foundation (BHF) data shows Scots men and women still have the highest heart disease death rates in the UK at 221 and 81 per 100,000. Rates for men are next highest in north-west England at 210 and for women in Yorkshire at 72. The UK average is 173 for men and 58 per 100,000 for women. Death rates have fallen in every region of the UK.

Half of all NHS hospitals can't afford to replace midwives More than one in three hospitals are cutting budgets for maternity care as the National Health Service financial crisis deepens. The cuts mean that almost half of all health trusts are not replacing midwives who leave the service, according to research by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM). Meanwhile, one in four heads of midwifery have also been forced to reduce home visits and 10 per cent are cutting back on home births, despite NHS guidance that women should be allowed to opt for such a procedure. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

European court rules that Labour's waiting times targets are irrelevant- 15 May 06

NHS told to fund treatment abroad in landmark court ruling UK patients who are forced to wait longer than they should for NHS treatment are entitled to reclaim the cost of being treated in Europe, a court has ruled. The European Court of Justice said the NHS must refund costs if patients waited longer than clinicians advised, even if waiting time targets were met. The case, which centres on the definition of "undue delay", could have a significant impact on the whole NHS.

Late NHS payments shut down staff agencies Employment agencies that supply staff to the National Health Service are going bust because NHS trusts have put off paying them in their attempts to deal with big overspends in the health service. At the same time, suppliers of equipment and tests to the NHS say they are owed tens of millions of pounds- which is the result of hospitals putting off paying bills from the last financial year to this.

Doctors warn that General Practices are bursting at the seams Three quarters of GP practices responding to a BMA survey say their premises are not suitable for anticipated future needs. The survey results, published today describe how family doctors are prevented from expanding their patient services by lack of space, coping instead with a daily round of “hot desking”, room juggling and even using the coffee room for immunisations.

Labour's targets are triggering NHS staff bullying The "target ethos" in the NHS is adding to a "survival of the fittest" culture where bullying is common, doctors leaders have warned. The British Medical Association says one in seven NHS workers has been bullied by colleagues. The organisation is calling for "zero tolerance" of bullying in the NHS.

Britain- the sick heart of europe Heart disease, the most preventable health threat facing Britain today, is costing the economy £29bn a year. Rising rates of obesity, an ageing population and the soaring prescription bills for heart drugs such as statins mean that the bill is likely to rise in the future. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NHS hospitals are getting dirtier despite Labour's promises, claim patients
Fri 26 May- Standards of cleanliness in hospitals are falling despite Labour Government promises to tackle dirty wards, a survey showed yesterday. The annual NHS patients' survey found high levels of general satisfaction with the health service. However, when more specific questions were asked of the 80,000 people who took part a different picture emerged.

Only 52 per cent of the patients said their ward had been "very clean" last year compared with 56 per cent in 2002. Less than half - 46 per cent - described lavatories as "very clean" compared with 51 per cent three years before.

Anna Walker, the chief executive of the Labour Government watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, which commissioned the survey, said " patients are still sending a clear message that there is more work to do. Providing patients with the right information, in the right format and at the right time is crucial to their treatment and recovery, yet so many tell us that they are not receiving this.''

Surgeon used eBay to buy equipment- and has it confiscated by nanny
Thu 25 May- A surgeon has upset hospital bosses by ordering medical equipment through the auction website eBay. Kevin Murray, a newly appointed consultant at the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, Norfolk, had been asked to provide a list of the equipment he would need for his operating theatre.

10,000 in 'breast cancer backlog'
Wed 24 May- About 10,000 women are now caught in a backlog for breast screening in the Northern Health Board area, the BBC has learned. The board said it was currently running 13 months behind schedule. It comes after a consultant radiologist who worked at three NI hospitals was suspended over concerns about his "clinical judgements".

DoH orders £200m cuts to scheme to stay within Treasury guidelines
Tue 23 May- The Department of Health has trimmed back another major private finance initiative scheme, forcing a trust to abandon plans for new buildings on the site of one of the three hospitals involved. The DoH has instructed University Hospitals of Leicester trust to cut just under £200m from its £761m plans to revamp and reconfigure services at Leicester’s General, Royal Infirmary and Glenfield hospitals.

NHS caught in foreign offenders chaos The NHS has become embroiled in the row over the release of foreign offenders as it emerged that patients have been freed from secure hospitals without being considered for deportation. Officials have launched a search for foreigners released from Broadmoor, Rampton or Ashworth hospitals after home secretary John Reid admitted there was no system for identifying them.

Foundation hospitals- Labour's PFI promise will "fall short"- Monitor regulator warns Tony Bliar's promise that every NHS hospital in England will be ready to break free from Whitehall control by 2008 will not be honoured, papers of the foundation trust watchdog revealed yesterday. The board minutes of the regulator, Monitor, note that William Moyes, its chairman, has warned the Department of Health that well under 50% of trusts are set to achieve foundation status by April 2008. Others may be held back for years by their inability to break even and by the cost of hospital building schemes under private finance initiatives.

Health service faces up to costly IT operations The National Health Service is likely to spend close to £20bn over the next decade on its ambitious programme to create an electronic record for every patient in England, Lord Warner, the health minister in charge of the programme, has said yesterday.

NHS electronic patient IT records project (CfH) will be at least two years late Plans to give all 50m NHS patients in England a full electronic medical record are running at least two to two-and-a-half years late, Lord Warner, the health minister who oversees the project, has confirmed. He also admitted that the full cost of the programme was likely to be nearer £20bn than the widely quoted figure of £6.2bn. The latter figure covered only the national contracts for the systems’ basic infrastructure and software applications, he said.

NHS needs to take £1bn out of costs after record £536m overspend The National Health Service in England will have to take more than £1bn out of its costs this year after its overspend last year doubled to a record £536m. In the case of a small number of hospitals that have overspent by tens of millions of pounds, that "could be detrimental to patient care", the National Audit Office warned yesterday. It added that some have such large cumulative deficits that there is a question mark over whether they can remain "going concerns".

Trusts pay to end NPfIT staff supply contracts in red tape chaos National Health Service trusts are having to buy themselves out of a commitment to supply staff to companies building the NPfIT electronic patient record system. Trusts in the south are paying Fujitsu £19m after the service found it could not provide 50 NHS employees to help with the programme.

"Half-baked" NHS reforms could harm patients, says think-tank Patients could suffer from reforms to introduce choice and competition in the NHS unless the government gives a clearer commitment to establishing a full-blown market for the supply of healthcare, according to a leading think-tank.

NHS refuses to fund new prostate cancer Brachytherapy for men Hundreds of men are being denied an alternative to radical surgery for prostate cancer because the National Health Service is refusing to pay for it. Hard-up primary care trusts across England have stopped funding Brachytherapy, a new form of radiotherapy, although it has been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).

£20bn (NpfIT) computer failures left NHS patients waiting longer Evidence that the Labour government’s troubled £20 billion National Health Service computer system has lengthened waiting times for patients has emerged for the first time. It was hoped that a pilot scheme for the technology at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust in Oxford would show the benefits of the delayed system. Instead, when it went “live”, the computers crashed, data could not be found and some patients found that they were facing among the longest waits for operations in the country.Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NHS Trusts feel the impact as PFI and Payment by Results (PbR) processes collide- 12 June 06

On Sat 10 June 2006 we highlighted an excellent explanation of how two of Labour's health policies actually work against each other: NHS Trusts feel the impact as PFI and Payment by Results (PbR) processes collide Health Direct repeats the analysis by HSJ below of the current conflicting Labour strategy for "saving" the NHS as it eloquently explains how the Payment by Results (PbR) system of financial planning one year at a time conflicts with the up to 30 year planning cycle that the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts which are drawn up by the Treasury and bind new health service facilities:

"Imagine buying a house for a family with four children. Over the next few years you know you will need a lot of space to accommodate noisy teenagers. But in 10 years’ time your needs are not so clear cut: children may leave, elderly relatives may come to stay or you may be on your own. Your income is also uncertain and not under your control: your boss has just refused a pay rise to reflect your high accommodation costs and says you can have the same as everyone else." PbR v PFI NHS conflicts, more

NAO warns on NHS IT systems two years late and £20bn cost climbs The National Audit Office reported to Parliament the results of its examination of the National Programme for IT in the NHS. It found key parts of the NPfIT were running at least 2 years late and that the total cost of the project may be as much as £20 billion once all the elements are included.

Scare over MMR vaccine safety causes cases of Mumps to soar as immunisation postcode lottery grows The scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine is still discouraging parents from immunisation, particularly in London, raising the risk of mumps, measles and rubella. Cases of mumps soared from 4,204 in 2003 to 16,436 in 2004 and to 56,390 last year. The exodus has been also been driven by Labour's introduction of bonus payments for doctors who meet immunisation targets leading to even more health postcode lotteries.

NHS faces brain drain, BMA doctors warn Doctors' leaders said yesterday that the profession faced a potential brain drain because of a shortage of posts being made available under controversial government reforms. The British Medical Association said that up to 11,500 doctors could be left disappointed because there were only 9,500 training posts being competed for by more than 21,000 doctors.

Concern over £28m in unpaid NHS Trust bills Nine foundation trusts have ‘significant concerns’ over whether outstanding bills will be paid by primary care trusts. The trusts are warning that £28m might have to be written off. The figures were revealed in the preliminary financial results for foundation trusts for 2005-06, published by regulator Monitor this week.

Doctors fight to save DTB drug guidance from government axe A highly respected and influential journal which gives doctors independent advice on the drugs they prescribe is set to close because the government is withdrawing its funding after 40 years. The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin is sent to every doctor in the country and offers what many describe as highly readable guidance on the value of sometimes heavily marketed pills. But the Department of Health has refused to renew its contract.

NHS drug watchdog backs Herceptin The NHS's drugs watchdog says people with early stage breast cancer should be able to get the drug Herceptin. The draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) comes two weeks after the drug received its European licence. Cancer experts say hundreds of lives will be saved by making Herceptin available across the UK.Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Last brick in the wall for the new look NHS health insurance The decision by the Department of Health to open up the purchasing of NHS care, as well as its provision, to the private sector amounts to the last brick in the wall in the Labour government's construction of the new-look health service.

Trusts criticised for outsourcing patient records to cut costs Hospital trusts faced criticism from Britain's biggest trade union yesterday over a scheme to send tens of thousands of confidential patient records to be transcribed in India, the Philippines and South Africa under a new form of outsourcing that will save the NHS millions of pounds.

New Care Services Minister Ivan Lewis wants Dignity debate about caring for the elderly New Care Services Minister Mr Ivan Lewis has said he wants to make dignity of older people one of his top priorities. Speaking at a session on the out of hospitals white paper, he said: ‘I want to make dignity an important theme in my time as a minister. ‘This is not a gimmick; just another initiative. It should be at the heart of what we are doing.

Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) still failing to stir GPs GP leaders, the government and primary care trusts have all ‘failed to inspire’ doctors to take up practice-based commissioning, according to an NHS Alliance report. The report, based on workshops with over 2,000 members, says the biggest problem has been the ‘lack of clear communication and leadership’ from the centre, strategic health authorities and PCTs. And it said frontline staff were confused about government policy on PBC and where it fits into the overall policy picture.

As health chiefs last week reported the worst outbreaks of measles across Britain in 20 years, slow progress was being made in bringing to justice the doctor who sparked the MMR scare. Measles- how a spurious health MMR scare brought an old killer back At the high court in London, lawyers for the General Medical Council (GMC) gave the first public hearing to disciplinary charges against Andrew Wakefield, whose scientific paper published eight years ago caused millions to shun the vaccination for fear that their children might contract autism. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NHS reform falters as Labour ministers pull advert The sense that the Labour government is losing its grip on plans to reform the National Health Service gathered momentum yesterday as ministers pulled a procurement notice inviting the private sector to bid to purchase NHS services in the face of all-out opposition from unions. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, and Lord Warner, minister for NHS reform, said there had been "drafting errors" in the advertisement.

'Lack of jobs' for trainee nurses warns RCN The Royal College of Nurses has warned that thousands of newly qualified nurses and other health professionals will be without jobs by the time they graduate this year. A survey of 20 universities suggested that more than 80% of nurses qualifying this summer have yet to find a job, compared to 30% this time last year.

Doctors toughen position against Labour's NHS reforms The British Medical Association moved towards near total opposition to market-like reforms to the National Health Service yesterday. It called for no further involvement of the private sector, a potential end to the split between purchasers and providers and to the private finance initiative. The decision at the annual representative meeting in Belfast went against the leadership, which had been a fierce critic of elements of the reforms but had worked to maintain a dialogue with Labour ministers.

‘Mediocre’ NHS fails to make Europe’s top 10- 22nd out of 26 The NHS is ‘mediocre’, according to the Euro Health Consumer Index 2006 organisation behind an index ranking the UK’s public healthcare system 15th of 26 European countries. France was ranked top of the Euro Health Index 2006, which covers 28 performance indicators in five categories.

BMA reports that the NHS does not provide choice claims public More than half the people in a general public survey on patient choice in the health service believe the NHS does not offer choice. The British Medical Association commissioned the survey and is publishing the findings on the eve of its annual meeting.

Hospital pays off surgeons in NHS cash crisis Two doctors at a leading NHS hospital have become the first consultant surgeons to be made redundant as a result of the financial crisis in the health service. Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, which has a £33m deficit, has given two consultant gastrointestinal surgeons, one full-time and one part- time, three months’ notice. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Whooping cough is still widespread in the UK Almost 40% of children who visit their GPs with persistent coughs have signs of whooping cough, a study suggests. The University of Oxford researchers said its research, which involved 172 children, showed whooping cough was widespread among young children. And the team says its study - reported in the British Medical Journal - shows GPs should consider diagnosing whooping cough even in fully immunised children.

NHS staff are "not reporting errors" Nearly 1m patient safety lapses occurred last year and too many NHS staff still do not report lapses in patient safety, MPs say. The Public Accounts Committee said nearly a quarter of incidents and 39% of "near misses" go unreported, with doctors being the worst culprits. And the cross-party group said more should be done to cut the number of errors, especially those which cause serious harm or death.

Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI)s increases again in 2005 New figures released today by the Health Protection Agency show that the number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and other conditions diagnosed in genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in the UK increased by 3% between 2004 and 2005. Chlamydia remains the most commonly diagnosed STI, with 109,832 new cases in 2005, a 5% increase on the previous year. The highest rates of infection and highest increases in diagnoses were seen for both sexes in the 16 to 24 age group.

RCN reacts strongly to international nurse recruitment block The RCN has reacted strongly to the Department of Health's announcement that it is to restrict international nurse recruitment by removing nursing from the list of recognised shortage professions. General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Beverly Malone, said “International nurses have always been there for the UK in times of need and it beggars belief that they are now being made scapegoats for the current deficits crisis."

Waiting times up as DoH publishes latest figures The latest figures from the Department of Health show waiting times rose in England. On inpatient waits, the number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks rose by 600 to 198,600 between April and May 2006. However, year on year the number fell by nearly a quarter (23 per cent). Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Waiting times- NHS patients still face long delays for treatment
Half of NHS patients are waiting longer than the Government's 18-week target for treatment after seeing their GP. Some people have waited more than two years before receiving treatment, a Department of Health study found, but the department said this involved only 1 per cent of patients. The figures come from a study of patient "journeys" in eight pilot areas to look at whether a series of government targets is delivering faster treatment times.

Health Direct is pleased at the “honesty” of Health minister Andy Burnham, but he acknowledges that he still hasn’t worked out how he will achieve the 18 week total wait target by 2008.

As Health Direct pointed out on Friday, January 06, 2006 Labour ministers promises on ambitious 18 week maximum wait for surgery the 18 week process involves moving patients through three stages. From the initial visit to the GP, the patient has to go to a first outpatient appointment, then through any diagnostic tests that are needed and finally on to the operation itself once a decision to admit has been taken.

But an analysis of Department of Health data by the Financial Times shows that the government will miss its target without additional capacity and reform of the way the service operates.

Referring to the latest waiting times published in January 2006 "What these figures show," according to Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at the University of York, "is that of the three elements needed to get to the overall 18-week target, one is falling far too slowly, one is unknown but may well rise before it falls, and the third - the time spent on the waiting list before an operation - is actually going in the wrong direction.

"Unless something changes radically, the government is going to miss its target". 6 months on and with 17,000 NHS staff since having their jobs axed- Professor Maynard’s comments are as valid now as they were then.

Doubts over NHS community hospitals' new plan Concerns have been raised about the Labour government's plan to reinvigorate NHS community services in England as several community hospitals have already closed. Apparently, £750m is being made available to NHS trusts over the next five years to help move care out of hospitals.

NHS ID cards are doomed say officials Tony Bliar's flagship NHS identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails from the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project. The problems are so serious that ministers have been forced to draw up plans for a scaled-down “face-saving” version to meet their pledge of phasing in the cards from 2008. However, civil servants say there is no evidence that even this compromise is “remotely feasible” and accuse ministers of “ignoring reality” by pressing ahead.

Stroke patients dying needlessly from Labour's health failures Stroke patients are needlessly dying or suffering more serious disablement because not enough priority is given to stroke services, according to a report by the Commons Public Accounts committee. The report found that stroke is not treated as a medical emergency, brain scans for patients are often delayed and a significant proportion of stroke patients are not treated on specialist units.

Ignorance on diabetes treatment Two-thirds of the two million people with diabetes in the UK do not take their medication as prescribed, research suggests. The study also found one in three did not understand what their medication was for or how to take it because they felt stupid asking questions. Experts warn failure to manage diabetes properly can have serious consequences. Diabetes UK, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and Ask About Medicines commissioned the study. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Labour's health incompetence is criticised by growing numbers of critics- 17 July 06
The old, savers,.car parking, prescription payers and infirm are all worse off under Labour.

The national homes swindle-a growing scandal
In March 2006, Panorama investigated how sick and elderly people are compelled unlawfully to sell their homes to pay for NHS care. The film prompted the biggest viewer response Panorama has ever had with 1,700 emails and 3,000 phone calls. So now we have investigated the stories you brought to us.

Patients 'failed' by NHS inefficiency reports Sir Liam Donaldson the Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
Thousands of NHS patients are failing to receive appropriate care due to waste, inefficiency and postcode prescribing, the chief medical officer for England said today. Professor Sir Liam Donaldson blamed variations in care across the country on doctors and NHS managers who put their own preferences for certain treatments before the needs of patients. Both the over-use of some treatments and the under-use of others were wasting millions of pounds, he warned in his annual report on the state of public health. His report noted that shortcomings in patient safety were costing the NHS at least £3bn every year.

Labour's health charging is a "mess" reports Health Select Committee
The House of Commons Health Select Committee in it's report on health charges finds that the system of health charges in England is a mess. Charges for prescriptions and dentistry have been in place for over 50 years and sight tests for almost 20 years. They have not been introduced following detailed analysis of their likely consequences; rather they have come about piecemeal, often in response to the need to raise money. There are no comprehensible underlying principles. The charges remain largely for ‘historical’ reasons.

Anger over 'legality' of NHS cuts
A Cornish district council boss is questioning the legality of an NHS trust's plans to cut health services after the proposals for the closure of St Michael's Hospital were leaked to the media. Penwith Council chief executive Jim McKenna has written to the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust over proposals for hospitals in Hayle and Penzance.

New NHS CEO appointment raises questions about commitment to reform
The only public sector candidate to be shortlisted for the post of National Health Service chief executive got the job yesterday, prompting speculation that the government is losing its nerve over the scale of reforms. David Nicholson, 50, head of the new London strategic health authority, saw off a shortlist of otherwise private sector candidates compiled after a worldwide search.

NHS targets blamed as crowded wards increase risk of superbugs
Government targets to cut NHS hospital waiting times are putting patients at increased risk of infection with the superbug MRSA, an official report has revealed. An internal policy review conducted by the Department of Health, leaked to The Independent, has for the first time shown that there is a direct link between the number of patients in hospital - measured by bed occupancy - and MRSA rates. Ministers have denied there is a link. The most crowded hospitals, with occupancy rates over 90 per cent, have MRSA rates that are over 42 per cent higher than average, according to the report. Those with occupancy rates above 85 per cent have MRSA rates 16 per cent above average.

Independent treatment centres (ISTC) savaged by Health Select Committee report
The House of Commons Health Select Committee has scathingly reported that the Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTC)s have produced only a tiny fraction of the NHS's total capacity, ISTCs are not necessarily more efficient than NHS Treatment Centres, there is no proof about whether the ISTC programme represented value for money and accused Labour Ministers of muddled and "inconsistent thinking".

More than 51,000 patients aged over 65 catch C difficile in a year
The number of elderly patients infected with the potentially-fatal Clostridium difficile soared by 17.2% last year in England. A total of 51,690 people aged 65 and over caught the hospital-acquired superbug, according to new figures from the Health Protection Agency (HPA). Across England 60% of the 173 hospital trusts reported a rise in cases of the infection in 2005/6, with 15% seeing a "significant" increase. Cases of the bug, known as C diff, had already doubled in the three years to 2004/5 to 44,107 cases - with 2,247 of these causing deaths.

Hewitt visits cutbacks anger and ignores Kidderminster effect.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was visiting Gloucestershire amid widespread anger at NHS cutbacks. About 500 health jobs and 240 hospital beds are threatened as the county's three PCTs and NHS provider try to claw back a £40m deficit. Last Saturday, thousands of health service workers and union members marched through Cheltenham in protest. Ms Hewitt visited Cirencester hospital on Tuesday as part of a nationwide tour of health services. She tried to justify the cuts as she has already given her backing to closure of in-patient facilities in Fairford and Tetbury. The savings are part of moves to reduce an NHS deficit across England, which has reached £512m. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Risks of drugs scientifically compared- "Not fit for purpose" drugs laws criticised- July 31st 06.

Risks of taking drugs compared- Scientific review of dangers of drug taking- Drugs, the real deal Health Direct reproduces the first ranking based upon scientific evidence of harm to both individuals and society of taking drugs. It was devised by government advisers- then ignored by Labour ministers because of its controversial findings. The analysis was carried out by David Nutt, a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council. Copies of the report have been submitted to the Home Office, which has failed to act on the conclusions.

Drug classes have little link to the dangers Following on from yesterday's post MPs demand changes to classification of illegal drugs by the Commons Science and Technology Committee, the Home Office has now been warned by its own senior advisers that alcohol and tobacco are more harmful to the nation's health than the Class A drugs LSD and ecstasy. Britain's antiquated drugs laws stand accused of failing millions of people because they bear little or no relationship to the harm caused by everything from a hit of heroin to a seemingly harmless pint of lager.

MPs demand changes to classification of illegal drugs The ABC system of classifying illegal drugs should be replaced with a more scientifically based scale of harm, a committee of MPs will say today. In a scathing report entitled Drug Classification: Making a Hash of It?, the Commons science and technology committee says there is no consistency in the way drugs are classified A, B or C and no evidence to support the official view that the classification has a deterrent effect.

Sexual health funds used to cut trust debts Millions of pounds intended for improving sexual health services are being diverted to pay off debts, a government advisory group said yesterday. The Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV said that a substantial part of the £300 million set aside had been absorbed by primary care trusts (PCTs).

Hospital fined for treating too many patients An NHS hospital has been penalised for treating its patients too quickly - losing nearly £2.5 million, the cost of the care it provided outside an agreed contract. Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, which finished the year £16.7 million in the red, had been doing so well with waiting list targets that in one department patients were waiting only a week to see a consultant.. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Labour can find £20 billion for bean counters but not £90K for 6 Chaplains- 7 Aug 06

Public sector consultants to cost £20bn under Labour's stewardship
The bill for management consultancy within government is set to top £20bn over the lifetime of three parliaments, according to a former consultant who has carried out an extensive survey of public spending on external advice. David Craig, formerly of Capgemini, the consulting company, and the author of Plundering the Public Sector, estimates that total expenditure on outside expertise will be worth £70bn from 1997 to 2009. This larger number includes spending on implementing large information technology projects, such as Connecting for Health, the digitisation of NHS records.

You have neither God nor Love on your side as 6 Chaplains are sacked to save money
Health Direct paraphrases the Thompson Twins' song title as Labour's NHS closures and cutbacks policy reached new depths of despair with the announcement that the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is to sack it's team of six chaplains purely to save money.

Postcode lottery for cancer, hearts and mental health King's Fund reports
Wide variations in NHS spending may be denying patients fair access to drugs and treatment, a study says. The King's Fund think tank found that some English trusts spent four times as much on certain diseases than others. The research, compiled from government data from 2003-4 to 2004-5, also showed mental health got the most cash, followed by heart disease and cancer.

Rural areas lose out to cities over health spending postcode lottery
Money needed for patients in rural England is being diverted to inner-city areas where it is not even being spent, experts say. Researchers at Cambridge University Medical School say the 29 primary care trusts (PCTs) most in surplus in 2004-5 were virtually all in inner-city areas. In comparison, the 29 most in-debt PCTs were in rural areas, which received on average £205 less per head of population.

41,000 NHS drug errors logged in a year
More than 41,000 medication errors are made in the NHS in a year, it was revealed today, and while most mistakes lead to no ill effects, 2,000 cause moderate to severe harm to patients. The figures have been collated by the National Patient Safety Agency from reports of mistakes in the dose or type of drug given to patients and submitted to the agency by doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff. The statistics inevitably underestimate the problem to a degree since not all errors are reported. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

PFI profits exposed by Channel 4 as greater than credit card companies In Public Service, Private Profit, Liam Halligan revealed how the private funding of state schools and hospitals is draining hundreds of millions of pounds from frontline services, while creating a £4 billion-a-year industry and a new elite of publicly-unaccountable PFI professionals.

Extra billions for NHS largely wasted by Labour- The massive increase in government expenditure on the NHS has not resulted in anything like the level of improvements in the service which might have been expected, according to a study from independent social-policy think-tank Civitas. Total public spending on the NHS in England has increased from £44.9bn in the first year of the NHS Plan (2000-01) to £76.4bn five years later (2005-06). This represents an increase of just over two thirds in cash terms (70%). In spite of this, according to James Gubb, author of The NHS and the NHS Plan: Is The Extra Money Working?, 'service improvement has in too many areas resembled a country stroll, whereas expenditure has increased at a sprint'.

Doubts over future of hospitals as lives are put at risk At least 10 major hospitals in England face potential closure or a downgraded role, the BBC has learned. Talks are under way about removing emergency care from hospitals in London, Surrey, Sussex, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cornwall. The sites will either close or be left to handle basic care, with "super" regional centres seeing the most ill. NHS bosses say the measures are aimed at reducing deficits and treating more patients in the community.

Insurer tells hospitals cleanliness is way to healthy books Hospitals could save billions of pounds a year if they took simple steps to cut the number of patients who are admitted with one illness only to catch an infection like MRSA or suffer another mishap, according to an insurance broker. Marsh, the world's largest insurance broker which also advises clients on risk, pointed out that one in 10 hospital admissions lead to additional and unrelated problems.

Late motherhood as ‘big a problem’ as teenage mums- nanny state Middle class women who become pregnant in their late thirties and early forties are as big a public health problem as teenage mothers, a leading obstetrician has warned. Dr Susan Bewley, consultant obstetrician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital in London, wants ministers to formally categorise the epidemic of what she describes as “middle-age pregnancy” as a health hazard and come up with specific policies to deal with it, as happens with teenage mothers. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

NPfIT £20 billion NHS project in doubt with key developer in financial trouble- 21 Aug 06

Isoft losses £343.8m- NPfIT £20 Billion project at greater risk The company at heart of NHS reform in serious trouble- Isoft the troubled healthcare software company that is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority for issuing potentially misleading statements to the market, today reported a full year pre-tax loss of £343.8m. The Manchester-based company also revealed that Accenture and Computer Sciences Corporation, its senior partners on different parts of the NHS IT project, have accused it of material breach of contract. It is denying the claims, but said that the most likely outcome was a commercial settlement.

Labour conceals NHS criticism by NAO of NPfIT Labour faces allegations of trying to undermine the independence of the National Audit Office after it successfully toned down the findings of an inquiry into the £12 billion NHS computer system. Documents released last week show how key passages in the NAO report were changed after interventions by Department of Health officials. These included removing warnings about the difficulties of creating computerised records for every patient in the country.

Nurses bemoan lack of IT training Nurses feel they are not receiving sufficient training in the use of IT systems, according to a new survey. The Royal College of Nursing published the findings of the survey, carried out by Nursix, on 22 August 2006. It also said that nurses feel ignored in NHS IT decision making. The survey found that 87% of nurses felt it was important that they were consulted about IT plans, but only 12% felt they had been adequately consulted. Although 38% said they have had adequate information about current NHS IT developments, 61% said they have not, including 26% who have had none at all.

Pensioner strikes blow against reforms of family doctor services A pensioner has struck a blow against government health reforms after she won a legal battle to stop a US-owned company from taking over family doctor services in part of Derbyshire. The Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the North Eastern Derbyshire Primary Care Trust had failed properly to consult the residents of two former mining villages before provisionally awarding UnitedHealth Europe a contract to run GP surgeries in the area.

"Cruel" NICE bans bowel cancer drugs Avastin and Erbitux Charities have criticised a proposal to block the routine NHS use of two drugs for advanced bowel cancer. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said there was insufficient evidence to recommend Avastin and Erbitux. But charities say both drugs are the best option for seriously ill patients whose cancer has spread. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Involve doctors in health policy or risk damaging the NHS, BMA warns Doctors’ leaders are calling on politicians to involve doctors in developing health policy or risk damaging the NHS. This was the message given by BMA Chairman, Mr James Johnson, ahead of the political party conference season. In a newsletter to Westminster MPs and Peers, Mr James Johnson says: “All over England doctors are seriously worried by the rapid introduction of new reforms, fragmentation of services, the lack of evaluation of new policy measures, over emphasis on the role of the independent sector, and a lack of clear vision on the direction of travel.

Spending on spin trebles under Bliar's Labour govt Spending on Government spin has trebled under Labour and taxpayers are now supporting an army of more than 3,200 press officers. The dramatic expansion of the Whitehall press machine under Tony Bliar is laid bare in official figures obtained by the Conservatives. A total of 1,815 press officers and other public relations staff works in Whitehall departments, including 117 in the Department of Health and 25 in the Health Protection Agency. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has three press officers, despite no longer having a department.

Call for IVF ban for obese, but young, smoking lesbians may win IVF postcode lottery. Very obese women should be denied IVF fertility treatment, experts say. The British Fertility Society is recommending women with a body mass index of 36 and over should not be allowed access to fertility treatment. Underweight women and those classed just as obese (BMI over 29) should be forced to address their weight before starting treatment, the society said. NHS guidelines say overweight women should be warned of the health risks, but do not impose any ban on treatment.

90% of Nurses 'too busy to monitor food'- new survey Nine out of 10 nurses say they do not always have time to help ensure hospital patients eat properly, a study has found. The charity Age Concern believes this could be one reason why six out of 10 older patients are at risk of becoming malnourished while in hospital. The charity said the NHS was continuing to fail patients despite guidelines which make feeding a core priority. Malnourished patients stay in hospital for much longer, are three times as likely to develop complications during surgery, and have a higher mortality rate.

NHS botches 300 births a year More than 300 babies a year are being left with brain damage because of oxygen starvation caused by lack of proper care at birth. The National Health Service litigation authority, which handles damages claims from hospital patients, has for the first time released data from every hospital in England showing the number of babies damaged by botched deliveries. The accidents are being blamed on staff shortages leading to inadequate monitoring.Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

£22 billion Pound outsourcing of award winning NHS Logistics service dominates health news- 4 Sep 06

Unions gear up for fight over NHS £22bn DHL health 'privatisation' deal Unions have pledged support for strike action in a bid to stop the Labour Government outsourcing two National Health Service operations to DHL, the German-owned logistics company. The result of a strike ballot of NHS staff is due to be announced on Monday at the start of the Trades Union Congress annual meeting. Unions are using the high-profile event to begin a campaign against the DHL deal.

DHL signs £22 billion NHS supply deal The German-owned logistics company, yesterday signed a controversial contract that will outsource the purchasing and delivery of billions of pounds worth of supplies annually to the National Health Service. DHL will take over some 1,650 staff from NHS Logistics and the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency, expecting to deliver at least £22bn of goods and services to the NHS over a 10-year deal worth £1.6bn a year in revenue.

New setback for NHS IT computer project as NPfIT "sleepwalks to disaster" The troubled multi-billion-pound NHS computer system suffered a fresh blow last night when it emerged that two-thirds of the hospital trusts due to have installed an electronic patient administration system for booking appointments with consultants by the end of October will not meet the deadline.

National Audit Office pledges new report on NHS NPfIT project The National Audit Office (NAO) is to publish a new report into the UK's largest IT investment, the £12.4bn National Programme for IT in the NHS. Its decision follows criticism by MPs of the Audit Office's June 2006 report on the NHS programme. Greg Clark, a member of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the June report was "the most gushing" of all NAO reports he had read. Another member of the Public Accounts Committee, Richard Bacon, said the NAO's report on the NPfIT was not up to the organisation's usual high standards.

EU chief to help cut barriers to patients crossing borders Europe's public healthcare systems must brace for radical change as barriers to patients crossing borders to seek treatment drop, the European Union's top health official said yesterday. Markos Kyprianou, EU health commissioner, told the Financial Times that he would act to implement the right of patients to travel for treatment across the 25-member bloc in the wake of recent court judgments. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Labour targets NHS hospital cuts away from marginal constituencies Labour may be trying to target hospital cutbacks in areas where rival parties have seats, the Conservatives claim. The Tories have seen leaked emails detailing meetings between ministers and Labour party officials. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said there also seemed to be a deliberate attempt to cut fewer services in Labour constituencies.

IVF donor sperm crisis revealed as NHS fails couples Almost 70% of fertility clinics either have no access to donor sperm, or find it extremely difficult to obtain, a BBC survey suggests. Two thirds of IVF clinics have trouble getting the sperm they need. Specialists say infertile patients are becoming desperate and more resources are needed for campaigns aimed at recruiting donors.

NHS workers vote to strike in protest at National Health Service privatisation Hospitals and GP surgeries face shortages of key medical equipment after NHS workers decided yesterday to stage the first national strikes in the health service since 1988. As anger increases over the policy of using private companies to provide NHS services, Unison, the public services union, announced that its members at NHS Logistics had voted by 74 per cent to strike over the £22 billion outsource of their award winning network to the German haulage firm DHL.

NHS external managers bill soars to over £172m this year The NHS in England is set to spend £172m this year on external management consultants, a rise of 83% in only two years the Conservatives have claimed. The Tories warn spending on managers is detracting from clinical services. Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain figures from 76% of NHS trusts. The data shows a link between trusts with the biggest debts and most job cuts, the Tories said.

Hospital superbug 'out of control' as child MRSA cases rise to 150 Nearly 150 babies and children last year suffered potentially fatal blood infections after contracting the MRSA superbug in NHS hospitals, Government research reveals. The figure is double that of previous estimates, raising concerns that MRSA is tightening its grip on the very young and that poor hospital hygiene is allowing the superbug to spread. Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

First NHS national strike in 18 years over health service outsourcing- 18 Sept 06

NHS staff out in national strike over DHL outsourcing Hundreds of NHS workers have gone on strike, in the first national walkout in the health service for 18 years. Staff who work for the delivery arm of the health service in England are angry their jobs are being privatised. The supply agency NHS Logistics is due to be handed over to German transport company DHL from the start of October.

New ONS PFI figures are a 'step forward in a murky area' The Labour government has long been accused of finessing the public finances by favouring private finance initiative deals for capital investment projects, such as schools and hospitals, because the debt did not show up on the government's books. Now, after pondering the problem for five years, the Office for National Statistics has put a £4.95bn figure on the value of the debt of PFI and public-private partnership deals, which it has added to public sector net debt. Its estimate represents what it thinks the government would have to borrow today to buy back a PFI asset for the remainder of its PFI contract.

Hewitt claims private companies' role in NHS healthcare is 'to be set locally' An end seemed in sight to the era of big, centrally negotiated contracts between private healthproviders and the government yesterday when Patricia Hewitt said patients, primary care trusts and family doctors would decide the extent of private sector involvement in the National Health Service.

NHS Health systems hit by 110 IT incidents NHS Hospitals have been hit by more than 110 "major incidents" affecting their information technology systems over the past four months, according to a report in Computer Weekly. They include the data centre crash in July which saw 80 National Health Service trusts lose central services provided by Connecting for Health, the NHS's £12.4bn IT programme, for up to four days. But others have seen digital X-ray systems and patient administration systems go down, with more than 20 of them affecting more than one hospital site.

Tories have best health and education policies, say voters in MORI poll The public has become so disillusioned with the Labour government's ability to deliver improvements in key public services that the Conservatives are now seen as having the best policies for education and health for the first time since Labour won power in 1997, according to polling by Ipsos MORI. The research company's quarterly tracking index, which is eagerly watched by the government, shows the public disagrees by two to one (59 per cent compared with 31 per cent) that Labour's policies will improve the state of public services overall Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

Cynical Labour targets cuts NHS services in rivals constituencies- 25 Sept 06

NHS closures rigged away from Labour voting constituencies Last week saw the outcome of consultations over £40 million worth of NHS cutbacks and closures in Gloucestershire. Labour voting Gloucester sees new hospital facilities and Labour voting Stroud saw it’s maternity hospital remaining. Lib Dem voting Cheltenham saw the closure of it’s maternity, vascular surgery, urology and gynaecology departments with the aim of closing the A&E department as well as the closure of Delancey Hospital. Conservative voting Tewkesbury, Forest of Dean and Cotswold constituencies see the likely closure of their local hospitals in Winchcombe, Dilke and Lydney. Coincidence? Health Direct doesn't think so.

Brother Brown's plans for the NHS are bonkers One word sums up Brown's big idea for the NHS- bonkers. When a local hospital is closed by Labour's managers with no right for politicians to intervene, ask who is accountable? On Monday at the Labour conference, Brother Brown raised the idea of hospital closures being removed from the labour politicians with the introduction of yet another layer of bureaucrats taking the blame.

Mental health services are 'failing' as watchdog finds that the services are abysmal. People suffering mental health problems are being failed by poor access to key community services, a watchdog says. Most people with mental health problems are treated out of hospitals. The Healthcare Commission's review of 174 mental health teams in England found gaps in out-of-hours care, talking therapies and access to information. The watchdog rated only one in 10 as excellent, with nearly half just getting a fair grade.

Accenture drops out of NHS's NPfIT IT project US consultancy firm Computer Sciences Corporation has taken over as the largest regional contractor on the NHS's troubled £6.2bn IT overhaul after rival group Accenture yesterday exited two 10-year contracts with the health service worth £2bn. CSC, already the lead contractor on a £973m contract in the north-west of England, is now charged with digitising the largely paper-based systems in GP surgeries, hospitals and other NHS trusts in the east and north-east of England.

An ex-nurse wins wards closure legal battle A former nurse has won a High Court battle challenging the closure of two hospital wards. Pat Morris, 65, from Bowdon, Greater Manchester, challenged the decision to shut two rehabilitation wards for older people at Altrincham General Hospital. Mr Justice Hodge has ruled that the Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust's move in March to close 26 beds was unlawful as there was no public consultation. But he refused to order the trust immediately to reopen the beds.Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

"Demeaning" Labour loses the political battle with Cameron over the NHS- 2 Oct 06

NHS direct result- Cameron 2 Brown 0 Health Direct is pleased to report that at long last the Conservatives have produced a positive set of proposals for the future of the NHS. Coming hard on the heels of brother brown's bonkers plan for the NHS at last week's Labour conference, it looks as though politicians are finally waking up to the plea of millions of voters for a proper health service.

Labour's NHS-speak spin is demeaning to patients Terms such as "frequent flyers" and "bed-blockers", used by Labour ministers and NHS staff to describe patients, are demeaning, the patients' tsar says. Harry Cayton said such negative words shifted blame to patients and should be avoided, the Royal Society of Medicine journal said.

Record numbers of patients visit A & E as GPs services are cut The number of people seeking treatment at accident and emergency units is at a record level. Statistics from the Department of Health (DoH) reveal that there were 18,759,104 A&E visits in 2005-06, up five per cent from 17,837,180 the -previous year. The rise comes as up to 60 National Health Service trusts face having to downgrade their A&E units due to Labour's funding cuts.

First NHS hospital privatisation-- 60 more may follow A foundation hospital trust is planning to "takeover" a smaller cash strapped NHS hospital in what is thought to be the first privatisation of its kind. The Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham hopes to acquire Good Hope Hospital, which is £15m in debt.

NICE's delay could blind thousands with AMD campaigners warn A drug for treating the disease which is the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK could also help people regain some vision, research suggests. Injections of the drug Lucentis can improve sight in people with a particular form of retina degeneration. Although the drug Lucentis has been given a US licence, NICE's hold up will mean that thousands of UK sufferers of AMD will be denied access for their failing sight.Back to Health Direct's stories headlines

National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) blights up to 750,000 lives- 9 Oct 06

National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) blights thousands of Alzheimer sufferers NICE has been renamed by NHS doctors as the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure after it's latest edict to ban the funding of Alzheimers drugs costing only £2.50 a day- which will effect hunderds of thousands of sufferers. "This blatant cost-cutting will rob people of priceless time" said Neil Hunt of the Alzheimer's Society.

Treasury figures reveal IT project delays totalling 17 years The scale of the problems facing large government information technology projects was underlined yesterday as Treasury figures revealed delays totalling more than 17 years. The fresh details, which came in response to a parliamentary question by the Liberal Democrats, emerged against the background of a two-year delay to the vast £12.4bn upgrade of the National Health Service's IT systems and as Labour prepares to launch the procurement process for its national identity card project, which is slated to cost £5.4bn.

Health inspectors demand tough action to cure 'weak' NHS trusts The Healthcare Commission today published the first performance ratings for quality of services under the annual health check of NHS trusts in England. There was a mixed picture on quality of services in NHS with half of England's hospitals graded in lowest category and only two organisations of the 570 trusts getting top marks in review.

Britons are the fattest in Europe A major Government study has shown the continuing North-South divide when it comes to the health of people in England. The report also shows that the UK has the highest obesity rate in Europe and that Boston in Lincolnshire has the highest number of people with obesity in England. The "Health Profile" says men in northern counties die on average two years earlier than those in the South - partly because of higher obesity levels and smoking-related disease. Life expectancy for women is also a year shorter.

Dentists abandon children on NHS Up to two-thirds of children in some areas of England are failing to get regular dental treatment as thousands of youngsters have been dropped by dentists no longer willing to provide free National Health Service care. This weekend dentists have warned that children will find it even more difficult to get free dental care in the future as fewer dentists undertake NHS work. Back to the top of our headlines

The Times has learnt that seven times as many community hospitals have closed or are under threat in constituencies held by opposition MPs. There are 62 closed or at-risk hospitals in Conservative constituencies and 8 in Liberal Democrats seats, with 11 in Labour areas.

Eighty NHS cottage hospitals face cuts As many as 80 cottage and community hospitals in England are threatened with cuts or closures in direct contradiction to Government policy, which calls for more health services near people's homes. Campaigners said yesterday that 10 community hospitals closed within the first six months of this year and that since 1999 as many as 2,000 local beds had been lost.

NHS does not know how many jobs axed in recent cutbacks and closures The newly appointed chief executive of the National Health Service admitted on Tuesday that he did not know how many jobs would be lost this year as a result of budget cuts and reorganisation. David Nicholson was challenged on the impact on jobs of English NHS trusts plunging £523 million into the red at a press conference called by the Prime Minister to highlight health service reforms. "Out of touch" bliar claims "only a few hundred" NHS jobs were axed.

Elderly home care 'needs change' Inspectors have criticised the standard of home care for hundreds of thousands of elderly people in England. The Commission for Social Care Inspection report said many people found their carers too rushed and there was little time to build trust. Commission chair Dame Denise Platt said the report Time to Care? painted a "mixed picture" of the quality of care. The government admitted that "issues of poor quality and reliability" remained.

"Scandal" of NHS cancelled operations The National Health Service is cancelling more than 620 operations every day because of administrative blunders, it has been claimed. Mistakes, like forgetting to book operating theatres, led to about 162,500 procedures being abandoned in 2005. The numbers also appear to have gone up by a quarter over the past three years, according to newly released figures. Back to the top of our headlines

Labour support at lowest level since Thatcher's last election victory Support for Labour has dropped to its lowest level in almost 20 years with the Conservatives opening up a potentially election-winning 10-point lead, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. Labour has the backing of only 29% of voters, equal to its lowest-ever level of support in a Guardian/ICM poll - recorded in May 1987, a month before Margaret Thatcher won a third term.

Only 14% of voters think the money invested in the NHS since 1997 has been well spent, against 72% who agree that "a lot" has been used badly. Even 58% of Labour voters think the extra money has been misspent. As a result only 25% of voters think that the NHS has improved since Labour came to power in 1997, against 30% who think it has got worse and 39% who think Labour has made little difference. When one reads yesterday's blog is it any surprise that Labour gets the bird?

Labour blamed for £2.2 bn wasted by NHS every year The National Health Service is wasting at least £2 billion a year, more than four times the record deficit reported in 2005-06, according to an analysis of hospital activities and finances set out by the Government today. The figures show that if the worst performing primary care trusts did as well as the best then £2.2 billion could be saved on a range of activities, including how long patients spend in hospitals, the level of "unnecessary" operations and the numbers of sick referred for hospital appointments.

NHS blows millions on removing 187,000 tattoos The National Health Service spent tens of millions of pounds removing nearly 200,000 tattoos last year, according to figures released by the Department of Health last week. Rosie Winterton, the health minister, said in a Commons written answer that doctors had carried out the procedure, involving either skin grafts or lasers, on 187,063 tattoos.

MRSA kills twice as many people as drunk drivers in the UK Sir John Oldham, a GP and head of the Improvement Foundation, which advises primary care trusts, warned that one in five clinical staff failed to wash their hands, despite evidence that doing so cuts the incidence of hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA, which costs the NHS £1bn a year. Figures for 2004 show MRSA killed 1,623 patients in England and Wales. Some 580 people were killed in drink-driving incidents in Britain. Back to the top of our headlines

Warning over privacy of 50m patient files in NHS IT project Millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded regardless of patients' wishes to a central national database from where information can be made available to police and security services, the Guardian has learned. Details of mental illnesses, abortions, pregnancy, HIV status, drug-taking, or alcoholism may also be included, and there are no laws to prevent DNA profiles being added. The uploading is planned under Whitehall's bedevilled £12bn scheme to computerise the health service.

NHS and suppliers struggle with basics on CfH patient record system The National Health Service and its suppliers are struggling to get in place the basic building blocks for the planned national electronic patient record (Connected for Health). The NHS financial deficit from last year and a shortage of resources to train staff appear to be compounding problems linking old systems with the new ones, as well as difficulties in migrating old data to the new systems.

PbR Payment by Results are fundamentally flawed says coding chief The current system of Payment by Results (PbR) is 'fundamentally flawed and unacceptable' the head of the Professional Association of Clinical Coders warned last week. Managing director Sue Eve-Jones told an HSJ conference last week that the quality of data in the NHS could compromise any chances of ensuring fairness under PbR. Her presentation was subtitled 'doing the best we can with a fundamentally flawed and unacceptable system'

Thousands to join NHS cuts rally at Westminster today Thousands of NHS staff are expected to descend on Parliament for a rally against the state of the NHS. NHS Together, an alliance of 16 health unions, has arranged the demonstration against job losses in the NHS and the pace of government reforms. The health service is facing unprecedented upheaval with increasing private sector involvement and major hospitals under threat of cuts. Officials from the alliance will also be lobbying MPs.

NHS patient safety 'must improve' says Healthcare Commission More needs to be done to improve standards of safety in the NHS and independent sector, a watchdog says. The Healthcare Commission said that while most patients received safe care, standards were inconsistent in England and Wales. The watchdog said there was no clear indication on the number of deaths that could be avoided. It also raised concerns about a range of other areas, including mental health care and health inequalities aka the NHS postcode lottery..Back to the top of our headlines

Labour's Health Minister admits lying- Lord Warner lies to Parliament A Labour minister has admitted that he misled parliament about paying for the use of life coaches in Whitehall departments. "I didn’t tell the truth over paying for life coaches", admits health minister. Lord Warner, the Labour health minister, was forced to apologise after falsely denying that his department was employing psychologists to mentor senior staff.

Labour's lying Lord- Baron Warner health minister- a brief biographical overview of his "achievements" by Health Direct Norman Reginald Warner- Baron Warner (PC) was born on 8 September 1940 and is a Labour member of the House of Lords. One of "Tony's Cronies" he was created Baron Warner of Brockley in the London Borough of Lewisham on 29 July 1998 and has been a Minister of State at the Department of Health since the summer of 2003. He was appointed to the Privy Council in June 2006, and was sworn in on 19 July 2006- coincidently the hottest day in British history.

Another lying labour health minister- Rosie Winterton- a brief biography by Health Direct Following on from Health Direct's brief biography earlier this week of the Lying Lord Warner we thought that it would only be fair to do likewise for the Minister for Health in the House of Commons. Rosalie Winterton, known as Rosie Winterton, was born on August 10, 1958 in Leicester and she is the Labour member of Parliament for the South Yorkshire constituency of Doncaster Central. She became a Minister of State at the Department for Health in June 2003 and in January 2006 her responsibilities were changed to Health Services.

Commons misled by another Labour Minister over NHS tattoos answer The Department of Health has apologised for misleading MPs by giving incorrect figures on tattoos removed on the NHS. Health minister Rosie Winterton said in October that 187,063 tattoos had been removed last year. Some experts later estimated this could have cost £300m. But the department now says the figure was a mistaken estimate and that the true amount was not known. The error was uncovered during a debate in the Lords and condemned by Tory Lord Tebbit as "extraordinary".

Hewitt faces major opposition to her NHS cutbacks and closure plans Patricia Hewitt has given the go-ahead to a reshaping of hospital services in Yorkshire, widely viewed as the first big trial of her resolve to push through politically contentious reforms. The health secretary has backed significant changes to services in the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust despite local opposition. Local activists have gathered a 40,000-signature petition, gained a seat on the local council and warned local Labour MPs in marginal seats they could lose support at election time.Back to the top of our headlines

Labours NHS failures highlighted by NICE's and mental health tragedies- 13 Nov 06

Drugs watchdog faces legal review- NICE's approach is irrational and flawed A decision by the Labour government's drugs watchdog to restrict the use by the NHS of Alzheimer's medication is to be challenged in court. Two drug companies plan to apply for a judicial review of the way the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence reached its conclusion. NICE ruled NHS patients with newly diagnosed, mild Alzheimer's disease should not be prescribed the drugs.

Scandal of Labour's blunders that led to murder by mental patient The needs of dangerous psychiatric patients are being put before the safety of the general public, according to a report to be published today on the murder of a retired banker by a mental health patient. The highly critical report into how a psychiatric patient at a south London hospital escaped and attacked Denis Finnegan as he cycled through Richmond Park will reveal how a catalogue of systemic errors led to his death.

Chaired by Robert Robinson, a mental health lawyer, the report is said to be one of the most damning in the past decade. Over 400 pages it details a catalogue of preventable errors at Springfield Hospital which led to Mr Finnegan's murder. It concludes that a special medium secure facility in the hospital, the Shaftesbury Unit, must be closed pending an external audit.

Big increase in NHS complaints The number of written complaints received by frontline NHS trusts in England jumped by more than 5% during 2005-06. Figures from the Information Centre for Health and Social Care show that 95,047 complaints were registered during the year. This compared with 90,413 complaints made during the previous 12 months.

IT project accused of bullying- Connecting for Health underfunded and plain wrong Managers have attacked the Connecting for Health IT project for 'bullying' people into talking down problems on the ground. West Herts primary care trust IM&T service manager Roz Foad was among speakers at an IT conference who criticised the scheme to create an NHS-wide clinical computer system.

NHS debt hits £1.2bn as patients face more service cuts Front-line services for patients will have to be cut after it emerged last week that hospitals and GP surgeries are on course to run up a £1.2 billion deficit this year. Senior Whitehall officials admitted that operations and other services at many high-performing trusts may have to be axed this year so they can save money and build up surpluses.Back to the top of our headlines

Hewitt defends extra NHS cash for Labour voting areas Patricia Hewitt sparked new controversy over NHS funding last night after insisting that it was "absolutely right" that spending per head on health care was at least 35 per cent higher in many Labour areas than wealthier Tory ones. The Health Secretary told MPs that people in more prosperous areas had the "good fortune" to be in better health and as a result needed less allocated for their care.

Asked by a Tory member of the health select committee, Mike Penning, if it was fair that people in her Labour constituency of Leicester West received £1,300 per head in NHS spending, compared with £960 in his Hemel Hempstead seat, she replied: "I am satisfied that funding allocations are fair. I believe that reflects the very real differences in health areas, in the prevalence of disease between our two constituencies.

NHS staff pay rises claim half of extra £5.5bn funding Almost half of last year's £5.5bn increase in health spending in England went on higher pay, the latest figures from the Department of Health show. This year, the department expects to incur a redundancy bill of about £400m from shrinking the number of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts. The redundancy bill, which excludes any redundancies from National Health Service trusts shedding jobs to balance their books, is four times the projected overspend for this year. In addition, the department spent a mighty £133m on external consultants last year.

NHS Trusts warned not to axe acute mental health beds prematurely Mental health trusts have been warned not to cut acute beds until their community services are fully developed. In a report about bed over-occupancy, the Mental Health Act Commission found that in the year leading to July 2006 the national average for bed occupancy in acute admission wards visited was 101 per cent. In London it was as high as 112 per cent.

GPs revolt over patient files privacy on flagship IT system About 50% of family doctors are threatening to defy government instructions to automatically put patient records on a new national database because of fears that they will not be safe, a Guardian poll reveals today. It shows that GPs are expressing grave doubts about access to the "Spine" - an electronic warehouse being built to store information on about 50 million patients - and how information on it could be vulnerable to hackers, bribery and blackmail.

Accounts showing NHS soaring £156bn pension gap delayed again The Labour government is under mounting pressure from to publish accounts which are set to reveal that the NHS's pension liabilities have rocketed to £156bn – an increase of one third in just two years. The 2005-06 accounts for the pension scheme for nurses, doctors and other health workers are already almost five months late and civil servants have told The Sunday Telegraph the document is now unlikely to be published until the end of January. Back to the top of our headlines

The cynical activites of The Liar were exposed again as the chasm between his NHS promises and the reality of his actions became obvious with his failure to close mixed sex wards.

Degradation, filth and shame in an NHS hospital on mixed sex wards Twenty-four hours to save the NHS! I wonder how often that promise comes back to haunt Tony Bliar 10 years later. Week after week reliable reports and the government’s own figures tell a disgraceful story of incompetence, debt, misery and filth in the National Health Service. That story is supported, week after week, by heart-rending personal accounts of horrors on the wards.

Labour continues to pay the price for it's NHS cutbacks and closures with the voters The public remains deeply sceptical over the government's ability to improve public services and the economy, according to the latest findings from Ipsos Mori's public delivery index. A mere 19 per cent of adults believe the National Health Service is getting better, against 46 per cent who believe it is worsening. Just one person in 100 believes the NHS will get better over the next few years, against 13 who believe it will get much worse. (Which proves the adage that you can fool some of the people some of the time- but eventually people will see through the spin and lies.)

£12 million GPs survey to cut doctors funding Five million patients will next year be asked to fill in a questionnaire which will ask, among other things, whether they have been able to secure an appointment within 48 hours, as the Labour government has promised. The British Medical Association condemned the poll as unfair and biased, and accused the Department of Health of adding questions that had not been agreed. Most GPs accept that they are unlikely to score 100 per cent and so they will see a reduction in funding.

MPs will hold inquiry into £12bn (NPfIT) NHS IT plan The House of Commons' Health Committee has agreed to hold an inquiry into key facets of the £12.4bn NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) after some MPs expressed concerns that the scheme may be foundering. The decision reverses a resolution taken by the parliamentary committee only weeks ago not to hold an inquiry, and vindicates a campaign led by leading academics, Health Direct, Computer Weekly and MPs. Back to the top of our headlines

Labour's NHS "changes" are all about saving money The Labour government has launched a charm offensive to convince critics that hospital reconfigurations are not just about cutting costs. But many remain unconvinced. Protesters believe changes are being motivated by cash shortages- Huntingdon, Worthing, Epsom, Cheltenham and Redditch are hardly known for their militancy. But like many other towns across the country, they have seen demonstrations on a previously unheralded scale. The protesters, who include residents, NHS staff and MPs, are united in their concerns about cuts in their local health services.

Bliar still thinks that his reforms will improve NHS Tony Bliar has defended his "changes" in the NHS, and predicted that they will lead to better patient care. In a speech to the NHS Confederation, he called on managers and doctors to sell reforms to the public in England. "The best is yet to come with more lives saved, stopping more pain and distress".

Leaked paper reveals Labour fears on NHS cutbacks as 50 Accident and Emergency centers will be downgraded Patricia Hewitt and other ministers have privately conceded that the government is in real difficulty over its efforts to sell controversial health reforms, a minute of a private briefing reveals. At a brainstorming on the future of the NHS between the health secretary and ministers last Thursday, some raised anxieties about the way the reforms were being presented to the public. "Too often the debate on public service reforms seemed to pitch the government against frontline staff," said the minute, which was marked restricted.

Mentally ill murder 400- a rate of 1 every week More than 400 people have been killed by mentally ill patients released into the community in the past eight years, a government inquiry will reveal this week. The Department of Health study, concludes that on average 52 people a year — one a week— are killed by mentally ill patients. It will say that a significant proportion of these deaths could have been avoided, had it not been for health service failures or legal loopholes.

Consultancy 'gravy train' costs under fire on Bliar's black day On the day that Tony “purer than pure” Bliar suffered the double humiliation of becoming the first serving British prime minister to be interviewed by police conducting a criminal investigation and also his attorney general (possibly illegally) halting a separate criminal enquiry into alleged bribes to Saudi Arabians, the bad news that was cynically “buried” was the news that Labour's "external consultancy gravy train" was attacked by a spending watchdog in a report which showed a 33 per cent rise in expenditure in the past year alone.

Labour's unsustainable NHS resource account and budgeting (RAB) rules to stay The health department has postponed a decision to scrap a set of accounting rules- that have plunged some NHS trusts into potentially irrecoverable financial deficit. The NHS Confederation, which represents health authorities and trusts, said yesterday that it was disappointed at the decision which came despite the health department accepting that the application of the rules to individual NHS trusts "will become increasingly unsustainable".

Patricia Hewitt's U turn as she breaks her NHS finance promises The NHS in England has been told it must achieve a £250m surplus next year. The service ended the last financial year £512m in deficit, but Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt had pledged to balance the books this year. However, the latest predictions are that the NHS will have a £94m shortfall this year. In January and again in November, Ms Hewitt told the Health Select Committee she would take "personal responsibility" for bringing the NHS out of deficit this financial year.

Private health contracts are destabilising NHS services claim Doctors NHS bosses are forcing doctors to refer patients to private centres for fast-track treatment while imposing longer waiting times on local hospitals, it has emerged. The move has been condemned by the British Medical Association, GPs and surgeons, who say that a "two-tier" health service is being established to prop up privately-run centres, which were introduced by the Government with the aim of helping the NHS.

Labour to extend nanny state with fatherless babies in IVF fertility revolution A child's need for a father will no longer be a consideration when a woman seeks fertility treatment, ministers will say this week. The move which comes despite widespread public opposition and which will give single women and lesbians the right to treatment forms part of a shake-up of Britain's embryology laws. One of the key proposals would allow research on test-tube embryos that were part-human, part-animal referred to as "chimeras". Back to the top of our headlines

PVL- new mothers and babies infected in hospital outbreak of new MRSA superbug An outbreak of a PVL superbug struck the maternity unit of a hospital in Plymouth leaving 10 mothers and their babies with severe infections. Emma Lynch, one of the mothers, developed an abscess almost eight inches long, which required emergency surgery, and her daughter, Daisy, had a boil on her breast which required lancing when she was two weeks old. Daisy has since had 14 courses of antibiotics in an attempt to clear her of the bug, which is resistant to treatment.

PVL- a new strain of MRSA superbug targets the young, and its latest victim is an NHS nurse Two people have died after catching an MRSA superbug strain that has never caused deaths in UK hospitals before. A healthcare worker at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire died in September after catching the infection called Panton-Valentine Leukocidin, (PVL) the Health Protection Agency said.

Labour's mismanagement has led to NHS deficits Mismanagement at all levels of the NHS in England has led to the current multimillion pound deficit, a committee of MPs has found. The Commons health select committee said existing deficits were made worse by the cost of new staff pay deals and the expense of meeting NHS targets. Last year's NHS deficit was £547m.

Patients win partial right to block medical records in U turn on CfH IT project Labour Ministers have bowed to the complete distrust some patients have of the planned National Health Service electronic patient record Connected for Health IT £20 billion system by appearing to agree that we will be able to place a total block on our records being uploaded to the system- rather than just a bar on them being shared. Precisely how they will be able to do that, however, has yet to be established ahead of pilot projects planned for the spring.

Private hospitals produce patchy standards Healthcare watchdog reveals Nearly one private hospital in 20 failed to meet the basic standards laid down by the health service regulator. Only a third met most of them. Figures released for the first time today by the Healthcare Commission reveal mixed standards in some hospitals and clinics run by the largest private health care providers.

The sad end to the National Health Service occurred when a private firm is awarded total control of NHS hospital in final erosion of National Health Service The first NHS hospital to be put under the total control of a private company was announced last week by the Department of Health. In a final erosion of the health service's role as sole provider of healthcare for NHS patients, labour ministers have awarded a five year contract to manage the new Lymington New Forest Hospital in Hampshire to the Partnership Health Group, a partly owned subsidiary of Care UK. Doctors and nurses will be seconded from the NHS to work alongside staff employed directly by PHG.

NHS Confidentaility at the Big Opt Out- protect your medical privacy NOW! NHS Confidentaility aka the Big Opt Out- Protect your privacy and campaign to preserve your medical confidentiality. Do you want ministers, the police and over 250,000 others to be able to access your complete medical history? If not please sign up NOW!

Santa's present for John Prescott- a kidney stone for Christmas Day Our beloved deputy leader must have been a bad boy this year as John Prescott was taken to hospital on Christmas Day after falling ill with a kidney stone. Prezza took an unexpected tour of front line NHS Accident and Emergency staff on Christmas day at his local hospital in Hull- Castle Hill Hospital. Officials said that Prescott still intended to deputise for Tony Bliar, who has swanned off to Miami for a post Christmas break.

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.

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

The NHS news advice, spin and information on events in 2006

Choose and Book- the supposed "brave new world"- 2 January 06

Money and IT dominate the week's health direct news- 9 January 06

Embarrassing warnings by Health Select Committee and experts views of the new Labour health plans- 16 January 06

The effects of the health service funding crisis- 23 January 06

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt repeated her warnings that hospitals will close- January 30

Bliar confirms his NHS health failures- 6 February 06

Bliar breaks yet another promise- 13 February 06

NICE's primacy confirmed in Herceptin cancer drug High Court case- 20 February 06

Health Direct welcomes the Department of Health (DoH) to our blog- 27 February 06

One again we see the wheels coming off Labour's centralised NHS planning- and their incompetence delivers chaos- 6 March 06.

The old, the mentally unwell and cancer patients lose out in budget cuts- 27 March 06