NHS patients will be able to book GP appointments online and get test results online within three years from a new health direct website.The moves are part of a new Information Strategy designed to “take the hassle out of the health service”.

Online communications between patients and their doctors is already happening in some places.

But the strategy sets out plans to ensure there is universal adoption of digital technologies.

The Department of Health is also encouraging the NHS and private companies to develop new health apps for smart phones and tablet computers.

Repeat prescriptions will also be available from 2015 too.

The deadline mirrors the goal of giving patients access to electronic medical records – something thatwas part of tony bliar’s vision for the NHS in his NPfIT £12 billion dream.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “Our NHS reforms are about making life easier for patients.

“By allowing people to access the NHS online, we will put an end to the 8am rush to phone your GP to try and book an appointment. Reforms like this will take the hassle out of the health service.”

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee, said: “There are GP surgeries which have been pioneering online booking and repeat prescriptions for a while now so we would support the wider implementation of this, as long as it doesn’t impact on patients without IT access who can continue to book appointments in the usual way.

“However, we would caution against the potential use of email for consultations, because compared to a telephone or face-to-face consultation it is difficult for GPs to assess someone quickly and safely this way.

“When it comes to patients being able to view their records online, we believe patients should have access to their health records but we’d want to be satisfied that their records would remain secure before this was implemented – for example it would be important to be certain that it couldn’t be an abusive partner or a parent trying to access their teenager’s records. All patients need to be confident that their records are held safely otherwise they may not feel comfortable talking to their GP about confidential issues.”

Given that the government has an appalling record on leaking and losing your records from everything from DVLA to the tax office we caution against rushing out and signing up for similar treatments.

NHS hospitals had to be bailed out to the tune of almost £415 million last year after running out of cash according to Department of Health figures.In total 31 hospitals had to be given extra emergency funding to keep them going in 2011-12, up from 21 the previous year.

The payments have risen dramatically since 2009-10, when the department started collating full figures.

That year, they were £187.1 million, while in 2010-11 they rose slightly to £223.0 million, before jumping to £414.2 million.

The big rise coincided with a tighter budget settlement for the NHS as a whole,which has resulted in drops in referrals to hospitals and tighter restrictions on surgery for operations like hip and knee replacements.

Andrew Lansley said: “Labour left us a dismal legacy of challenged hospitals, burdening some of them with PFI deals they could not afford, huge debts, and poor financial governance.

“Even with the Government’s decision to protect NHS spending, the challenges of an ageing population and rising costs mean that these problems cannot be swept under the carpet any longer.

“For some hospital trusts, the challenges they face may be too great for them to take on alone.  That is why we are helping them overcome their problems, with short-term support if necessary, so that they become sustainable in the long-term.”

The largest single bailout was for South London Healthcare Trust, which received £79.2 million last year. Over three years it has been handed £168.7 million. Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust was the second biggest recipient in 2011-12, taking £57.7 million in total.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospital-bailouts-top-400m

The NHS risks becoming the “World Health Service” because even visitors to the country can claim free treatment, immigration campaigners warn.Ministers have confirmed that GPs do not need to ask prospective patients for ID or proof of address when registering them, raising fresh fears over “health tourism”.

It allows foreign nationals who arrive in England on a six month visitors visa to begin receiving health care immediately.

But the pressure group Migration Watch UK says that it could also mean illegal immigrants getting NHS treatment.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the organisation, said: “What this means is that someone getting off a plane with a valid visitors visa, is, in effect, able to access the GP services of the NHS without ever having paid a penny into the system. Over one and a half million such visas were issued last year.”

“And once registered with a GP it is, in practice, an easy step to potentially highly expensive and long term treatment – all at the expense of the UK taxpayer with little or no prospect of the beneficiaries ever being charged for it.”

He went on: “‘It is clearly not the job of doctors to act as an arm of the immigration service but there are clear and substantial risks of abuse in such a lax system and controls must be put in place.”

“The present situation is outrageous. Everyone knows the pressure the NHS is under and its ever increasing cost to the taxpayer. To allow such easy and potentially hugely expensive access without any entitlement must be stopped at once, otherwise the NHS risks becoming the ‘World Health Service’.”

The “lax” rules were confirmed in response to a parliamentary written question asked by Frank Field, the veteran Labour MP.

From: http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/

Women with embarrassing medical problems are misdiagnosing themselves after consulting search engines.

They have bought the wrong medication after misdiagnosing themselves on the internet and one in ten has suffered unpleasant side effects as a result, research suggests.

Half of women have diagnosed themselves online and bought a treatment without checking with pharmacists if it is the correct product.

A similar proportion said they would seek to treat medical problems themselves before consulting doctors.

A quarter said they “dread” speaking to doctors.

The online world is just as bad as the offline world for misleading people with snakeoil potions.

The moral of the story is to make sure that you only deal with professionals who you can trust.

For medical news we suggest only using websites such as Health Direct which are regularly reviewed by independent experts:
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
Remember that Dr Google can’t do anything for you, except make you feel bad and paranoid

Dr Google can’t write prescriptions- nor even examine you verbally or in person.

Also, search engines can’t actually think- though they may be programmed very cleverly.

Common sense should prevail online as well as offline.

If your symptoms are bothering you that much, you should go to a qualified practitioner which in the case of medical issues is a GP.

One in three NHS staff say they are not enough people in their department to get their work done, according to the annual health service survey.And almost half of NHS staff said they do not have time to complete their tasks, it was warned.

Staff cuts and a lack of cover when people are on leave or sick is to blame, a union said.

The 2011 NHS Staff Survey, of more than 135,000 health service workers in England, found some were struggling with heavy workloads.

The official NHS staff survey comes after the Royal College of Nursing warned that one in three nurses working on older people’s wards are too busy to help patients with eating or going to the lavatory.

However when hospital staff were asked if a friend or relative needed treatment in their organisation, they would be happy with the standards of care, the proportion answering ‘yes’ varied from just one in three at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust to 96 per cent at Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology NHS Foundation Trust.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “This survey shows that NHS staff remain committed to providing the highest quality of care to their patients.

“The number of staff happy with the standard of care remains stable, with some foundation trusts performing to a very high standard. Too many trusts continue to have less favourable levels of recommendation to family and friends.”

“The NHS should use this as a basis for seeing improvement in the services we deliver for patients in the future.”

Christina McAnea, Unison head of health, said: “The staff survey reflects some of the pressures felt by staff, but our own survey painted a much bleaker picture.

“Unison’s survey showed that 85% experienced an increase in workload and 83% suffered an increase in stress over the past year. The increase in workload is not a coincidence, it is down to cuts in staffing and to a lack of cover for staff on sick or on leave.”

The NHS survey also found that a fifth of staff said they cannot do their job to a standard they are personally pleased with and half would not recommend their trust as a good place to work.

Almost nine out of ten staff who deal with patients said they were satisfied with the quality of care they provided.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-staff-overworked-survey-finds

The most senior doctor in the NHS is demanding that hospitals have a full complement of doctors at weekends to make the health service more convenient to access as “people get sick seven days a week”.Sir Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of the NHS, criticised the culture in hospitals of only treating emergency cases at the weekend with little or no routine surgery or diagnostic testing done outside normal office hours.

He said the current system ‘lacks compassion’ because patients are forced to wait for investigations or take time off work or arrange childcare in order to be seen.

Studies have shown that patients are around 16 per cent per cent more likely to die if they are admitted to hospital at the weekend due to a lack of senior staff.

His comments come as a survey revealed that four in ten doctors are opposed to hospitals operating a seven-day service saying they would need extra pay to work unsocial hours.

Sir Bruce is attempting to reform NHS hospital working hours by talking to hospital chief executives around the country to identify which services can be opened at the weekend first.

He said: “What other industry shuts down for two and half days a week? People get sick seven days a week, they need help seven days a week.

“I want to get to a position where the NHS is indistinguishable on a Saturday from a Wednesday but we won’t get there overnight.

“Twenty years ago there was a debate about Sunday trading and the situation has changed quite substantially. Now in a secular world, the prime occupation on a Sunday is shopping.

“There is a really powerful moral and professional argument for seven day routine services. It would contribute to people’s lives, to the economy and bring a bit of convenience into healthcare.”

In London alone it is estimated that 500 lives a year could be saved if mortality rates at the weekend matched those in the week.

A poll conducted by the website, Doctors.net, has found that four in ten doctors are opposed to such a move.

A seven day working week would mean senior doctors would have to be paid more for working at the weekend and that services would be reduced in the week when staff needed days off in lieu, they said.

Some claimed the NHS is unable to afford proper staffing for a five-day working week, let alone seven days. Childcare issues were also raised as a major stumbling block to doctors working all week.

Currently hospital wards are staffed mostly by nurses and junior doctors often covering hundreds of patients each with consultants and other senior staff on call from home.

Research commissioned by Sir Bruce found that NHS patients were ten per cent more likely to die if they were admitted on a Saturday compared with a Wednesday and 16 per cent more likely to die if they were admitted on a Sunday.

Not all of the deaths were emergency cases, showing that patients seen routinely were at greater risk too.

Chairman of the British Medical Association’s Consultants Committee, Dr Mark Porter, said: “This snapshot poll reflects consultants’ abiding concern for the quality of patient care. Some patients clearly need acute specialist care on a 24/7 basis with appropriate diagnostic and support teams.

“It may be appropriate for other departments to have an on-call consultant available out-of-hours, rather than having a senior doctor present at all times. Hospitals have to be flexible to patients’ needs.

“This is a complex issue and we need to look at the evidence and determine what works best for different areas of medicine.

“The ongoing cuts in NHS resources at present make a consultant-based service more difficult as the NHS is often at full tilt just covering emergencies at weekends.”

Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, which has called for weekend working said: “It is good news that doctors are recognising and supporting the need for seven-day working.

“In December 2010, the Royal College of Physicians called for consultant physicians to be available to care for very sick patients at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

“I am worried that patients are still not getting the best care that they deserve at night and at weekends. Too many junior doctors are covering too many very ill patients, and this has to change.

“To support this change, consultants will need diagnostic and other support services, such as radiography and support from junior doctors. We will also need changes to workforce planning and working patterns.

President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Norman Williams, said: “The evidence continues to mount that we need to rethink how surgical care is delivered for patients’ seven-days-a-week. In particular, mortality and complication rates vary widely for patients admitted as emergencies at the weekend.

“In order to address this, clinicians and managers must work together to reconfigure hospital services in a way that strengthens the quality of care given to patients regardless of when they are admitted.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospitals-should-operate-seven-days-a-week-NHS-top-doctor

The public want taxes to be spent on patient care, not paper-shuffling- Telegraph Editorial.The astonishing levels of pay for agency doctors employed by the NHS, revealed in our investigation, provide further evidence of how dysfunctional the health service bureaucracy has become.

Nor do these findings suggest that the EU Working Time Directive, limiting doctors’ working hours, is operating to good effect.

Although there were strong objections from the medical profession when this directive was imposed, there was also a recognition that doctors’ hours needed to be regulated to some degree: there is an obvious risk to patients being seen by an exhausted doctor, panda-eyed from lack of sleep.

The revelation, however, that in the two years since the directive came into force, NHS hospitals have spent more than £2 billion on temporary clinical staff makes it clear that something is very wrong.

One problem has been highlighted by Professor Norman Williams, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, who has expressed concern about hospitals attempting to economise by leaving vacant the posts of retired consultants, only to spend large sums employing locum staff.

That is sheer incompetence and evidence of the urgent need to rationalise NHS bureaucracy.

Doctors perform a vital service; but it is neither reasonable nor necessary to pay rates of £20,000 a week (equivalent to £1 million a year), especially when many of the payments to on-call doctors include hours when they are asleep.

This scandalous situation has all the classic ingredients: European diktat, bureaucratic incoherence and abuse of taxpayers’ money.

The public agency on which taxpayers least begrudge their involuntary contributions being spent is the NHS; but that generosity is predicated on the money being spent at the “sharp end” of patient care, not dissipated in the black hole of public sector paper-shuffling.

Doctors must not work excessive hours, but both the directive and NHS administration should be searchingly reappraised.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/A-scandalous-waste-of-money-in-the-health-service

The bitter 14 month parliamentary battle over the NHS finally came to an end last night after the Government comfortably fended off a last desperate attempt by Labour to delay the health legislation.MPs have approved the last amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill – leaving the way clear for Royal Assent to be granted before Parliament starts its Easter recess next week.

The NHS shake-up has threatened to drive a wedge between the coalition partners ever since it was unveiled by Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

It is intended to give GPs greater control over NHS budgets, reduce bureaucracy, and increase patient choice.

But while there was jubilation among Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers, opponents have warned that the problems are only just beginning.

RCN chief executive and general secretary Dr Peter Carter described the reforms as “deeply flawed”.

He said: “We have achieved some concessions which make the Bill a different piece of legislation from that which first appeared, but our real concerns about the future of the NHS have not been heeded.

“It is now our responsibility to patients to do everything we can to ensure that the health service runs as best as it can despite the massive upheaval that this Bill will bring.

“We intend to work with trusts, regulators and other bodies but our fear is that in the fullness of time this Bill will be a cause of significant regret.

“Perhaps most importantly we will be supporting nurses who are going to have to pick up the pieces and still deliver the best care they can for patients through this extremely difficult time of change.”

Furious opposition from professional bodies and Lib Dem activists led David Cameron and Nick Clegg to take the highly unusual step of “pausing” the legislation last year.

Despite accepting more than a thousand amendments – including limits on competition and private sector involvement – the Government has failed to win over many health workers.

Lib Dems embarrassed Mr Clegg at the party’s spring conference this month by again refusing to back the measures in a vote.

And there is speculation that the controversy could yet cost Mr Lansley his job in a reshuffle expected over the coming months.

When the Cabinet met yesterday, ministers from both parties banged the table to celebrate news that the reforms had finally cleared the House of Lords.

An emergency debate called by Labour had the potential to delay the Bill until an internal assessment of risks had been published.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham demanded that the Government publish the risk register, insisting: “People outside will struggle to understand how Members of this House could make such momentous decisions without having carefully considered all of the facts and all of the evidence.”

But Mr Lansley accused Labour of “political opportunism”, saying civil servants needed “safe space” in which to advise ministers.

The Commons defeated the motion by 328 to 246 – a majority of 82. No Lib Dem MPs sided with the opposition, with the most vocal critics choosing to abstain.

After the House agreed more than 370 amendments to formally pass the Bill later, Mr Burnham insisted the “fight will go on” and promised to repeal the measures if Labour returned to power.

“We have given this fight everything that we had,” he said. “All I can say is our fight will go on to protect and restore this party’s finest achievement.”

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/nhs-reforms-approved-by-parliament

Family doctors must take an “active stand” against the Government’s health reforms by preventing private firms from controlling NHS budgets, the British Medical Association has warned.The call-to-arms is contained in a strongly-worded letter from the BMA to 22,000 general practitioners, which argues the Health and Social Care Bill will be “irreversibly damaging to the NHS”.

It marks a move from the BMA opposing the Health and Social Care Bill to advising members to do something about it, if it receives Royal Assent.

The letter, by Dr Laurance Buckman, chair of the BMA’s GPs’ committee, describes the Bill as “complex, incoherent and not fit for purpose”.

It warns the legislation will be “almost impossible to implement successfully, given widespread opposition across the NHS workforce”.

Dr Buckman argued the reforms “will be irreversibly damaging to the NHS as a public service, converting it into a competitive marketplace that will widen health inequalities and be detrimental to patient care”, and “could cause irreparable damage to the relationship between GPs and their patients”.

Although stronger in tone than previous criticisms the BMA has made, the statements in the letter do not change the union’s position. It moved to a position of total opposition last November.

However, Dr Buckman also called for GPs to act if the Bill becomes law.

Doctors have become increasingly concerned about the role of private firms in running clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which will be responsible for buying services for the NHS. These will control about two-thirds of the service’s £100+ billion budget.

The Bill contains provisions for private firms to become involved in CCGs, with the Government arguing they will just provide back-office support.

But Dr Buckman wrote: “Unless GPs take an active stand, the day-to-day running of the CCG, and especially its commissioning function, is likely to be outsourced to the hands of organisations providing commissioning support services (CSSs).

“These bodies will initially do some or all of the “back office” functions, but we fear that, in time, they could become the de facto CCG management.”

He continued: “We believe this will lead to the privatisation of commissioning, destroy the public health dimension to commissioning, with a loss of local accountability to local populations, and is likely to exacerbate health inequalities.”

This point is central to much opposition to the Bill, which opponents argue is a poorly-disguised Trojan horse for privatisation of the NHS.

Many GPs favour some sort of clinically-led commissioning – putting doctors in charge of buying health services – but Dr Buckman said the Bill was not necessary to achieve this.

Seven English NHS hospital trusts with debts caused by Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debts are to have access to a £1.5 billion government bailout fund.The subsidy will be available over the course of 25 year long contracts.

Trusts will have to show they have improved efficiency and provide good care in order to access the money.

The seven trusts are: Barking, Havering and Redbridge, St Helens and Knowsley, South London, Peterborough and Stamford, North Cumbria, Dartford and Gravesham and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.

There are 100 plus PFI schemes, where private firms pay to build hospitals, leaving the NHS to pay an annual fee or “mortgage”.

Coalition ministers have attacked Labour over its deals, but the National Audit Office recently reported that for most trusts with financial difficulties PFI was just part of the problem.

The Department of Health says without the funding, services at the hospitals would be put at risk.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “We need to balance the accountability of the NHS at local level to live within its means on one hand, with recognising that there is a legacy of debt for some trusts with PFI schemes.”