Professor Stephen Bloom, from Imperial College London who is described as an “outstanding clinical academic” and pioneer in the field of obesity and diabetes research has received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours list.Prof Bloom is currently leading a research group investigating appetite control systems and gut hormones.

Their discovery that oxyntomodulin reduces appetite offers a potential new treatment for obesity.

Prof Bloom said he was delighted by his knighthood.

“This is a testament to the efforts of a great many colleagues with whom I have worked over the years. This is a unique period in the history of scientific research when we are at last able to work out the details of how the body functions and therefore contribute to the prevention of disease. I am proud that the units are helping patients. I get letters from them all the time.”

Professor Sir Keith O’Nions, rector of Imperial College London, said Prof Bloom’s research was “pioneering” and had changed the approach to treating obesity, for the benefit of everyone in society.

A large variety of vocations are also honoured in health and medicine.

They include MBEs for six GPs, five nurses, a physiotherapist, two pharmacists, a dentist and a volunteer ambulance driver.

John Wallwork, professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of transplantation at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, is the recipient of a CBE.

Julie Moore, chief executive of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust becomes a Dame. Her personal involvement in the development and staffing of the military managed ward concept at Selly Oak Hospital has been recognised.

Christine Mills, founder of Hope for Tomorrow charity, receives an MBE for launching the first UK mobile chemotherapy unit.

She founded the charity after her husband died from cancer of the spine and wanted to alleviate the suffering of people travelling long distances to and from hospital to receive chemotherapy treatment.

She raised enough money to build the world’s first mobile chemotherapy unit, which can treat 12 to 20 cancer patients a day on the road, complete with two dedicated nurses.

There are a host of challenges looming for the NHS in the next 12 months.After 139 days of public hearings, the Mid Staffordshire Public Inquiry closed on 1 December. There is no date yet for the publication of the final report. But already Robert Francis QC, the head of the inquiry, has said the issue threatens to unleash a “tsunami of anger”.

The inquiry has been looking at what happened at Stafford Hospital from 2005 to 2008 during which hundreds of patients died needlessly and why it went undetected for so long. In particular, the findings promise to have major implications for regulation of the health service.

In recent months, the Care Quality Commission, which now regulates quality in the NHS after taking on responsibility for it from the Healthcare Commission in 2009, has come under criticism from the House of Commons health committee for losing sight of what it should be doing. Ominously for the quango, the prime minister was quick to give his backing to the findings.

What is more, during the inquiry the culture and vision of the regulator came under attack from its own officials, prompting the health secretary to order an investigation himself. It seems unlikely that the CQC will survive unchanged.

Politically, the government’s reform of the NHS in England may be over the worst hurdles, but that does not mean it will be an easy ride from now until the big bang in 2013 when GPs finally get control over the purse strings.

There is growing frustration among doctors who are getting involved in the new clinical commission groups. In many ways, they should be the greatest advocates of the plans as they are supposed to be getting more power than ever before.

But the Clinical Commissioning Coalition, which represents the GPs who are piloting the new arrangements, has started reporting that they are being bullied by senior managers in the health service. They say they are interfering with their structures and decision-making process – and this in turn is threatening the whole project. Expect another 12 months of arguments and controversy.

Although it is not part of the NHS, the social care system is closely linked to the fortunes of the health service. Whether it is arranging discharge from hospital or preventing falls in the home, when social services are not working as they should, the effect is felt in the NHS.

When Tony Blair came to power in 1997 he talked about improving social care. But at the end of Labour’s 13 years in power, ministers were still arguing about the best way forward.

After 13 years of labour’s dithering the system is suffering from chronic under funding.

While the NHS enjoys a budget in excess of £100 billion, adult social care has to get by on about £14 billion.

This is topped up by individual contributions – the system is means-tested – but nonetheless councils across the country are cutting back on what they can offer. And so reform will require extra money – something which is of course in short supply at the moment.

It is also likely to require cross-party consensus, but there is still some bad blood between the health secretary and his Labour opponent Andy Burnham over the death tax row which effectively scuppered the shadow health secretary’s plans to reform social care when he was in power.

The budget is increasing by an average of 0.1%, but as inflation in the health service is rising at a much quicker rate to cover costs associated with the ageing population and rising levels of obesity, savings are having to be made.

The NHS has a target of £20 billion by 2015, the equivalent of about 4% a year. That means there is pressure on jobs – unions say tens of thousands are being lost – and front-line services.

In particular, hospitals are coming under pressure. Advances in medicine and the nature of illnesses in the 21st century – many more people are suffering from chronic conditions like diabetes – means more and more can be done in the community.

It has meant an increasing number of hospitals are piling up debts because they are not getting enough patients through the door.

This in turn means managers and ministers are having to make difficult decisions about closing departments and even whole centres. The process will continue in 2012, particularly in and around London which was recently described as being in a “shocking” state by a committee of MPs.

Under Labour, an 18-week waiting time target was set for non-emergency hospital treatment, such as knee and hip operations. Within months of the coalition being formed, ministers said it was being relaxed to move away from the tick-box culture that they say had developed.

But when the government was knee-deep in criticism over its reforms the prime minister made the specific pledge that waiting times would not be allowed to slip. This has resulted in more attention than ever being given to waiting times.

And signs are emerging that hospitals are beginning to struggle to keep up with the 18-week goal. Overall, the NHS is still meeting the target – they only have to achieve it for 90% of patients to reflect the fact there are valid reasons why some wait longer.

But that masks the fact that there is a rising number of places where it is being breached, leaving the best-performers to bring the national figure up.

It means there could be growing dissatisfaction with the waits patients are facing, although it must be remembered a return to the 1990s when waits of six months and even a year were the norm for many patients is still a long, long way off.

Huge regional inequalities in the quality, quantity and costs of health care have been revealed by a new website.Treatments for cancer and dementia and access to care homes are among the areas highlighted in the NHS Atlas of Variation, which was published yesterday.

The annual study carried out across England is a detailed survey of the “postcode lottery” in NHS treatment.

Ministers say the results will help identify “unjustified” disparities and drive up standards resulting in “consistently high quality care”.

The report shows a stark contrast in the rate of prescribing anti-dementia drugs.

Patients in north Lancashire are being described 25 times as many treatments and tablets to help “temporarily improve or stabilise symptoms” than in Kent.

The report suggests that one possible reason is the lack of awareness some GPs have about how to spot early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease – a concern shared by campaigners for those living with the illness.

It also highlights worries that some breast cancer patients are staying in hospital too long in some parts of the country as compared with others.

The survey notes that most patients undergoing breast cancer surgery can be “safely managed as day cases or with a single overnight stay” but that currently more than 20 primary care trusts have average lengths of stay “in excess of three days”.

For example, the same surgery carried out in parts of south Wales resulted in patients staying in hospital for a few days where in Hertfordshire they stayed only one night.

Access to care homes – paid for by the NHS for those receiving end-of-life care or round-the-clock intensive care – also varied considerably.

In Devon and Cornwall, with its high elderly population, the admission rate for those aged over 74 to care homes funded by the NHS was just under three per 100,000 of the population. The figure in Northumberland was 190.

Meanwhile the rate of angioplasty operations – which tackle blocked and narrowed arteries – was three times higher in Peterborough than County Durham.

The report measures 71 key indicators, including hospital admission rates, what treatments health trusts choose to fund, and how children are managed in the NHS.

It attempts to map the “utilisation of healthcare services that cannot be explained by variation in patient illness or patient preferences”.

Health minister Lord Howe said: “The Atlas of Variation lets us look at how the local NHS is meeting the clinical needs of their local population.

“This will help commissioners to identify unjustified variations and drive up standards so patients are receiving consistently high quality care throughout the NHS.

“We are committed to improving results for patients and our new NHS Outcomes Framework will hold the NHS to account for this. Commissioners will be able to apply contractual penalties if any organisation is failing to deliver improvements for patients.”

Critics warn that parts of the Government’s plan to share patient records with private companies give real concern over personal data privacy issues.Mr Burnham said it is “absolutely essential” that patient data is safeguarded, after The Sunday Telegraph revealed David Cameron will use a keynote speech to outline far closer “collaboration” between the health service and life science companies.

The Prime Minister will say that the controversial industry has the potential to be a powerhouse of Britain’s 21st century economy, but that it is stifled by excessive regulation at present.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Burnham said that while he did not object in principle to close ties between the NHS and private sector life science companies, he was concerned that “one of the patients’ groups that was on the working group looking at this issue has walked away”.

“That gives real cause for concern and rings alarm bells” he said. “The Government simply can’t say: ‘This is all red tape and it all must be brushed away’”.

“Proper regulation, essential safeguards need to be in place when it comes to the use of patient data.”

The move, which will give life science companies more freedom to run clinical trials inside hospitals, is likely to face a backlash from privacy campaigners who have consistently opposed private companies being given access to medical records.

There will be particular opposition from animal rights activists who object vehemently, and sometimes violently, to vivisection, while religious groups, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, could object to firms that use stem cells harvested from embryos being allowed access to NHS data.

One senior executive at a leading drugs company well-known for using animal testing said: “You can look at the NHS as one massive database with 60 million people in it.”

The Prime Minister will stress that greater integration between private companies and the NHS could advance medical science, give patients greater access to cutting-edge treatments and save money, while boosting economic growth.

With Britain teetering on the brink of a double-dip recession, ministers are keen to show that they have a positive vision of the future.

“Britain has the potential to become a powerhouse in the world’s life sciences industry,” said a Downing Street source this weekend.

“We want to see much closer collaboration between the NHS and life science companies — not just greater data-sharing, but more clinical trials in hospitals.

“These changes will not only boost the industry, but also potentially give the NHS early access to new, innovative drugs treatments.”

Welcoming the move, Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, said: “Any action the Government takes to improve the environment in this country for life science across these activities is welcome.”

Britain is considered uniquely placed to become a world leader in life sciences because of the strength of scientific research at its top universities and the amount of data and expertise amassed by the NHS since its creation in 1948.

The industry already employs about 160,000 people in 4,500 companies, ranging from large multinationals to small businesses.

These firms employ highly skilled researchers with PhDs down to lower-skilled workers in drugs manufacturing plants.

Whether such companies would be charged for access to NHS records was not clear.

Although personal information should be anonymised, the public sector has an appauling history of handling the personal details of citizens.

Numerous health trusts have been criticised for losing patient records in recent years and HM Revenue & Customs has previously lost the financial records of millions of taxpayers.

Privacy campaigners led a vigorous campaign against the previous Labour government’s plans to place every medical record on a central electronic database.

It is understood that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency would oversee the sharing of NHS data with businesses.

Joyce Robins, from Patient Concern, said many people would be “deeply disturbed” by the notion that their private medical records could be handed to firms seeking new markets.

“Even when they say records will be anonymised, the amount of detail contained in medical records means that companies may be able to find ways to target people with particular conditions,” she said.

“This data is absolutely private; it is not the Government’s to give.”

Health Direct has long warned that patients’ personal data security.

If the Government is genuine in their desire to speed up drug development- they ought to cut red tape.

10 years ago 10% of all new drugs developed in the world were tested in the UK. Since labour created the killer quango National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) this figure that fallen to only 3%.

Britain has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, according to results of an international survey published this week. The Commonwealth Fund survey consistently ranks the NHS highly on a range of measures looking at how health systems deal with people with chronic and serious illness.

It finds people in Britain have among the fastest access to GPs, the best co-ordinated care, and suffer from the among the fewest medical errors, of 11 high income countries surveyed.

The countries examined were: the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Britain and Switzerland were consistently among the best performers, found the analysis of answers from over 18,000 adults with chronic and serious illness.

For example, the Washington DC based organisation reported: “UK and Swiss patients reported more positive health care experiences than sicker adults in the other countries: they were more likely to be able to get a same- or next-day appointment when sick and to have easy access to after-hours care, and they were less likely to experience poorly coordinated care.”

The success of the NHS stands out despite the fact that per capita health spending in the UK is the third lowest of the 11, at £2,170 per head, compared with £3,200 in Switzerland and £4,950 in the US.

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation which claims to support “independent research on health policy reform”.

However, it is widely seen in the US as being strongly in favour of President Obama’s health reforms.

Today’s report is highly critical of current US healthcare. Karen Davis, its president, says the country “practically stands alone when it comes to people with illness or chronic conditions having difficulty affording health care and paying medical bills”.

A spokesman for the Royal College of General Practitioners said the survey “shows yet again that the excellent work carried out by GPs in the UK is recognised worldwide, leading the field in ease of access, coordinated care and good patient doctor relationships”.

He added: “If the current reform of the NHS is to achieve anything, it must preserve and build on the strengths of general practice by producing more GPs, who are trained for longer so that they can do even more to improve the health of their patients.

“The NHS stands out internationally as an example of excellence, and general practice is what makes the NHS safe, fair and value for money.”

Controversial reforms to the NHS have avoided a potentially “fatal” delay in the House of Lords, to the relief of ministers.Amid deep concern in the medical profession and among many members of the public, some peers had tried to have the Health and Social Care Bill thrown out or subjected to detailed scrutiny that would have ruined the Government’s timetable.

It is feared by opponents that the wording of the legislation will remove the Secretary of State’s duty to provide healthcare for all, while plans to widen competition will see the back-door privatisation of the NHS.

But following two days of debate by 100 members of the upper house, and pressure applied by ministers and whips to Tories and Lib Dems, attempts to delay or thrown out the Bill were defeated comfortably in the biggest turnouts seen in the Lords for more than a decade.

A motion by Lord Owen, a former health minister and SDP leader, to let a special committee spend until Christmas studying the constitutional impact of the reforms was rejected by a margin of 330 to 262.

Labour’s Lord Rea had wanted the second reading to be refused altogether but this proposal was lost by 354 votes to 220.

Baroness Williams of Crosby, the Lib Dem grandee who had been among the first to raise fears over the Bill, abstained on the critical Lord Owen vote and went with the Government on the Lord Rea motion.

The results means the Bill, which seeks to remove two tiers of NHS management and give more power to GPs and patients, will now be considered line-by-line in committee stage in the Lords and remains on track to receive Royal Assent by next summer.

It has already survived a rebellion by Lib Dem activists in the spring and an unprecedented “pause” in the parliamentary proceedings for doctors’ concerns to be heard, which led to competition plans being watered down.

But even the Government accepts that more changes will be made to contentious areas.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The vote today moves us one step closer to delivering a world-class health service that puts patients at its heart and hands more power to health professionals. We now look forward to working with the Lords to scrutinise the Bill during Committee Stage to improve our plans further.”

Labour said it would continue to call for “drastic changes”.

The plans had been criticised in the debate by well-known figures including Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, who described the Bill as “unnecessary and, I’m afraid to say, irresponsible”.

After the vote Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of BMA Council, said: “It remains the BMA position that the Health and Social Care Bill should be withdrawn, or if not that it should be substantially amended, and we will continue to raise our concerns at every available opportunity as the Bill progresses through the House of Lords.

“The BMA continues to have many areas of concern, including the need for assurance that increasing patients’ choice of provider for specific elements of their care won’t be given priority over the development of integrated services and fair access.

“We also need to see an explicit provision that the Secretary of State will retain ultimate responsibility for the provision of comprehensive health services.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-reform-Bill-survives-fatal-Lords-vote

Overseas patients owe the NHS almost £60 million in unpaid medical bills, with foreign governments among those with the biggest debts.The figures, which cover the past six years, show an increase in the number of visitors leaving the country without paying for treatment.

Embassies and foreign governments have run up debts of nearly £6 million at two London hospitals after failing to pay for non-emergency treatment, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

More than £4 million is owed to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital by Middle Eastern governments that arrange for children to have treatments not available in their own countries.

While much of the debt is still being chased, more than half has been abandoned or written off.

Free NHS hospital treatment is available to British residents. Overseas patients are charged for the full cost of any treatment they receive unless a specific exemption applies.

Urgent treatment is always available to overseas visitors, regardless of their residence status or ability to pay, but non-urgent treatment should not go ahead without the NHS first receiving payment.

In 2009, West Middlesex University Hospital, in west London, became the first to tell foreign patients they must pay in advance.

The figures reveal that hospitals threatened with closures over mounting debts have written off some of the highest amounts. Imperial College trust, which is £100 million in debt and in the process of making major cuts, is owed £2.5 million and has written off a further £2 million.

The trust for Chase Farm hospital, in north London, which received a bail-out from the Challenged Trust Board and is being forced to close its A&E department, has a foreign debt of £2.5 million.

The Government recently introduced a policy to deny new visas to tourists with outstanding NHS payments.

The burden on the taxpayer is expected to increase next year with one million extra visitors and foreign dignitaries attending the Olympics in London.

Separate figures show that European governments owe £38.5 million to Britain under the system that allows visitors free emergency treatment on the NHS.

Statistics released in a Parliamentary written question show that almost half of the total owed in the European Health Insurance Card scheme, £17.2 million, is due from Ireland.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “At a time when the NHS needs to make £20 billion of savings by 2014, why are managers at hospitals not desperately chasing these unpaid bills? Why are we writing off this money and throwing it down the drain when it could be used to fund front line services and help patients?”

Simon Burns, a health minister, said: “Hospitals must take every reasonable measure to recover any debts from overseas patients. The NHS has a duty to anyone whose life or long-term health is at immediate risk, but we cannot afford to become an international health service, providing free treatment for all.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Overseas-patients-owe-health-service-60m

The General Medical Council (GMC) says some overseas doctors come to the NHS with ‘little or no preparation’ for working in the UK.Along with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, it wants the right to test the English language skills of applicants from within the EU in the same way they test applicants from outside of Europe.

But an EU red tape Directive prevents any systematic testing of language skills of doctors from the European Economic Area (EEA).

The GMC says UK legislation – the Medical Act 1983 – ‘gold plates’ the directive and prevents the GMC from doing any language-testing of doctors from the EEA at all.

Employers are allowed to assess the language skills of applicants from the EEA, but it is thought many do not.

A spokesperson from the GMC said: “Doctors who come to work in the UK make a vital contribution to our healthcare system, but we must make sure they receive the support they need to practise safely and to conform to UK standards.”

“It is unacceptable that the current system enables doctors to practise in the UK without a sufficient grasp of English.”

The GMC says some overseas doctors come to the NHS with “little or no preparation” for working in the UK and those trained under different cultural and professional standards need more support.

The GMC is planning a basic induction programme for all doctors – including those who qualify in the UK – to help understand how healthcare is practised in the UK.

A spokesperson from the Department of Health said: “This government is determined to make sure that foreign healthcare professionals are not allowed to work in the NHS unless they have proven their competence and language skills.”

“We do think the Directive needs updating and we are in the process of responding to the EU proposals, but we can’t pre-empt that response.

“We have already taken steps to strengthen the current system by introducing a duty for responsible officers to check the qualifications, experience and references of all doctors, including foreign doctors.”

But poor English language standards are not just an issue among some European NHS staff, for whom English is not their first language.

Asian nurses said they found it difficult to understand European colleagues – particularly those from Eastern Europe.

But when one was asked what a patient meant if they said they wanted to ‘spend a penny’ – slang for go to the lavatory – she replied “they want to spend money”.

A spokesperson from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We take patient experience and patient complaints very seriously.”

“We care for a diverse patient population and employ a diverse workforce, and understand the importance of staff being able to talk to patients and their families in an appropriate way.”

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14921565

England’s NHS hospitals needed at least £200 million in bailouts and loans as they struggled to balance their books while also meeting tough savings targets, according to a spending watchdog.The Audit Commission said nine NHS trusts “failed to achieve financial balance” and many more applied for extra funding from managers and the Government, although overall performance “continues to be good”.

Health bodies spent £289m on redundancy payments but the number of staff employed in hospitals actually rose by almost 8,000.

Dozens were found at fault with the “value for money” they offer and a fifth of all NHS bodies failed to meet their savings targets despite cutting back on staff and the number of patients they treat.

The Audit Commission, the public spending watchdog that is being scrapped, warned that health service providers face even tougher times ahead as savings become harder to find and Government spending increases dry up.

Andy McKeon, managing director for health at the Audit Commission, said: “It is impressive that the NHS overall performed so well financially last year, even if some organisations struggled.

“But there is no room for complacency. Tighter funding, and the need to continue to improve services and implement reforms, will make the next three years much tougher.  NHS organisations will need to make a determined effort to find further recurrent savings while continuing to deliver high quality services.”

The watchdog looked at the 2010-11 accounts for Primary Care Trusts, which pay for treatment; hospitals not including the semi-independent Foundation Trusts; and the regional Strategic Health Authorities.

It found that they were running a £1.5 billion surplus and had actually underspent by £272 millon on the £2.95 billion in capital expenditure they were given by the Department of Health, twice as much as recorded the previous year.

But seven hospitals and two PCTs failed to break even, one fewer than in 2009-10, with the biggest deficit of £41m recorded by South London Healthcare NHS Trust.

At least 16 NHS organisations needed additional financial support from PCTs which is never paid back “thereby obscuring their real financial health”.

Managers gave out £90 million to hospitals, while the Department of Health issued loans totalling £34 million to four hospitals and also gave £76 million to two trusts which did not even have enough money to pay back loans.

Ministers want to cut management costs by 45 per cent at SHAs and PCTs, which are being restructured, and they did let 5,713 people go with average pay-offs of £40,000 each.

But the headcount at hospitals actually rose by 7,616 and only fell by 27 in the 10 SHAs.

The Audit Commission did not find any NHS body’s accounts were not “true and fair”, but it did issue “qualified Value For Money conclusions” for 27 hospitals and 18 PCTs, suggesting they had problems with “financial resilience” or “economy, efficiency and effectiveness”.

The Audit Commission warns next year will be “a more financially challenging year” as there will be no “significant real-terms increase” in the central budget, so trusts will require “determined effort and strong leadership”.

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-hospitals-needed-200m-in-bailouts-and-loans

The head of a scandal hit NHS hospital has claimed there is something “fundamentally wrong” with nurses and the nursing profession.Sir Stephen Moss, chairman of Stafford Hospital and himself a nurse for 40 years, said that “too many patients and families” are being let down but that staff shortages are not to blame.

He suggested the problems lie in the training nurses receive as well as the way they work on hospital wards, and plans to lead a new campaign to improve standards.

His comments come in the wake of a series of scandals at NHS hospitals in which vulnerable patients have been neglected with sometimes fatal consequences.

At Stafford Hospital, which Sir Stephen arrived at in 2009 to help turn around its fortunes, as many as 1,200 patients are feared to have died unnecessarily over three years as managers became preoccupied with cost-cutting.

A recent report by the Health Service Ombudsman condemned the NHS for failing to meet “even the most basic standards of care” for pensioners, while spot inspections by the Care Quality Commission have uncovered geriatric wards where doctors are prescribing water to elderly patients to stop them becoming dehydrated.

Unions and professional bodies have suggested that the problems are down to staff being over-worked or forced to focus on Government targets rather than providing personal care.

But other commentators have claimed that too much care is now provided by cheap healthcare assistants, who do not need to meet national training standards and who are not regulated by a professional body; or that nurses think they are “above” feeding and cleaning patients now that they have to be university-educated.

In an interview with a local newspaper, Sir Stephen said: “Not everything in nursing is bad, but after the events at Stafford Hospital, the recent concerns at New Cross Hospital [in Wolverhampton, where high death rates are being investigated] and others around the country you can’t tell me there isn’t an issue here that needs addressing and we have to do something about it.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with the nursing profession and the way it is focused at the moment.  We are getting a lot right but we are also letting down too many patients and families. We can’t just stand by and not do something.”

Sir Stephen is drawing together a group of seven “big hitters” in the health service to suggest ways that hospital care can be improved.

Their plans, to be disclosed in September, will focus on how nurses can be trained for “the real world of the NHS rather than the classroom”.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-boss-something-fundamentally-wrong-with-nursing