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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Thousands of GP practices — and some other localised services — are without their IT systems today, due to global outages also affecting banking, media and aviation.
    All EMIS GP IT systems, which are used by more than half of the 8,000-odd GP practices in England, were down. It was leaving many practices unable to book appointments or consult with patients first thing on Friday morning.
    This will quickly lead to a backlog of appointments and likely pressure on other urgent care.
    Patient-facing digital services linked to EMIS also appeared to be down, such as records access via the NHS app.
    The National Pharmacy Association said some community pharmacy services were down — such as “accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries” were disrupted. It’s unclear if that is also caused by EMIS, or other systems.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 19 July 2024
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    A fifth of the nursing and midwifery professionals who left the register in the last year did so within 10 years of joining, figures show.
    Nursing leaders described the statistic as “deeply alarming” and called on ministers to “grasp the nettle and make nursing an attractive career”.
    The latest Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) annual report on its register of nurses, midwives and nursing associates in the UK shows 27,168 staff left the profession between April 2023 and March 2024, a slight decrease on the previous 12 months.
    However, 20.3% of the total - or 5,508 - did so within the first 10 years. This is compared to 18.8% in 2020/2021 and “reflects a rise over the last three years”, according to the report.
    Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: “It is deeply alarming that over 5,000 young, early-career nursing staff chose to quit the profession last year, most vowing never to return.
    “When the vacancy rate is high and care standards often poor due to staffing levels, the NHS cannot afford to lose a single individual.
    “New ministers have to grasp the nettle and make nursing an attractive career.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 19 July 2024
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    BBC reporters are at Queens hospital in Romford, east London, and, like many across the capital it is busy. Really busy.
    When filming, 17 patients from their A&E were being treated on beds in corridors.
    Growing numbers of attendances have meant that what was once an emergency measure has now become the norm.
    Ruth Green is the director of nursing for the emergency department and says corridor care has become "customary practice"
    When the BBC last filmed the corridor treatments here back in January 2023, the department was seeing 1,400 patients arrive each month by ambulance. Now that number has risen to 2,100.
    The number of ambulances arriving every day has gone up in a year too, from around 90 per day to around 120.
    Ruth Green, the director of nursing for the emergency department said: "Unfortunately it is now customary practice to have patients treated on our corridors pretty much all of the time, not every day now it’s the summer, but still far too often."
    They have had to install new plugs in the corridors so they can operate the hospital beds, new nurse call buttons and a new sink.
    One patient in a bed in the corridor is Louis Vella.
    He spent 18 hours in A&E after coming in with chest pains and was eventually transferred to a corridor to wait for a bed on a ward.
    He said: "It’s not ideal, no, but they are working as best they can with what they’ve got and what else can one ask for?"
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 19 July 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift
    Reflections on a clinical shift: "After 20 years of nursing, this is one of the worst shifts I have ever completed"
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    A troubled mental health trust’s internal mortality review has concluded 418 of an estimated 12,503 patient deaths over a four-and-a-half year period were “unexpected and unnatural”.
    Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust’s leaders said the findings showed there had been a “much, much smaller” number of avoidable deaths than had been implied by previous reviews and reported by the media in the past.
    But the review’s findings were swiftly dismissed by campaigners, who said they had “no confidence” in the new figures, accused the trust of “corporate gaslighting” and renewed calls for a statutory public inquiry.
    The review was initiated after a similar exercise by Grant Thornton last June concluded it was not possible to work out how many avoidable deaths there had been because of the trust’s poor data.
    A month later, BBC Newsnight reported evidence it had watered down criticism in the Grant Thorton report, with allegations of “weak” and “inadequate” governance in earlier versions of the report removed from the final version. The trust and auditor said the changes were due to “fact checking”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 18 July 2024
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    A woman has said her ovarian cancer diagnosis was delayed after her symptoms were wrongly dismissed as menopause or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) – accusing her doctor of misogyny and medically gaslighting her.
    Sbba Siddique, a 55-year-old business owner, told The Independent that “unconscious bias and cultural incompetence” were also to blame for her delayed diagnosis.
    Ms Siddique, who lives in Berkshire, said she began to feel unwell around October 2021 but did not get diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer until March the following year.
    “I was feeling really tired all the time. I had no energy. I was piling on weight that wasn’t there previously despite not changing my eating habits. I was needing to wee more,” the mother of three recalled.
    “I was going back and forth with my GP trying to get an appointment. I couldn’t get a face-to-face – every consultation was on the phone or via online forms. That was part of the problem of the misdiagnosis.”
    Her GP was “very dismissive” of her symptoms and attributed them to IBS or the menopause, she added.
    “At the end of the day, I’m not the expert, the GP is – I believed him,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 14 July 2024
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    The former health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have been criticised for their failure to better prepare the UK for the pandemic, in a damning first report from the Covid inquiry that calls for an overhaul in how the government prepares for civil emergencies.
    Hunt, who was the health secretary from 2012-18, and Hancock, who took over until 2021, were named by the chair to the inquiry, Heather Hallett, for failing to rectify flaws in contingency planning before the pandemic, which claimed more than 230,000 lives in the UK.
    The government had focused largely on the threat of an influenza outbreak despite the fact that coronaviruses in Asia and the Middle East in the preceding years meant “another coronavirus outbreak at a pandemic scale was foreseeable”. Lady Hallett said that to overlook that was “a fundamental error”.
    “It was not a black swan event,” Hallett said in a 240-page report. It concluded: “The processes, planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens. Ministers and officials were guilty of ‘groupthink’ that led to a false consensus that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic. Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.”
    In what families bereaved by Covid welcomed as a “hard-hitting, clear-sighted and damning analysis of how and why the UK found itself to be fatally underprepared”, Hallett said “preparedness and resilience for a whole-system emergency must be treated in much the same way as we treat a threat from a hostile state”.
    The arrival of another pandemic – “potentially one that is even more transmissible and lethal” – was a question of when, not if, she said, and “unless we are better prepared” it would bring “immense suffering and huge financial cost and the most vulnerable in society will suffer most”.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 18 July 2024
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS should help social care recruit and retain nurses, including with better pay and conditions, particularly for new service models where care staff take on more health tasks.
    This is among the recommendations in the first workforce plan for adult social care, published by Skills for Care today, which also warns government must not delay promised improvements in staff pay, standards and conditions, while it waits to decide on funding reform.
    The report also recommends a pay uplift for care staff which it estimates would cost between about £2bn and £6bn a year – but it suggests there would be a significant net benefit overall due to reducing turnover costs and increasing care capacity.
    The report says integrated care systems should develop joint “one workforce” plans, “align terms and conditions, training and wellbeing support”, and “create the pipeline for registered nurses and nursing associates” to go into care roles.
    Nursing turnover in care providers is very high and it is thought nurses often leave for NHS jobs with better pay and conditions. However, nursing staff are increasingly needed to supervise “delegated healthcare tasks” for care users with rising acuity. It is an approach government, and many systems, want to grow as part of integrated teams, such as testing and monitoring in “virtual wards”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 18 July 2024
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS has significantly reduced the amount of IVF procedures it provides across the UK, leaving infertile women either unable to access treatment or forced to pay for it privately.
    Barely one in four (27%) of cycles of IVF during 2022 were paid for by the health service – the lowest figure since 2008 and a sharp fall on the 40% which it provided in 2012.
    The sharp fall in recent years is revealed in the latest annual report by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (Hfea), which regulates fertility treatment in the four home nations.
    The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has told the NHS in England to give all women who qualify three cycles of IVF. However, that rarely happens, with provision being patchy.
    Dr Kevin McEleny, the chair of the British Fertility Society (BFS), said women are the casualties of a widespread variation in the availability of IVF which is “heartbreaking and so unfair”.
    “Cost-cutting by NHS funding bodies who should implement the Nice IVF recommendations [means] patients in one part of the country are unable to access NHS-funded fertility treatments that people in a similar situation elsewhere in the country can.
    “Infertility is recognised as a health problem. Yet many people still see involuntary childlessness as a lifestyle choice, and this attitude reflects why it doesn’t get the NHS funding it deserves,” he added.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 July 2024
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Organ replacement procedures to obesity surgery, Brazilian butt lifts to hair transplants and full body MOTs. This is not the body modification menu of a sci-fi novel, but packages for sale at the Health Tourism Expo – a two-day sales conference for surgical alterations held in London last month.
    The event was teeming with doctors and hospital representatives staffing promotional stands, many of them from Turkey where clinics attract thousands of British tourists looking for surgical alterations at a lower price, with flights and accommodation thrown in.
    There is no suggestion that any of the clinics exhibiting at the London expo have been involved in malpractice, but while the business of surgical tourism appears to be booming, one aspect of the industry seem to be missing entirely: regulation of promotional events such as this one.
    According to data from the Foreign Office, six Britonsa died in Turkey in 2023 after medical procedures, while data from the British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has revealed the number of people needing hospital treatment in the UK after getting cosmetic surgery abroad increased by 94% in three years, with 324 patients requiring surgery once they returned home in the four years to 2022.
    Marc Pacifico, the president of BAAPS, said the lack of oversight of events such as the Health Tourism Expo was concerning. “I think it is truly remarkable that an exhibition like this seems to fall between the cracks of all the UK regulatory bodies that are responsible for healthcare and the safety of patients,” he said. “I would have thought it would be common sense for there to be some sort of oversight.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 July 2024
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    The failures and weaknesses in the UK's pandemic preparations are expected to be laid out in the first report published by the Covid inquiry.
    Baroness Hallett, who is chairing the public inquiry, will set out her findings at lunchtime.
    Her report will cover the state of the healthcare system, stockpiles of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the planning that was in place.
    It is the first of at least nine reports covering everything from political decision-making to vaccines and the impact on children.
    Trained army medic Dr Saleyha Ahsan, who worked in hospitals during the first two waves of Covid and is now part of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, after losing her father to the virus, said it felt like there had been “zero planning”, with doctors often struggling to get hold of the right PPE
    “The rules were changing on a daily basis in the first few weeks - it was ridiculous,” she said.
    “We were in the flimsiest of PPE, just a little surgical mask with a white apron.
    “It felt like we were making do and the people who were being pushed to the front were healthcare workers."
    “It's so, so important for those of us who worked through it, who lost through it, or who have suffered ill health because of it, to really appreciate where things went wrong and who was responsible.”
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 18 July 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    The pandemic – questions around Government governance: a blog from David Osborn Respiratory protective equipment: An unequal solution for healthcare workers? A blog by David Osborn
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    More than one million extra women could have life-saving cervical-cancer checks if the NHS adopted do-it-yourself testing, researchers estimate.
    The team at King’s College London said the results of its self-testing trial were “fantastic” and “gave power to women”.
    The kits are like a Covid swab but longer and are posted to a lab for analysis.
    The NHS called the findings extremely positive and is assessing whether to roll out the scheme.
    There are more than 3,000 new cases of cervical cancer in the UK each year.
    “Cervical cancer screening has been in decline for the last 20 years,” a senior consultant on the trial, Mairead Lyons, said.
    "Many women will describe it as an uncomfortable experience [or they are] too busy, embarrassed or afraid of the physical experience of it."
    NHS England screening and vaccination director Deborah Tomalin called the trial results “extremely promising”.
    “The NHS will now be working with the UK National Screening Committee to consider the feasibility of rolling this out more widely across England,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 17 July 2024
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    More than 133,000 men die early every year in the UK, equating to 15 every hour, according to a report calling for urgent action to improve men’s health.
    Two in five men are dying prematurely, before the age of 75 and often from entirely avoidable health conditions, research by the charity Movember found.
    Almost two in three men – 64% – wait more than a week before visiting a doctor with symptoms, while 48% believe it is normal practice to avoid health check-ups. Less than 40% take up the offer of an NHS health check for which they are eligible.
    “The report findings should serve as a wake-up call to the unacceptable state of men’s health across the UK,” said Michelle Terry, the chief executive of Movember. “For too long, men’s health has been relegated to the sidelines of broader health conversations. Men’s health doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”
    The report found the health of men in the UK was worse than in many other wealthy countries, while those living in the UK’s most deprived regions are 81% more likely to die prematurely than those in the wealthiest.
    William Roberts, the chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, said: “Too many men are dying too young and too many men experience poor health due to preventable conditions.
    “It is critical that we address the underlying causes of poor men’s health. Men’s health affects us all and we need to see it as a critical part of a healthy nation.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 17 July 2024
    Further resources on the hub:
    11 top picks: Men's health Why harmful gender stereotypes surrounding men’s approaches towards their feelings need challenging  
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    The proportion of trusts with maternity services “red rated” for neonatal mortality rose from around a quarter in 2021 to a third in 2022, according to the latest national audit.
    The latest Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk Through Audit and Confidential Enquiries report, published on Friday, classifies trusts from red to green, according to how far above or below they are their peer group providers.
    Nationally, there were increases in the neonatal mortality rate per 1,000 live births in 2022 compared with 2021, rising from 1.65 to 1.69 per 1,000 total births. Neonatal death is when a baby dies in the first 28 days of life.
    Of 121 trusts, 41 (34%) were rated “red” for neonatal mortality in 2022, as their rates were over 5% higher than their peer group average. This compares with 32 trusts (26% of 123 trusts) rated “red” for neonatal mortality in 2021.
    There were, however, also some areas of improvement year-on-year. The number of trusts rated “green” — with neonatal death rates more than 15% lower than the average in their peer group — increased from three in 2021 to eight in 2022, marking a significant improvement from 2020 and 2021.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 July 2024
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS has been told it can start using a new digital test to speed up the diagnosis of ADHD in children and young people, which up to now could often take several years.
    The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has issued draft guidance approving the use of the QbTest by psychiatrists and specialist children’s doctors. The computer-based test measures the three main characteristics of ADHD: inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity.
    Clinicians can use the results alongside other information they have gathered to help them diagnose, or rule out, that a young person has the condition. NICE said the test could be used when diagnosing six- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales.
    Experts welcomed the move, saying the QbTest would help doctors diagnose more people within six months of them first being assessed.
    Dr Jessica Eccles, the chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ neurodevelopmental special interest group, said: “People who suspect they may have ADHD often have to wait months or even years for an assessment which can prevent them from accessing timely and effective care. Any new evidence-based tools should be used to reduce these unacceptable waiting times and improve the availability of support.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 July 2024
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    A sexual health nurse who failed to tell patients and their partners of positive test results for sexually transmitted infections should be struck off, a professional hearing was told.
    David Allen made incorrect entries and omitted information when updating patient records, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) heard.
    Mr Allen, who worked at Wakefield Integrated Sexual Health Services, also posted abusive and inappropriate messages about colleagues online.
    The NMC found his actions could have resulted in a real risk of harm to patients and had been "a flagrant departure from the standards expected of a registered nurse".
    The NMC panel, which met earlier in July, heard the discrepancies dated back to 2018 and involved 18 cases.
    When a person has tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease, guidelines said any current or past sexual partners should be informed, which is called partner notification.
    The NMC panel found that on 18 occasions, Mr Allen had failed to complete the partner notification and had falsely indicated he had done so.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 July 2024
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Two babies died on a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit during a bacterial outbreak which could have been prevented, the BBC has learned.
    An internal investigation by Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) said lapses in hygiene practices allowed the drug-resistant bugs to spread.
    Five other infants were found to have the same Klebsiella pneumoniae strain during the outbreak in November 2021. The mother of a two-week-old boy who died said she felt “betrayed” by the hospital and had begun legal action.
    Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said it had implemented new infection control measures, brought in additional training and increased staffing levels.
    A nurse who previously worked at the neonatal unit told the BBC staff faced “extremely strenuous” conditions which led to “medical mistakes”.
    A patient safety incident investigation report, circulated internally in March 2022 and seen by the BBC, also said infection control practices which could have stopped the spread of Klebsiella “were not being implemented consistently” by staff in the unit.
    It revealed an investigation had found staff in the neonatal unit were not “consistently” following hand hygiene guidelines at the time of the outbreak and “seemed unclear” about where and when personal protective equipment was required.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 16 July 2024
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    A woman living with type 1 diabetes is calling for better communication on the supply of essential medication after she had to turn to social media for help in finding some.
    Gwen Edwards, 27, from Anglesey, takes insulin and has been using Fiasp FlexTouch, a type of insulin that comes in a disposable pen.
    A shortage notice about supplies of the insulin that she uses was sent to all surgeries and pharmacies in Wales in March, but Gwen said she was not made aware of this.
    According to her, she normally gets a prescription two weeks before her medicine runs out, but recently it became clear that there was a problem with the stock.
    "I had to go and look for insulin. One chemist told me that they had run out and that there was no stock at all, so I was a bit worried," she said.
    Despite the low stock, she said she was not aware of the shortage.
    "I went with the prescription to other places to look for the insulin. Five chemists later they told me that the insulin was out of stock."
    Her GP practice said it could not comment on individual cases, but the health board for north Wales said local pharmacies would not "routinely contact patients directly" about shortages of medicines because most would not see any disruption.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 July 2024
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    A Black nurse who tried to call out alleged racism at a scandal-hit regulator was targeted by a complaint, The Independent revealed.
    The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which regulates more than 800,000 nurses and midwives in the UK, was heavily criticised in a review that found it had a “toxic” and “dysfunctional” culture and had failed to address racism in its ranks.
    The review warned that the safety of the public as well as nursing and midwifery staff is at risk because of flawed and delayed investigations by the NMC.
    It warned of widespread allegations of racism at the NMC, which senior leaders had failed to address. It also found that the body was mishandling racism complaints against nurses and midwives. Staff told reviewers that prejudice such as racism and misogyny was leading to flawed responses to complaints against nurses.
    Now a Black nurse, Neomi Bennett, has revealed that she faced a complaint submitted by a senior NMC representative after she publicly called out alleged racism on the part of the regulator.
    She told The Independent that being referred to her regulator for her comments while calling out racism felt like a “betrayal” and an “abuse of power”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 15 July 2024
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Vulnerable people face being denied basic preventive social care at home due to a wave of rapid discharges from hospitals that is sucking up resources, council bosses have warned.
    Despite cross-party support for more early care at home, town hall officials are having to allocate resources to people with more complex needs, many discharged from hospital early as part of attempts to clear NHS backlogs.
    It means thousands of others were “at risk of missing out [on care] or their needs escalating”, warned the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services in England (Adass) after its annual survey of England’s 153 council social care directors.
    It revealed that only 1 in 10 directors were fully confident their budgets would meet their statutory duties – down from more than a third before the Covid pandemic.
    Spending aimed at preventing people’s conditions from worsening was forced down by £121m over the past year. As the complexity of cases increases, councils overspent by £586m – the highest level for at least a decade, triggering raids on dwindling council reserves.
    The findings were “unsustainable and worrying” said Melanie Williams, the president of Adass and director of adult social care at Nottinghamshire county council.
    “Instead of focusing on investment in hospitals and freeing up beds, the new government must shift to investing in more social care, supporting unpaid carers, and providing healthcare in our local community to prevent people reaching crisis point and ending up in hospital in the first place,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 July 2024
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    The UK’s under-fire nursing regulator is being forced to investigate as a third of universities may have released trainee nurses to work in hospitals despite failing to carry out hundreds of hours of mandatory training.
    The potential training failure comes after the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) allegedly ignored warnings from universities about the problem three years ago, with the regulator only now taking action.
    The blunder means an unknown number of nurses may have been sent to work in hospitals without the required amount of experience, and hundreds of student nurses have already had their graduation date delayed, leaving some concerned about public safety.
    Thirty out of 98 universities are now facing reviews by the NMC into how they have monitored the qualifications of student nurses and midwives.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 14 July 2024
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    One in five hospices in the UK are cutting services amid the worst funding crisis in two decades, a report has warned, with soaring numbers of patients being pushed back into the NHS.
    Research by Hospice UK found “small and wildly varying” state funding had failed to keep pace with growing demand and rising running costs.
    That means inpatient beds are being cut, staff made redundant and community services restricted, with fewer visits to dying patients in their own homes, according to the charity, which represents more than 200 hospices across the country.
    Hospice UK said the sector’s finances were in their worst state in 20 years. A fifth of hospices have cut or closed their services in the last year or are planning to do so, the charity said.
    Toby Porter, its chief executive, said: “Too many hospices are in crisis. The small and wildly variable amount of state funding they receive has failed to keep pace with rising costs.
    “Many hospices are therefore running deficits that can only mean one thing – more cuts to essential care services, or even service closures. We’re already seeing redundancies at some major hospices.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 July 2024
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    The Care Quality Commission’s new chief executive has admitted the regulator “got things wrong” during the rollout of its new inspection regime and announced an increase in the number of assessments it carries out.
    The CQC announced a shake-up of its regulatory regime three years ago. It involved a move from a “set schedule of inspections to a more flexible, targeted approach”, called the “single assessment framework”, with greater reliance on data.
    However, its rollout has been controversial with CQC’s own staff and providers flagging concerns about the new approach.
    Now, Ms Terroni has said changes in how the regulator manages relationships has left many providers feeling “unsupported”, with wider technical issues preventing organisations from accessing information.
    She wrote: ”I want to start with an apology. We’ve got things wrong in the implementation of our new regulatory approach. I know that the changes we’ve delivered so far are not what we promised. It’s made things more difficult than they should be. We’re not where we want to be, and we’re determined to put things right….
    “Many of the issues we’re experiencing now were anticipated and flagged by providers and our own people. We didn’t listen properly or take on board these concerns, and that’s why we’re where we are now.
    “Though there was significant engagement and co-production of the high-level elements of our approach, we didn’t follow that process into the detail of how we’ll assess providers. I know that, for some of you, we’ve lost your trust because of this. I’m sorry.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 15 July 2024
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    Waiting times for hip and knee replacements are four times longer in England than Italy post-lockdown, analysis has revealed.
    Patients in England are waiting an average of 128 days for hip replacements and 141 days for a new knee on the NHS, which are both up by around 50 per cent since before the pandemic.
    It leaves England lagging behind other European countries, with waits that are four times longer than Italy, where hip replacements are completed in 33 days and knees within 30 days, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust.
    Sarah Reed, senior fellow at Nuffield Trust and author of the report, said countries around the world were “dealing with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, with many still struggling to bring down waiting times”.
    “However, it’s striking that in England our pace of recovery has been much slower for major surgeries like hip and knee replacements, but for some minor procedures we appear to have improved more quickly than nearly everywhere else,” she said.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 11 July 2024
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    There were "missed opportunities" to treat a four-year-old girl who visited A&E and a GP in the 48 hours before her death, an inquest jury has concluded.
    Makenna-Rose Thackray died on 20 December 2022 after stopping breathing and going into cardiac arrest.
    She was taken to Wakefield's Pinderfields Hospital by ambulance two days earlier but went home after her family endured a fruitless six-hour wait for treatment. They visited a GP the following day and were sent home without antibiotics.
    A lawyer for Makenna-Rose's family said the evidence showed the girl's death was "entirely preventable".
    On 18 December Makenna-Rose had been taken to children's A&E but the inquest heard the two nurses on shift that night dealt with almost 80 children, instead of the 30 to 40 which could have been safely treated.
    Earlier in proceedings, one of the nurses on shift that night, Helen Parker, described the shift as "one of the worst" and when asked if they were under-staffed, replied: "Absolutely, yes."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 11 July 2024
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients trying to reach their GP are almost three times as likely to fail to get through in the worst-performing integrated care systems (ICS) than the best, according to analysis of new annual figures. 
    The data is from NHS England’s annual GP patient survey, which has a large sample size, and is considered one of the best measures of GP access and experience.
    In Birmingham and Solihull and Black Country, 7% of patients said their calls went unanswered — significantly lower than the best-performing systems at 2%, and the national average of 4%.
    Some more urban and racially diverse areas tended to do worse on key GP access measures – such as Birmingham, the Black Country, large parts of London, Greater Manchester, and Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes – although more rural patches like Northamptonshire and parts of the South West also have big problems.
    NHSE said in a statement: “NHS staff have worked incredibly hard to cope with increased demand for patient care, but this survey makes it clear there is much more to do to improve patient’s satisfaction and experience in accessing primary care services.”
    It will work with the government to “tackle the issues that matter most to patients” including long-term conditions, continuity of care and patient access, it added. 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 12 July 2024
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