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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Trusts reduced the number of 65-week breaches by around 20% and cut the overall elective waiting list between October and mid-December, NHS England has said.
    The claim is based on provisional data published by NHSE on 2 January, which came with a warning of possible “significant issues regarding the quality and completeness”.
    The figures suggest the number of 65-week waiters fell from around 114,000 on 8 October to around 93,000 by 17 December. The last official “referral to treatment” figures were published last month (see table below). They reported there were around 107,000 65-week breaches in October.
    Sources familiar with the provisional data, from the “waiting list minimum data set”, said while it was not as accurate as official referral to treatment statistics, it gives an accurate picture of the direction of travel and overall performance.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 3 January 2024
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has been accused of bowing to political pressure and trying to “undermine” the junior doctors strike.
    British Medical Association council chair Philip Banfield tonight wrote to NHSE chief executive Amanda Pritchard accusing her organisation of the “weaponisation” of the process used to agree minimum services level during the strike.
    Junior doctors walked out yesterday to begin a six day strike, the latest in their 10 month campaign and the longest in NHS history.
    Professor Banfield’s letter claims that NHSE is not respecting the terms of the voluntary agreement to provide “derogations”. These, says the letter, “allow for junior doctors to return to work in the event of safety concerns arising from ‘unexpected and extreme circumstances’ unrelated to industrial action”.
    The BMA accuses trusts of not providing the information the union needs to determine if the requests for derogations are justified. It said that the lack of information provided by trusts had led to it turning down 20 requests for derogations.
    The letter states: “We are increasingly drawing the conclusion that NHS England’s change in attitude towards the process is not due to concerns around patient safety but due to political pressure to maintain a higher level of service, undermine our strike action and push the BMA into refusing an increasing number of requests; requests, we believe, would not have been put to us during previous rounds of strike action.
    “The change in approach also appears to be politicisation and weaponisation of a safety critical process to justify the Minimum Service Level regulations.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 3 January 2024
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    People in some more rural areas are missing out on specialist treatments they should be getting, while Londoners are receiving a lot more than their “fair share”, new NHS England figures suggest. 
    NHS England has suggested the main cause is “systematic shortfalls in access [in] remote communities”, leaving “unmet need” for specialised services in these areas.
    However other factors, including coding and reporting practices, year-to-year fluctuation, and weaknesses in the formula, are also likely to be confusing the picture, sources said.
    The variation is being uncovered now because NHSE is preparing to fund many specialised services via allocations to integrated care boards. These allocations will be based on estimates of their populations’ healthcare needs, rather than NHSE negotiating payments directly with provider trusts – as it has since 2013.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 3 January 2023
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    Almost one in four people have bought medicine online or at a pharmacy to treat their illness after failing to see a GP face to face, according to a UK survey underlining the rise of do-it-yourself treatment.
    Nearly one in five (19%) have gone to A&E seeking urgent medical treatment for the same reason, the research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows.
    One in six (16%) people agreed when asked by the pollsters Savanta ComRes if the difficulty of getting an in-person family doctor appointment meant they had “carried out medical treatment on yourself or asked somebody else who is not a medical professional to do so”.
    Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said delays and difficulty in accessing GP appointments constituted a national scandal, and face-to-face GP appointments had become “almost extinct” in some areas of the country.
    He said: “We now have the devastating situation where people are left treating themselves or even self-prescribing medication because they can’t see their local GP.”
    Dr Richard Van Mellaerts, the deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee in England, said: “While self-care and consulting other services such as pharmacies and NHS 111 will often be the right thing to do for many minor health conditions, it is worrying if patients feel forced into inappropriate courses of action because they are struggling to book an appointment for an issue that requires the attention of a GP or a member of practice staff.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 January 2024
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    Hundreds of children’s appointments – including for lifesaving operations and cancer treatments – have been cancelled on each day that NHS strikes took place over the last year, as hundreds of thousands of youngsters languish on the waiting list for treatment, The Independent can reveal.
    More than 20,000 paediatric treatments and surgeries were shelved because of the walkouts, while the families of 400 children were told that their lifesaving operations had been cancelled.
    With junior doctors due to stage the longest strike in NHS history this week – for six days, starting on Wednesday – the problem is set to get worse.
    Dr Camilla Kingdon, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, warned that long waits for children can be particularly damaging, and can have a lifelong impact as treatment is often time-critical.
    She said that children are seldom prioritised in national policy-making, and urged the government to put children’s needs “back on the agenda”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 2 January 2024
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    An alarming number of Britons are turning into “DIY doctors” because of the struggle to get an NHS GP appointment in 2023, new polling has revealed.
    Some 23% of those surveyed said they could not get an appointment, while three in 10 (33 per cent) said they had given up on booking one altogether, according to a Savanta poll commissioned by the Liberal Democrats.
    Many said they had resorted to “DIY” medical care or gone to A&E instead. One in seven (14 per cent) said they had been forced to treat themselves or ask someone else untrained to do so, with the same proportion seeking emergency care.
    One in five people said they had bought medication online or at a pharmacy without advice from a GP, and one in three had delayed seeing a doctor despite being in pain, as pressure on the NHS mounts.
    Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey described the figures as “utterly depressing” and said they should serve as an “urgent wake-up call for ministers asleep on the job”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 1 January 2024
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS bosses fear patient safety could be compromised during this week’s junior doctors strikes if medics do not honour an agreement to abandon picket lines if hospitals become overwhelmed during the winter crisis.
    Hospital bosses can ask the British Medical Association (BMA) to allow junior doctors to return to work to help if an emergency arises during their six-day strike starting on Wednesday.
    But there is concern among health trust leaders that the doctors’ union could reject such “recall requests” – or take worryingly long to consider them – despite “highly vulnerable” hospitals having too few staff on duty to cope with a surge in patient numbers.
    A spike in cases of flu, Covid and norovirus has left the NHS under intensifying strain in the first week of the new year, a period in which its winter crisis often bites.
    On the eve of the 144-hour strike – the longest in NHS history – the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, urged the BMA to ensure the “recall system” worked reliably if it was triggered.
    “With the next round of junior doctors strikes coinciding with what is always an exceptionally busy week for the NHS, health leaders hope that escalation plans run smoothly and with a shared understanding that protecting patient safety is the most important priority,” Danny Mortimer, the confederation’s deputy chief executive, said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 1 January 2024
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    Nurses are being put in increasing danger from shocking levels of violence and aggression by patients, a senior nursing leader has warned.
    Prof Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) director of nursing, said the crisis in the NHS had fuelled bad behaviour by patients frustrated by worsening delays for treatment since the Covid pandemic.
    Ranger said the situation was contributing to an exodus of nurses from the NHS, amid a vicious cycle of staff shortages and rising violence.
    This meant that there were often not enough nurses on duty to keep colleagues safe, she added.
    Calling on the government to make tackling the abuse of nurses a priority, Ranger said there was a sense of despair in the profession about their deteriorating working conditions.
    “I think the public would be totally shocked if they knew how common it is for nursing staff to be on the receiving end of violence and aggression at work,” said Ranger. “Nurses are put in jeopardy, it’s become all too common for them to be threatened by patients on shift.
    “We genuinely have got a nursing crisis in the UK that doesn’t seem to be being acknowledged by our government at all. Being spat at, being hit, being punched, can for some nurses just literally be the final straw."
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 1 January 2024
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Stroke patients in England are waiting an average of almost seven hours for a specialist bed, double the wait reported before Covid.
    National performance against key measures collected by the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme has nosedived, with patients in England waiting an average of almost seven hours to be admitted to a specialist unit in 2022-23, compared to three and a half hours in 2019-20.
    NHS England guidance states that every patient with acute stroke should be given rapid access to a stroke unit within four hours. This time frame is considered critical, as patients can only be given clot-busting drugs, and treatments such as thrombectomy, which surgically removes a clot, within the first few hours of stroke onset.
    However, this was achieved in just 40% of cases last year (2022-23), down from 61% in 2018-19.
    Juliet Bouverie, CEO of the Stroke Association, urged ministers to give trusts what they needed to reverse the decline, saying: “Stroke is a medical emergency and every minute is critical.
    “We are very concerned to see that, far from improving over the last year, the proportion of stroke patients being admitted to a stroke ward within the timescale for thrombolysis has continued to decline. This is putting patient recoveries at risk and strain on the rest of the health system.
    “We believe that early supported discharge, when done correctly, with adequately resourced community teams, can help to alleviate capacity pressures in acute stroke units. However, this is not a silver bullet. There are longstanding workforce issues which are affecting patient flow in, through and out of stroke units and we call on DHSC to properly address these in the workforce plan.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 2 January 2024
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients who feel fortunate to get a doctor's appointment then find they are in and out of the GP surgery in less than five minutes.
    A fifth of the consultations in England last year were done within that time.
    Dennis Reed, of the Silver Voices campaign group for over-60s, said: "It is hard enough to get a face-to-face appointment with a GP these days, without being shown the door before you have had a chance to take your coat off.
    "The public wants the family doctor back, who knows your family history and has the time to chat about your general health and wellbeing.
    "A revolving door policy, with the patient exiting after a couple of minutes clutching a prescription, is not the way to run a primary care service."
    Research from the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Lib Dems, found 22% of GP appointments between January to October 2023 lasted five minutes or less.
    Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse said: "Seeing a GP is the most vital contact for people to address their health concerns, seek help and start treatment.
    "Not having quick and easy access to a GP and not having sufficient time for patients during an appointment leads to huge problems later on, let alone the anxiety and additional pain people suffer because of delays."
    Read full story
    Source: The Express, 31 December 2023
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Hospital admissions from a winter virus could be reduced by more than 80% if babies are given a single dose of a new antibody treatment, a study says.
    Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, but can lead to bronchiolitis and pneumonia.
    More than 30,000 under fives are hospitalised with RSV in the UK annually, resulting in 20 to 30 deaths.
    One British parent said her son getting RSV was "very scary" as a first-time mother.
    Lorna and Russell Smith's eldest son, Caolan, got the virus when he was eight months old and was admitted to hospital twice - each time requiring oxygen.
    Now aged two, he has made a full recovery.
    "I hadn't heard of RSV and wasn't sure what to do. He had laboured breathing due to high temperature and was quite lethargic. It brought a lot of anxiety and stress," Lorna said.
    The Harmonie study involved 8,000 children up to the age of 12 months, with half receiving a single dose of the monoclonal antibody treatment nirsevimab.
    The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that RSV-related hospitalisation was reduced by 83% in those receiving the jab and admissions for all chest infections were cut by 58%.
    Side effects were similar in both groups and mostly mild.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 27 December 2023
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    Hospital neglect contributed to the death of a two month old baby after staff turned off emergency alarms, a coroner has ruled.
    Louella Sheridan died at Royal Bolton Hospital in on 24 April 2022 after she was admitted with bronchiolitis to the hospital’s intensive care unit before later dying from Covid and a related heart condition.
    Four alarms on a monitoring machine were silenced and then switched off before the baby collapsed in a high dependency unit, it has been found.
    On Wednesday coroner John Pollard ruled neglect by staff had contributed to Louella’s death after staff switched off the alarms on the monitors attached to her during the night.
    Summing up his conclusion Coroner Pollard reportedly said there was a “gross failure “ to provide basic medical care to Louell and that had care been given, had the alarms been switched on to alert staff her life may have been extended at least for a short period of time.
    He said turning off the alarms was a gross type of conduct.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 22 December 2023
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients have been harmed as a result of doctors striking this year, and others needing time-critical treatment will be at risk during next month’s walkout in England, hospital bosses have said.
    Cancer patients and women having induced or caesarean section births will be in danger of damage to their health unless junior doctors in those areas of care abandon their plans to strike for six days in January, they said.
    People awaiting urgent eye surgery risk permanent sight loss unless the British Medical Association (BMA) lets junior doctors keep working in that area, according to NHS Employers, which represents health service trusts in England.
    Its intervention comes amid mounting concern in the NHS that it may prove impossible to maintain patient safety in high-risk, time-sensitive areas of treatment when tens of thousands of junior doctors stage what will be the longest strike in NHS history from 3 January, when hospitals are facing what is often the service’s busiest week of the year.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 21 December 2023
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    Nearly 1.7 million Texans have lost their health insurance — the largest number of people any state has removed — in the months since Texas began peeling people from Medicaid as part of the post-pandemic “unwinding.” Around 65% of these removals occurred because of procedural reasons, according to the state.
    Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission has neared the end of a chaotic and overburdened process to remove people from state Medicaid insurance who became ineligible during the coronavirus pandemic. The state had not unenrolled people before this year because of federal pandemic rules, which forbid states from cutting coverage.
    As a result, more than 5 million Texans had continuous access to healthcare throughout the pandemic through Medicaid, the joint federal-and-state-funded insurance program for low-income individuals. In Texas, the program’s eligibility criteria is so restrictive, it mainly covers poor children, their mothers while pregnant and post partum, and disabled and senior adults.
    But the effects of speedrunning this process have reverberated: Still-eligible Texans were kicked off both in error and for procedural reasons, adding to backlogs of hundreds of thousands of Medicaid applications and pushing wait times back several months.
    “The state handled this with an incredible amount of incompetence and indifference to poor people,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, told The Texas Tribune. “It's really appalling.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Texas Tribune, 14 December 2023
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS could struggle to cope with a catastrophic flu season after leading medics warned of plunging flu vaccine uptake among its frontline staff.
    NHS figures show just 39% of frontline staff had a flu vaccine in November, down from 52% in November 2020.
    The worrying statistics mean the already under-strain service could lose crucial staff to illnesses and risk spreading the virus during its busiest winter period.
    Speaking to The Independent, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said: “We are concerned about staff vaccination against flu. Post-pandemic, there is a certain lack of appetite and there is probably a degree of apathy about staff getting vaccinated against flu, and we think that’s a problem.
    “We need to be doing more to get stuff vaccinated against flu.”
    He added: “I think societally and as healthcare practitioners, I think we have a moral duty to get ourselves vaccinated so we don't create gaps by going off sick and we don't infect our patients.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 21 December 2023
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    At least 137,000 women in the UK live with the painful and traumatic consequences of cutting, but there is no provision for reconstructive surgery.
    In May 2023, Shamsa Araweelo was in the A&E department of a London hospital in excruciating pain. It wasn’t the first time she had sought urgent treatment for the gynaecological damage caused by the female genital mutilation (FGM), or cutting, forced on her as a six-year-old. In fact, this was one of many such visits to emergency departments that Araweelo had made in her desperate attempt to find a surgeon who could help undo the damage done to her as a child and which has caused her so much pain and trauma as an adult.
    Araweelo says that in A&E she was told that she had severe nerve damage and that it could be reversed through reconstructive surgery. But not in the UK.
    “No doctor in the country will touch you, because you are an FGM survivor,” Araweelo says she was told. “I felt no compassion, no respect. Only in London did they tell me they wished they had the appropriate training to help me, and it breaks my heart. We are not valued in the UK.”
    Current NHS rules state that if a health practitioner suspects a patient has been cut, they must report the case to the police and complete a safeguarding risk assessment to determine whether a social care referral is required. Guidance for GPs also recommends referrals for mental health issues related to FGM or referrals to uro-gynaecological specialist clinics.
    Araweelo says that in all the years she has sought help she has never been offered any kind of support from medical professionals.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 21 December 2023
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    Thousands more elderly people will be stuck in hospital over Christmas because of junior doctors’ strikes, Age UK has warned.
    The charity is among several who have said the timing of the strikes, which begin at 7am on Wednesday means it will be “extremely difficult to ensure safe and effective care” during them.
    Age UK is one of five organisations raising fears over patient safety and making a plea to the British Medical Association (BMA) and Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, for a resolution to the dispute.
    Junior doctors’ walkouts are due to last until Saturday, with their longest strike to come early in the new year, while flu, norovirus and Covid hospitalisations are rising.
    In a joint letter with the NHS Confederation, Patients Association, National Voices and Healthwatch , Age UK said strike action in the days ahead could leave thousands of patients stranded in hospital for want of staff to get them discharged.
    The latest figures show 13,000 such cases in hospitals despite being medically fit for discharge. The charities said the withdrawal of almost half the medical workforce in England would mean the most vulnerable are left “bearing the brunt” of the pay dispute.
    “Our concern is that, despite the best efforts of hard-working NHS staff, it will be extremely difficult to ensure safe and effective care during this period for all patients that need it.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 20 December 2023
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    Scientists have drawn a link between the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and a “spike” in cases of a rare disease that can leave its victims paralysed.
    Three separate studies reported an increase in Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) shortly after the roll out of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
    GBS is a potentially deadly condition in which a person’s immune system attacks their nerves and gradually paralyses victims from the feet upwards. While most patients recover, it can be life-threatening or permanently debilitating.
    Two of the studies looked at rates of GBS in England and said there was an increase in cases “attributable to” the AstraZeneca vaccine, or that there was a probable “causal link”.
    The Telegraph has spoken to several people who developed GBS after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, and have become severely disabled as a result.
    On Friday, one of the victims spoke of his “anger” that he had the AstraZeneca jab without knowing that it posed such a risk.
    Anthony Shingler said: “It feels like the side effects were either missed or ignored.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 8 December 2023
    Related reading on the hub:
    Interview with Charlet Crichton, founder of UKCVFamily Adverse reactions to Covid-19 vaccination - are adverse reactions adequately understood and are patients affected provided for in your area?
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    More than half of a trust’s staff told the Care Quality Commission (CQC) they did not have confidence in its executive leadership, with just 16% saying they did, the regulator has reported.
    The CQC surveyed staff as part of its inspection of East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust.
    Eighty-four per cent either said they disagreed with the statement “I have confidence in the executive team”, or neither agreed nor disagreed. That leaves just 16% who said they did have confidence.
    Some said they felt “traumatised”, “devalued” or “damaged” by a recent restructuring programme at the trust, which has been grappling major care quality and performance problems for several years.
    The CQC also revealed in a report today that it issued a warning notice to the trust after inspections at its two main sites in July. They ordered immediate improvements in its emergency departments, medical care and children and young people’s services.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 December 2023
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    Health experts say more attention should be given to patients’ experiences after research found multiple examples of their insights being undervalued.
    A study led by the University of Cambridge and King’s College London found clinicians ranked patient self-assessments as the least important when making diagnostic decisions.
    Ethnicity and gender were felt to influence diagnosis, particularly a perception that women were more likely to be told their symptoms were psychosomatic. Male clinicians were more likely to say that patients overplay symptoms.
    The findings prompted calls for clinicians to move away from the “doctor knows best attitude” when caring for patients.
    One patient shared the feeling of being disbelieved as “degrading and dehumanising”, and added: “I’ll tell them my symptoms and they’ll tell me that symptom is wrong, or I can’t feel pain there, or in that way.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 December 2023
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    Mothers in England will be asked in detail if pregnancy or giving birth has affected their mental health as a result of new NHS guidance to GPs.
    The move is part of a drive by NHS England to improve support for women suffering postnatal depression or other mental health problems linked to their pregnancy or childbirth.
    Under the new guidance GPs will ask women more questions than before about how they are feeling when they attend their postnatal health check six to eight weeks after giving birth.
    Family doctors will look for any sign that the woman may have a condition such as postnatal PTSD as a result of experiencing a traumatic birth or psychosis induced by bearing a child.
    Anyone who the GP feels needs help with their mental wellbeing will be referred to specialist maternal mental health services, which have been expanded in recent years.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 December 2023
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    The traditional model of NHS dentistry is gone for good, experts are warning.
    The Nuffield Trust think tank said the service had been cut back so much it was now at the most perilous position in its 75-year history in England.
    It said restoring services would probably need an unrealistic amount of money and called for radical reform, suggesting NHS support may need to be completely scaled back for some adults.
    The Nuffield Trust said funding for NHS dentistry had suffered huge cuts in recent years. Some £3.1bn was spent in 2021-22 - a drop of £525m since 2014-15 once inflation is taken into account.
    It said the number of treatments being done each year was now six million lower than it was before the pandemic.
    The Nuffield Trust said tough policy choices needed to be made, suggesting one option could be to start charging adults for the full cost of treatment beyond emergency work and check-ups.
    Shawn Charlwood, chairman of the British Dental Association's general dental practice committee, said the report "reads like the last rites for NHS dentistry" and that "patients and this profession deserve some honesty here".
    He added: "The government say NHS dentistry should be accessible for all who need it.
    "The plain facts are we're not seeing any evidence of the reforms or the resources to realise that ambition."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 19 December 2023
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has been told it must take action to raise awareness about the potentially fatal interaction between tramadol and warfarin, following the death of a patient.
    Graham Danbury, assistant coroner for Hertfordshire, issued a prevention of future deaths report on 1 December 2023, after Susan Gladstone, from Hertfordshire, died on 8 January 2021 from a bleed in the brain.
    An inquest, which ended on 20 November 2023, concluded that Gladstone “died as a result of a generally unknown interaction between warfarin and tramadol, which caused exceptional thinning of her blood”. 
    Gladstone was prescribed tramadol twice for lower back pain: on 20 December 2020 and 4 January 2021. According to the report, she had been taking the anticoagulation medication warfarin for “a number of years”.
    The report continues: “There was nothing to warn the prescribing doctor of any possible interaction. I found on the balance of probabilities that an interaction between tramadol and warfarin had caused this dangerous, and in the event, fatal INR to develop.
    “In my opinion, actions should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you, NHS England, have the power to take such action.”
    Read full story
    Source: Pharmaceutical Journal, 13 December 2023
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    The national clinical director for older people has announced he is leaving NHS England and said a major government funding settlement will be needed to maintain progress and take community services to the ‘next stage’.
    Adrian Hayter joined NHSE in 2019 as NCD for older people and integrated person centred care.
    Dr Hayter, who is also a longstanding GP partner in Berkshire, said community services were now much more prominent at NHSE — and in its asks of the service – than they were four years ago. 
    He said: “When I first came in, there wasn’t very much in planning guidance about what was happening in the community at all. Now that is different and we are expecting a range of initiatives in 2024.
    “But the future is that all of these things are not individual programmes - they’re all part of a particular approach to how we manage and support people for as long as possible in their own homes.
    “Urgent community response [where services are required to respond within two-hours to urgent needs, referred from a range of services] and virtual wards are a continuum of care.
    “And the growth of virtual wards have helped extend what happens in the community all the way through to the acute level care.”
    National long-term funding for several of the new services – badged in the 2019 long-term plan as “Aging Well” – is also now due to end, with integrated care boards instead asked to commission them locally.
    Dr Hayter warned that, as well as moving those services closer together, there needed to be a future government spending review settlement aimed at growing community services, to meet the needs of the rapidly ageing population.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 18 December 2023
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Scientists are hoping a new 45-minute blood test can quickly identify sepsis before it kills.
    Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection. It occurs when the body overreacts and starts attacking its own tissues and organs.
    The hard-to-diagnose condition kills nearly 50,000 Brits a year more than breast, prostate and bowel cancer combined - with severe cases taking just hours to prove fatal.
    Dr Andrew Retter, an intensive care consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, who is trialling the test told The Times: “If someone comes into A&E and they’re sick, we can spot that early and start treatment early.
    “For every hour antibiotics are delayed, people’s mortality goes up by about 7 or 8 per cent if they’ve got sepsis.”
    Melissa Mead’s one-year-old son William died after weeks of a lingering cough and concerns were dismissed by doctors and 111 operators.
    The campaigner told The Times: “A test like this at the point of care in A&E, for example, could remove the uncertainty about sepsis, which presents differently in different people.
    “This could give people a chance at life that my son never had.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 17 December 2023
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