Honda promotes blood bikes

Many organisations rely on the unselfish dedication of volunteers to keep them ticking over and to keep the costs down. A familiar sight on the high street are charity shops, all manned by volunteers who give their time without recompense to help a good cause. We have all seen the WRVS concession stands in hospitals [...]

Share

NHS reforms may never happen

Earl Howel, the health minister has cautioned that if the peers delay the bill that is set to reform the NHS then it may never get put into law. The bill is to encourage more competition in the NHS and so reduce the cost of health care; part of this bill is to devolve power [...]

Share

NHS has to follow new enforced guidelines

The NHS is having a lot of problems lately, what with scathing reports from the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority and the public accounts committee (PAC), as well as the National Audit Office.  In the PAC report, as outlined in the Guardian last week, the findings showed that NHS has no sure way to link [...]

Share

NHS thinks £32 is a fair price for a loaf

It has emerged that more than £32 per loaf was paid by NHS officials for thousands of loaves of bread. The product is gluten free and given free to patients that have coeliac disease, yet sells in supermarkets for as little as £2.25. Figures released show that costs to the NHS by supplying it through [...]

Share

Many drugs being added to NHS blacklist

According to the GP Organisation ‘Pulse’, NHS managers are banning GP’s from prescribing high cost drugs to try and make savings on prescription budgets. Over 50% of PCO’s (Primary Care Organisations) have in the past year brought in drug blacklists that will no longer be funded by the NHS.

Health boards and Primary care trusts are [...]

Share

Doctors do not have to speak English to work for the NHS

Current European rules are a serious cause of concern and patient safety risk by banning it from examining GPs language skills before they are able to begin working here, says the General Medical Council. Some doctors on its books are not able to communicate in English says the regulator but were not allowed to prevent [...]

Share

NHS productivity continues to fall

Despite increases in resources it has been announced by a Parliamentary Report that NHS productivity in the last decade has fallen. The report from the Office of National Statistics has stated that the NHS productivity has fallen by close .2% each year since 2000 and in hospitals by an average of close to 1.5%, all [...]

Share

NHS still has many mixed sex wards

NHS guidelines suggest genders be separated to different wards when treated in hospital. However, hundreds of patients of both genders have been thrown together into the same wards in London, contrary to these guidelines.

Both the Tories and Labour have sworn to rid the hospitals of the mixed-gender wards, yet even today the Health Secretary, Andrew [...]

Share

Doctors want homeopathy out of the NHS

Doctors believe that the NHS should not pay for homeopathy and that it should no longer be considered a medicine by pharmacies.

Medics voiced their opinion on the matter at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Brighton conference.  They labeled the remedies as ‘nonsense’ and stated that some can even be harmful to patients that choose these [...]

Share

Fines for hospitals if they kick out patients before they are well

Under new government plans, hospitals will face financial penalties if patients have an emergency within 30 days after they are discharged from an initial stay.

Andrew Lansley will unveil the scheme on Tuesday in his first major act as the new health secretary.  According to his address, English hospitals will receive pay for initial treatment of [...]

Share