Monday 9 April 2018

Improving population mental health: five lessons from Liverpool

Improving population mental health: five lessons from Liverpool The King’s Fund has been working with Kaleidoscope Health and Care and the Centre for Mental Health to deliver a series of learning events across England, as part of the Prevention concordat for better mental health programme led by Public Health England. Here, Chris Naylor shares key lessons from a recent event in Liverpool.

Cancer taskforce recommendations: progress report

Cancer taskforce recommendations: progress report This document outlines Public Health England’s progress on strategic priorities identified in the Independent Cancer Taskforce report, Achieving world-class cancer outcomes: a strategy for England 2015 to 2020 that was published in July 2015.

New report reveals 4 in 10 prostate cancer cases are diagnosed late and an impending crisis in prostate cancer provision

New report reveals 4 in 10 prostate cancer cases are diagnosed late and an impending crisis in prostate cancer provision A new report – Prostate Cancer: Britain’s Growing Problem – published this week by male cancer charity, Orchid, highlights a worrying trend in late prostate cancer diagnosis and calls for urgent action by men, healthcare professionals and UK health chiefs to avert a “ticking time bomb in terms of prostate cancer provision”.

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Reclassify cancers to improve treatment, researchers say

Reclassify cancers to improve treatment, researchers say Cancers should no longer be categorised by where they are first formed in the body, but instead by similarities in tumour types, researchers say.

A US-led study of 33 cancer types from more than 10,000 patients found they could be reclassified into 28 clusters that shared similar molecules.

Reclassification would ultimately lead to better, more targeted treatments, said the researchers.

"It's time to rewrite the textbooks on cancer," one of the authors said. BBC News

It is time to end the 'heads on spikes' approach to NHS failures

It is time to end the 'heads on spikes' approach to NHS failures The health service needs to distinguish between managers who cross a moral line and those who get into difficulty trying to do their best

The leadership implosions at Liverpool community health NHS trust and Wirral University teaching hospital NHS trust have been followed by another bout of soul-searching at NHS Improvement about when and how to fire NHS managers.

In an interview with HSJ, recently appointed NHS Improvement chair Dido Harding articulated widely felt disquiet over the health service’s failure to distinguish between people in senior roles whose performance has fallen short and those who have, in her words, “crossed a moral line”. Continue reading... The Guardian

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Why do new medicines cost so much, and what can we do about it?

Why do new medicines cost so much, and what can we do about it? The cost of new drugs is putting increasing pressure on people in both rich and poor countries. Sarah Boseley explains why it’s a burning issue

Why does it matter what medicines cost?

If you are lucky enough to live in a country with comprehensive state-funded healthcare, such as the UK, you probably have no idea how much medicines really cost. But it can be a lot. Some drugs that have been around for ages are very cheap – aspirin, for instance, costs pence. It’s been out of patent and made by numerous companies competing to undercut each other’s price for decades. But new medicines, protected by 20-year patents, can cost hundreds of pounds a packet and sometimes thousands. The new breast cancer drug Kadcyla weighed in at a starting price of £90,000 per patient per year in the UK in 2015, though the manufacturer has now agreed a hefty discount for the NHSContinue reading... The Guardian

More elderly are dying after falls as care crisis deepens

More elderly are dying after falls as care crisis deepens Shortages of nurses and healthcare assistants in hospitals and care homes are blamed for a sharp rise in deaths

The number of Britons dying after suffering a fall is rising sharply, especially among the very old, raising fresh concern about the lack of social care and understaffing in hospitals and care homes.

Doctors are warning that while the trend is linked to the ageing population, the fact that the increase in deaths is outstripping the growth in numbers of people aged over 65 is a cause for alarm.

The UK has fewer doctors and nurses than many other comparable countries both in Europe and worldwide. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Britain comes 24th in a league table of 34 member countries in terms of the number of doctors per capita. Greece, Austria and Norway have the most; the three countries with the fewest are Turkey, Chile and Mexico. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, regularly points out that the NHS in England has more doctors and nurses than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. That is true, although there are now fewer district nurses, mental health nurses and other types of health professionals. Continue reading... The Guardian

Hospital staff paying £80 a week in car parking charges

Hospital staff paying £80 a week in car parking charges Three out of ten NHS hospitals are charging staff for car parking, with some demanding £80 a week, new figures show.

Doctors and nurses are expected to pay at 348 out of the 1,175 hospitals with parking facilities, according to NHS data.

The highest average charge for staff is £2 per hour at both the Edgware Community Hospital, north-west London and Birmingham Children's Hospital, analysis by motoring research charity the RAC Foundation revealed.

That is the equivalent of £80 for a 40-hour working week. The Daily Telegraph

Thousands of GPs warned to reduce antibiotics in fight against superbugs

Thousands of GPs warned to reduce antibiotics in fight against superbugs More than 8,000 GPs have been warned they may be contributing to the rise of drug-resistant superbugs by prescribing too many antibiotics.

Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies, who has previously warned of a “post-antibiotic apocalypse”, has targeted family doctors in surgeries with the highest prescribing rates and those where use of the drugs is rising quickly.

In a letter to GPs she described antimicrobial resistance, where antibiotics no longer work for some serious infections, as a “serious and growing threat to our health and economy”. The Daily Telegraph

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Doctors blast hospital bosses after they find SECRET monitoring devices

Doctors blast hospital bosses after they find SECRET monitoring devices Furious doctors have hit out at their bosses after finding secret monitoring devices under their desks at a scandal-hit hospital.

Hull Royal Infirmary chiefs installed the gadgets to 'ensure optimum space utilisation' at the hospital amid relentless pressure on the NHS.

But medics have branded the OccupEye 'Automated Workspace Utilisation Analysis' devices as as 'astonishing invasion of privacy'.

The Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) has written to Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust to condemn the gadgets. The Daily Mail