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The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis. Years of underfunding have left the service facing such “impossible” demands that without urgent extra investment in November’s autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce “draconian rationing” of treatment – all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says. NHS 'in perpetual winter of Narnia' as waiting list reaches record 3.9m Read more In an unprecedentedly bleak assessment of the NHS’s own health, NHS Providers, which speaks for...

The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis. Years of underfunding have left the service facing such “impossible” demands that without urgent extra investment in November’s autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce “draconian rationing” of treatment – all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says. n an unprecedentedly bleak assessment of the NHS’s own health, NHS Providers, which speaks for hospital trust chairs and chief executives, tells ministers that widespread breaches of performance targets,...

Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale. Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations. The decision, described by the Royal College of Surgeons as the “most severe the modern NHS has ever...

Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale. Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

Hospitals are to cancel thousands of operations and appointments in a desperate bid to stop the NHS "buckling" this winter, under Government plans. Health officials are drawing up contingency measures to attempt to safeguard emergency care by diverting senior doctors from operating theatres into wards and Accident & Emergency departments as winter sets in. The national plan, detailed in evidence to the Commons health select committee, comes amid concern that the NHS is already in the grip of the worst bed-blocking crisis on record. Last night, Britain’s most senior A&E doctor said hospitals were under such strain that a bad...

Elderly patients are being told by opticians to buy darker sunglasses as the NHS will not pay for life-changing cataract surgery Others have been informed they are not ‘entitled’ just because they had laser treatment on their eyes 16 years ago.

Hospitals across the UK are imposing do not resuscitate orders on tens of thousands of patients without informing their families, an audit has found. The investigation, by the Royal College of Physicians, estimated that around 200,000 patients are issued with the order for health workers not to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). In 16% of cases, the study found there was no record with the patient about making the order. The study also found that hospitals are failing to tell relations that they will not perform the potentially lifesaving technique. Its audit of 9,000 dying patients found that one in 5...

Hospitals in England are braced for the first all-out doctors' strike in the NHS's history on Tuesday. Junior doctors will walk out of both routine and emergency care from 08:00 to 17:00 BST in the contract row. It is the first time services such as A&E, maternity and intensive care have been hit in the long-running dispute. NHS bosses believe plans are in place to ensure care will be safe, but say the situation will be monitored closely during the stoppage. A second strike is due to take place on Wednesday, between the same hours. -snip NHS England said "military...

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital. Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex. But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery. Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

A young girl who dreamed of studying at Cambridge died of sepsis after being sent home twice by an NHS weekend walk-in centre. An inquest heard medics missed opportunities to save twelve-year-old Franchesca Pawson when she visited an NHS walk-in centre twice in a weekend. She was told to take paracetamol and ibuprofen at the centre, after nurses failed to detect the infection was spreading through her body. Her mother Elsa took her to the clinic in Derby on Saturday 10 January last year, because had been unwell for five days and was complaining of fever, a high temperature and...

A hospital doctor who gave a man a vasectomy by mistake after he complaint about waiting for another procedure has admitted misconduct charges. Associate specialist in urology Dr Nanikram Vaswani was meant to be removing scar tissue from the patient, but a string of failings meant he performed a vasectomy instead. A medical tribunal heard the patient had arrived at 7.30am for his surgery and was waiting with other men due to have vasectomies. There was "some disquiet" when patients who arrived at 11am were seen before those who arrived earlier leading to confusion over which procedure the man should...

The NHS chief at the centre of a growing 111 scandal authorised a separate policy which meant 999 calls were recorded as receiving a swift response - even if no help was given, a leaked report reveals. The head of South East Coast Ambulance trust ordered the secret scheme, which improved its apparent performance against national targets. Under NHS rules, 75 per cent of calls assessed as “life-threatening” should receive a response within eight minutes. But the trust retrospectively assessed thousands of missed calls, and counted them as receiving such a response - simply on the grounds that the patient...

Foreign press will need permission to publish anything online in China under new rules proposed by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology earlier this week and reported by Quartz. Under the new provisions, which are due to take effect on March 10 and are the latest evidence that China is clamping down on foreign influence, the government said it hopes to “regulate online publishing� and “promote the healthy and orderly development of online publishing services.� “Sino-foreign joint ventures and foreign business units shall not engage in online publishing services� and must be approved by the government before doing so, the rules, which were...

Nearly 3,000 operations have been canceled as junior doctors in England take part in a second 24-hour strike over pay and conditions. Checkups, appointments and tests are also set to be disrupted as a result of the walkout, which began at 08:00 GMT. Formal talks broke down in January and there is mounting speculation ministers may soon seek to impose a new contract, potentially inflaming the row further. The key sticking point appears to be payments for working on Saturdays. ...

At least 2,400 cancer patients die needlessly every year because their GP does not refer them to a specialist quickly enough, research has suggested. The two-week wait means patients should see a specialist for their first appointment within two weeks of seeing a GP with suspected cancer symptoms. But new research has found a higher number of deaths in cancer patients whose GPs do not regularly use the pathway. Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the study, which was funded by Cancer Research UK and National Institute for Health Research, examined data from 215,284 English cancer patients in 2009....

NHS trusts in England have racked up a deficit approaching £1 billion in the first three months of the financial year - the worst financial position "in a generation," regulators have said. The figure is more than the £820 million overspend for the entire previous year. They said the “staggering” figures would result in widespread cutbacks to services, with lengthening waiting times and increased rationing of care.

The number of cases of a terrifying superbug in NHS hospitals has surged after the Government ignored warnings—and relaxed the rules on fighting infections. Hundreds more patients fell ill with deadly Clostridium difficile—known as C.diff—between April 2014 and March 2015 than in the previous year. The increase, from 13,361 to 14,165, came immediately after the system for fining hospitals with too many cases was dramatically weakened. …

Researchers studied data from 70,000 patients and found that out of the 60,000 people who were diagnosed through their GP, nearly 13,300 had been seen three or more times before they were referred for cancer tests. Those who had taken the longest to diagnose were more likely to be unhappy with later aspects of their care. Nearly one in five were dissatisfied with how medical staff broke the news that they had cancer. 40 per cent were also unhappy with the communication between hospital staff and their GP. More than one in 10 felt that information had been deliberately withheld...

The NHS will be forced to discriminate against the over 70s to meet ‘highly unethical’ UN health targets which seek to reduce premature deaths in younger people, senior medics have warned. Under the proposed Sustainable Development Goals, UN member states must cut the number of deaths from diseases like cancer, stroke, diabetes and dementia by one third by 2030. However because many are age-related illnesses people who succumb to those diseases from the age of 70 are not deemed to have died prematurely and so are not included in the target. In an open letter published in The Lancet, an...

On Monday, the Right Honorable David Cameron, prime minister of Great Britain, gave his first major speech after being reelected to his high office — once held by Pitt, Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Churchill and Thatcher. Confronting a world of challenges — including Greece’s possible exit from the euro, a massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, Ukraine’s perilous state, Russia’s continued intransigence, the advance of the Islamic State and the continuing chaos in the Middle East — Cameron chose to talk about . . . a plan to ensure that hospitals in the United Kingdom will be better staffed on weekends. Okay,...

The UK Independence Party launched its election manifesto on Wednesday, appealing to Conservative voters with pledges to raise defense spending and bring forward a vote on Britain’s EU membership. […] (Nigel) Farage vowed to spend “substantially” more than the NATO minimum of two percent of GDP on defense in a move that he said would “rattle the dwindling number of Conservative voters who still see (Prime Minister David) Cameron’s party as the party of security”. […] The anti-mass immigration party, which had two MPs at the end of the last parliament, also promised to cut small business taxes and boost...

Doctors believe that a terminally-ill teenager who has a brain tumour will die within weeks after a judge gave them permission to withhold treatment. The 18-year-old man’s parents wanted chemotherapy to continue and his mother had launched a “passionate” fight “for his life” at a fraught late-night hearing at the Court of Protection in London. She said her son was “absolutely adored” and a “miracle child” and urged judge Mrs Justice Hogg not to rule that he “has to die”.

Obese People Could Have Benefits Taken Away If They Refuse Treatment David Cameron says taxpayers should no longer “fund the benefits” of obese people or drug and alcohol addicts who refuse to accept the treatment that could help them get back into employment By Peter Dominiczak, 13 Feb 2015 Obese people could have their benefits stripped if they refuse treatment in a bid to ensure they can lead a “fulfilling life”, David Cameron has said. A Conservative government will attempt to ensure that tens of thousands of people who claim welfare on the grounds of obesity, drug or alcohol addiction...

More than 50 patients have died after an NHS trust introduced a secret policy to downgrade 999 calls and not to send ambulances to terminally ill patients. Managers at East of England ambulance trust were accused of “the most cruel form of rationing imaginable” after admitting that 8,000 patients had been affected by the changes. An internal NHS report discloses that 57 patients died after their calls were downgraded following a decision not to send ambulances to the terminally ill and to those who had given instructions not to resuscitate. It meant that, instead of receiving a response from paramedics...

A Christian nurse says the U.K.'s National Health Service suspended her for "harassment and bullying" because she prayed a short prayer for her Muslim colleague who was going through heath and personal problems. The nurse is filing a legal challenge against the NHS. "God, I trust You will bring peace and You will bring healing," Victoria Wasteney, a 37-year-old senior occupational health therapist at the John Howard Centre, a secure mental hospital in east London, prayed for her Muslim colleague, Enya Nawaz, 25, according to The Telegraph. East London NHS Foundation Trust suspended her for nine months, but on full...

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit...

Britain’s most senior doctor has said the under-pressure NHS may be forced to abandon the concept of free healthcare for all. Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS in England, said there were doubts over whether the taxpayer-funded model was “sustainable in the longer term”. He added that huge changes were needed—including less reliance on hospitals—if free treatment was to be preserved. He told the Guardian: “If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not...

Ambulances will be allowed to take longer to reach seriously ill patients, under controversial plans announced by the Health Secretary. Jeremy Hunt yesterday unveiled a pilot scheme that will give operators an extra two minutes to assess 999 calls before dispatching paramedics. He said the added time will enable staff to establish if an ambulance is really needed, over concerns they are being sent out too readily to patients who are not seriously ill. But unions warned that the move would cost lives and dismissed the scheme as a ploy to meet targets ahead of the election. The ambulance service...

Playing God to save a buck. More than 50 patients have died after an NHS trust introduced a secret policy to downgrade 999 calls and not to send ambulances to terminally ill patients. Managers at East of England ambulance trust were accused of “the most cruel form of rationing imaginable” after admitting that 8,000 patients had been affected by the changes.An internal NHS report discloses that 57 patients died after their calls were downgraded following a decision not to send ambulances to the terminally ill and to those who had given instructions not to resuscitate.It meant that, instead of...

GPs will be asked to identify patients who are putting on weight under a new national programme to help fight obesity. Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said it was time for Britain to "get back in shape" in order to protect millions of people from a host of obesity-related diseases. Under the scheme, family doctors will be asked to identify anyone who has gained weight and is at risk of diabetes – particularly those aged below 40. They will then be offered tests for pre-diabetes, followed by healthy lifestyle advice and close monitoring to ensure they are eating...

The number of patients forced to endure Accident & Emergency trolley waits of up to 12 hours has tripled in four years. New figures from NHS England show that in November, 23,663 patients in England waited between four and 12 hours on a trolley in A&E. In November 2010, the figure was just 6,579. This month also saw 52 patients waiting in A&E for more than 12 hours, compared with just two in the same month four years ago. The figures show the problems are greatest in London, with 273 waits of between four and 12 hours at Barts Health...

She did her best to wait until December for the Christmas tree to go up. At four years old, the excitement for little Niamh Kelly-Ince is building daily. Will Santa bring her the Princess Elsa ice skates she desperately wants? Will Mummy remember to get carrots for the reindeer? And will someone please open the chocolate selection box? Her mother Katie watches her little girl, twirling in her favourite party frock, with love and pride. Is there anything more magical than seeing Christmas through the eyes of your beloved child? Scroll down for video Anyone watching this scene, especially parents...

Demands on the NHS tend to increase during the colder months because of illnesses like flu and norovirus. But with winter just getting under way, pressures are already reaching record levels. Extra money is being invested in each nation, but the four-hour A&E waiting time target is still being missed everywhere. The mounting problems come as the BBC launches its NHS Winter project, which tracks how the health service is performing down to individual hospital trust level. In England weekly figures are released. The latest, for the first week of December, show 91.8% of patients were seen in four hours...

“Notorious piracy website The Pirate Bay was taken offline yesterday, as part of a raid by Swedish authorities,” Electronista reports. “The server raid in Stockholm, which took place yesterday morning, is said to be performed as part of a large operation to protect intellectual property, with several servers and other computers seized for further examination by the police.” “Yesterday’s event joins copious others in the history of The Pirate Bay where authorities have attempted to reduce piracy,” Electronista reports. “It also occurs just over a month after co-founder Fredrik Neij was arrested in Thailand, after fleeing Sweden following his 2009...

David Cameron denies claims America trade deal will allow US firms to privatise our NHS The deal could generate £10billion a year but unions suggest it could allow US medical giants to run health services in Europe, reports Jason Beattie in Brisbane

It was a landmark moment in her life and should have been one of her family’s most precious memories. But Harmonie-Rose Allen’s first steps are tinged with sadness for her parents. Just weeks after starting to walk, their daughter is to lose all of her limbs to meningitis. Harmonie-Rose Allen is currently in hospital facing amputation of both her arms and legs after she contracted meningitis. Harmonie-Rose Allen is currently in hospital facing amputation of both her arms and legs after she contracted meningitis. The 11-month-old is on a life support machine in hospital, suffering what doctors said is one...

A band of healthcare professionals and charities has warned political leaders that health and social care services are at “breaking point” following “an era of unprecedented austerity”. “Signs of a system buckling under the twin crises of rising demand and flatlining budgets are everywhere,” they claim, highlighting a shortage of GPs, over-stretched maternity services, A&E departments missing waiting times, delayed cancer referrals, and a lack of mental health beds, as well as crippling costs of social care and failing dementia services.

A transsexual who had a £10,000 sex change on the NHS to become a woman now wants the taxpayer to foot the bill for a further £14,000 of surgery so she can become a man again. Chelsea Attonley, 30, who was born a boy and called Matthew, said she now finds being a woman 'exhausting', is tired of putting on make-up and wearing heels, and now accepts that she should always have stayed a man... But now, seven years after surgery to become a woman, Chelsea wants to go back to being a man - and wants the taxpayer to...

A September 6, 2014 headline in Great Britain’s Daily Mail announced, “Now NHS lets you jump the queue for routine surgery... if you'll pay What is happening in Great Britain’s vaunted in NHS (National Health Service) is of vital interest to Americans. Dr. Donald Berwick, one of the prime designers of the Affordable Care Act, proudly said in 2010 that the NHS was his model for our ACA. By seeing where the NHS is today, we can foresee where U.S. healthcare is headed tomorrow. To reduce the escalating costs of their healthcare system, the NHS has been rationing care, either...

ItÂ’s time to add to our collection of horror stories from the U.K.Â’s government-run healthcare system (previous examples can be found here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here,here,and here).What makes todayÂ’s story different, though, is that the bureaucracy not only is denying care to a small child, but also seeking to prevent the family from seeking treatment elsewhere.Check out these excerpts from a blood-chilling story in USA Today. The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their...

The parents of a five-year-old who was denied lifesaving treatment on the National Health Service have been arrested for kidnap after desperately trying to get their son so the Czech Republic, where he could be treated privately. Ashya King has a brain tumour but doctors refused to use proton laser treatment that could save his life, which led the family to take him out of hospital in the effort to find the treatment abroad. Hampshire Police defended their decision to lead an international manhunt for his parents, Brett and Naghemeh, who are now in custody in Spain. They are reported...

Euthanasia. Rationing. Assisted Suicide. These are the kinds of concerns the pro-life community brought up when Congress pushed through Obamacare and government-run health care. These concerns are already becoming real in the Untied States, but a new story out of the United Kingdom should give Americans a hint as to what’s next.Nurses who are a part of in-home health care programs for the sick, elderly and disabled are coming forward to say they’ve been told to ask such patients not if they need medical help but if they need assistance in killing themselves.The nurses say patients are asked via a...

Dr. James Beattie, a cardiologist who works at the East of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham, believes hospitals should let more elderly patients die and “quality of life� should be given more consideration.According to an article in the Daily Mail, Beattie said that society no longer accepts mortality and is much less familiar with death. ‘If a person is in hospital, particularly an elderly person with multiple co-morbidities, if they have a cardiac arrest it’s a sign they are in decline,’ he told Radio 4.‘It’s their act of dying and they should not be resuscitated, they should be allowed...

For as little as £300 women will be able to search database for donor Will mainly benefit those who want children without relationship with a man There is an increasing demand from lesbian couples and single women Critics called it 'dangerous' and warned against creating fatherless families

The National Health Service has been praised as the world’s best health-care system by an international panel of experts who said it was superior to those found in countries which spend far more on health. The study, entitled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” also described US healthcare provision as the worst globally. Despite investing the most money in health, the US refuses care to many patients without health insurance and is also the worst at saving the lives of people who fall ill, it found. The Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation produced the report. The fund is respected around the...

Britain’s obesity crisis is so serious that hospitals are buying specialist equipment to keep bodies cool because they are too large to fit into mortuary fridges. Hospitals are also having to widen corridors, buy reinforced beds and lifting equipment in order to cope with the growing numbers of obese patients coming though their doors. Figures obtained by The Telegraph show that hospitals have spent at least £5.5 million over the past three years to adapt allow them to treat larger patients. Experts now warn the cost of treating overweight and obese patients could rise to at least £10 million a...

NHS bosses have been criticized after they spent £250,000 on a clock—which staff claim is impossible to read. The complicated light sculpture clock hangs inside the new £430 million Southmead Hospital in Bristol, which opened this month. The binary clock shows the time through an unusual display of illuminated rings and bars, which represent specific hours and minutes. …

PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland -- President Obama Wednesday replayed a familiar scenario when dealing with scandal, in this case delays for treatment, deaths, alleged cover-ups and other acts of malfeasance reported at Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States: first express outrage, next announce an investigation and then say he won't comment on the scandal until the results of the investigation are in, promising people will be held "accountable," if they violated the law. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, critics are using the VA scandal to indict Obamacare. They believe what is occurring at VA hospitals is a preview of coming...

The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, which is affiliated with Britain’s state-run healthcare system (the NHS), recently performed what should have been a routine surgery. Instead, however, the doctors performed surgery on the “wrong site” and accidentally gave the man a vasectomy, sterilizing him. According to an article in The Telegraph: A vasectomy is a surgical procedure in which the tubes that carry sperm from a man’s testicles to the penis are cut, blocked or sealed. In most cases, it is more than 99 per cent effective and although it can be reversed, NHS England figures show that the success rate is...

England could lose the traditional family doctor, medics have warned, as new figures lay bare the steep decline in small GP practices. Patients, particularly in rural areas, are traveling further and receiving a less personal service after the disappearance of hundreds of small GP practices over the past decade. Under the last government, polyclinics—or super GP surgeries—with specialist doctors working on one site were seen as the future of the NHS. Single-doctor clinics have becoming increasingly rare as GPs try to save money on premises and administrative staff. …