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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. …

At least 1,000 hospital patients are dying needlessly each month from dehydration and poor care by doctors and nurses, according to a NHS study. The deaths from acute kidney injury could be prevented by simple steps such as nurses ensuring patients have enough to drink and doctors reviewing their medication, the researchers say. Between 15,000 and 40,000 patients die annually because hospital staff fail to diagnose the treatable kidney problem, a figure that dwarfs the death toll from superbugs like MRSA. The report comes less than a year after the NHS watchdog NICE was forced to issue guidelines on giving...

A pregnant woman with appendicitis died after a trainee surgeon mistakenly removed one of her healthy ovaries, a tribunal heard. Maria De Jesus, 32, underwent the operation at Queen's Hospital, Romford, Essex, after she was admitted with abdominal pains in October 2011. She died 19 days later after suffering a miscarriage. Dr Yahya Al-Abed admitted he made a number of errors during the procedure, including removing her right ovary instead of her appendix. Senior surgical consultant, Dr Babatunde Coker, is accused of failing in his role by not attending theatre to carry out the surgery himself or supervising the registrar....

The British Medical Association (BMA), the trade union representing all National Health Service (NHS) doctors, has said that the sale of cigarettes should be banned "to anyone born after the year 2000". In a new policy position of the organisation which claims to lobby Parliament in its members' interest, the BMA has stated that "humanity has never developed anything more deadly than the cigarette". Dr Crocker-Buqué, a "London research assistant in academic public health" reportedly told last week's BMA annual public health medicine conference that eight in 10 smokers started in their teenage years and that someone who started smoking...

FULL TITLE: Devastated woman suffering fourth miscarriage forced to sit on abortion ward surrounded by people discussing not wanting babies A woman was forced to wait for four hours in hospital without her partner while suffering her fourth miscarriage - and surrounded by women waiting for abortions. Chantelle Skinner had to listen to young girls waiting for a termination, who were saying they did not want their babies, while she was distraught at losing hers. The grieving woman's partner and mother were not able to comfort her while she waited after she was informed that it was a full clinic...

The daily allowance for a person's sugar intake should be halved to six teaspoons, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said. Draft guidance published by the international body advises a dramatic reduction in sugar consumption to help avoid mounting health problems including obesity and tooth decay. The WHO is proposing to retain its current formal recommendation that no more than 10 per cent of an individual's calories should come from sugar – the equivalent of 12 "level" teaspoons a day for the average adult. However, its draft guidelines state that a further reduction to 5 per cent "would have additional...

A third of intensive care beds at weekends are taken up by patients critically ill from alcohol, according to the NHS’s head of critical care. Dr. Bob Winter said it had become socially acceptable for people to drink themselves into an “anesthetized state” on Friday and Saturday nights, and he also warned of the trend of “front-loading”—becoming intoxicated before going out. The prices at supermarkets and off-licenses were so cheap it was possible to buy enough alcohol to “die from” with a £10 note, he added. Dr. Winter called for an urgent change in the culture of drinking and said...

More than 34 million patients will fail to get an appointment with their GP this year, according to figures seen by Sky News. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) used official NHS statistics to estimate the number of patients who will be unable to see a GP or practice nurse because surgeries are too busy.

Health bosses have been accused of trying to cover up high death rates and alarming waiting times in the NHS in Wales. The medical director in England, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, urged officials three months ago to launch a series of investigations into six hospitals after being alerted to the figures by a Welsh Labour MP. He also pointed out that waiting times in Wales were “persistently higher” than in England, with up to 80 percent of patients waiting more than six weeks for key diagnostic tests for diseases such as cancer. However, bosses didn’t reply to his email—nor did...

Wait times for cataract surgery in London jumped 50% last year, a disturbing trend officials expect will worsen unless Ontario’s health ministry restores funding. At the start of 2013, 90% of patients had surgery within 153 days. By November, that wait grew to 230 days. “It’s hurting patients,” said ophthalmologist Tim Hillson, chairperson of the Eye Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Patients forced to wait are at greater risk for falls, car crashes and depression, preventable calamities that cost our health-care system more in the long run, Hillson said, so making them wait longer is short-sighted.

This is what is going on right now in Great Britain. It is only a matter of time until Obamacare goes the same way. Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 per cent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts But pensioners with the disease have 44 per cent less chance of survival The figure for stomach cancer – at 45 per cent – is even worse Pensioners with cancer are being written off as too old to treat, campaigners said yesterday. They cited figures showing survival rates for British patients aged 75 and over are...

Pensioners with cancer are being written off as too old to treat, campaigners said yesterday. They cited figures showing survival rates for British patients aged 75 and over are among the worst in Europe. Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 per cent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts. But pensioners with the disease have 44 per cent less chance of survival. The figure for stomach cancer – at 45 per cent – is even worse.

Reforms to the formula used to ration expensive medicines will make it harder for NHS patients to get new life-saving drugs, warn campaigners. The rationing body, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), plans to lower the cost threshold for new treatments and end the priority given to patients who are dying. The reforms are a shift to a system which the Government pledged would allow patients to ‘access the drugs and treatments their doctors think they need’. It involves changes to a complex formula, known as quality adjusted life years (QALY). And some drugs approved under ‘end...

British patients should adopt more 'pushy' American attitudes with their doctors to get drugs they are entitled to, the head of the NHS rationing body has said. Professor David Haslam, chairman of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said that patients need to see themselves as 'equal partners' with doctors to get the treatment they need. And he explained that after working as a doctor near an American air force base in Cambridgeshire, he noticed that U.S. patients had a less deferential approach than local residents. Earlier this week a Government report found that a third of...

I have spent much of my career as a doctor working with disadvantaged patient groups — the mentally ill, in paediatric palliative care, geriatrics, in outreach programs, in drug clinics and with the homeless. Many of these people are desperately in need. Only a few weeks ago, a patient spat and then threw a chair at me because I had the audacity to suggest that if he continued to inject himself with heroin every day, despite being in treatment for more than two years, he should be discharged from my care and that this might affect his benefits. ‘They can’t...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While the Obama administration offers life support to its Affordable Care Act, in the UK a growing number of people are asking whether it's time to pull the plug on the National Health Service (NHS), which is in critical condition. For many years the UK media have carried stories that not only bode ill for the future of government-run health care, but also continue to serve as a "code blue" warning to the U.S. as to what might be in our future if we decide to go down that road. Writing in The Daily Telegraph under...

New drugs would only be licensed for the NHS if they help those judged to be a benefit to wider society under proposals from the health watchdog. Pharmaceutical firms on Thursday night warned that the move could lead to new medicines being denied to the elderly. A senior professor also said that the plans could threaten the well-being of older people and were “deeply suspect”, while charities questioned the ethics of the policy.

A third of GPs say patients should be charged for going to A&E, according to a poll. They want to impose a basic fee of up to £10 a time to deter the public from turning up with “trivial” complaints. A survey of 800 family doctors found that many believe patients are going to A&E at the “drop of the hat” because they can’t be bothered to wait for an appointment. But the findings will prompt anger among members of the public who feel they have no choice but to go to casualty because they can’t see their GP—especially at...

One child had a BMI measurement of 35, which for a six-foot man would mean weighing 19st. Britain's obesity epidemic, which sees NHS hospitals dealing with 1,000 cases every day, is a reversal of the traditional problem when children were undernourished. Increasingly social workers find youngsters being fed a high-fat, sugary diet, which can be just as bad for their health. The phenomenon is known as "killing with kindness" because the child craves the unhealthy food and a loving parent feels unable to say no. Professionals say they have to make complex decisions in care proceedings and a family's gross...

THE NHS should not be treated as a “national religion” while millions of patients receive a “wholly unsatisfactory” service from GPs and hospitals, the official regulator has warned. David Prior, the chairman of the Care Quality Commission, said the health service had been allowed to reach the brink of crisis because it was “too powerful” to be criticised. He said parts of the NHS were “out of control” because honest debate about the weaknesses of the health service was not tolerated. Mr Prior said priority must be given to reform of an “out of control” system of emergency care, overloaded...

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri In light of the ongoing ObamaCare debacle, it can be interesting to see how a state-run national health system free for all, like Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) – Obama’s favourite model -, has failed to deliver. The UK is one of the few countries in the world – mostly concentrated in Europe - to have completely free universal health provision. It sounds cuddly and comfy, but, like in all utopias and fairy tales, reality is a different matter. The NHS is Britain's sacred cow. No party, if it wants to be...

A quarter of new mothers said they were abandoned by their NHS midwives during labour, with some left to give birth on the floor or in corridors Three damning reports last night laid bare the crisis in NHS hospitals, maternity units and GP surgeries. One investigation revealed that a quarter of new mothers were abandoned by their midwives during labour, with some left to give birth on the floor or in corridors. The second found that mistakes deemed so serious they should never happen are being made in hospitals five times a week. And the third survey said thousands of...

Thousands of people who go on to be diagnosed with cancer are not being referred to specialists quickly enough by GPs, NHS England figures suggest. Under NHS targets, 95% of people with suspected cancer should be seen by a specialist within two weeks. But the data indicates that this target was missed in more than half of the 4,000 GP surgeries sampled. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the government was tackling the "unacceptable variation". NHS England said the figures were not a clear measure of performance, as some patients did not have obvious symptoms. National performance data allows patients to...

Have you seen Question Time on BBC1 tonight? Among the panelists was Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. They talked about the NHS (National Health Service), welfare, pensions, youth unemployment, housing crisis. If you haven’t seen it you can watch it on BBC iPlayer online. Interesting points have been: the idea of forcing owners to sell or develop property on unused land seems popular (although some people would probably forcibly impose developing, which seems to me communist-style; the idea of a tax on unused land or brownfield sites to make owners sell or develop is better). the average age of people...

Paramedics will be told to take fewer patients to hospital as part of radical reforms of the NHS to be unveiled this week. A review led by the NHS medical director will call for sweeping changes to ease pressure on Accident & Emergency (A&E) units, and is expected to conclude that up to half of 999 calls should result in patients receiving care at home. Amid a growing NHS crisis, Prof Sir Bruce Keogh will say that the total number of A&E departments should not be reduced — and may need to be expanded. However, his report is understood to...

Cancer surgery for legitimate patients is being canceled every week to make way for health tourists scamming the NHS. One of Britain’s most senior surgeons has condemned having to put bogus patients before those entitled to cancer care in a creaking health service. Professor J. Meirion Thomas has called on ministers to introduce a “NHS passport” to combat the abuse. “It is so easy to breach the system. It is awful for me as a doctor to have to treat someone I know is ineligible,” he said. Under NHS rules, any patient urgently referred by a GP for cancer surgery...