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For more than 65 years the National Health Service has occupied a sainted position in British life. Even the most radical, right-leaning Governments have hesitated before embarking on reforms which could be characterized by opponents as “cuts”. In recent years, however, the halo has slipped dramatically. … Now, details from a secret report on Wexham Park Hospital have provided devastating confirmation. … The report highlights huge structural problems, with a top-heavy cadre of bureaucrats spending their time—and our money—feuding with each other, against a backdrop of deepening financial problems and a chronic bed shortage. Shockingly, we have also established that...

The family of a pensioner who spent four days begging for food and water after he was placed on a controversial end-of-life programme have accused a hospital of treating him "like a dog". The family of Ron Jee claim the 80-year-old was put on a programme similar to the Liverpool Care Pathway. This involves the withdrawal of food, fluids and medication for terminally ill patients who often die within hours of being put on it. But they say he was treated like a dog after he spent four days on the end of life pathway when doctors said his condition...

Two junior clerical workers say they told NHS managers that they were being ordered to falsify data, so that it seemed that patients were being treated far more quickly than was the case. Police are considering whether to launch a criminal investigation after regulators the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found evidence that staff were put under pressure to falsify data, leaving some patients waiting up to four months for urgent treatment. The chief inspector of hospitals has said lives may have been risked by “shocking” decisions taken at Colchester Hospital University Foundation trust to delay crucial treatment for cancer patients,...

A mother has demanded "justice" for her son who died at a hospital which could face a police investigation after allegedy falsifying data about cancer patients. Danielle Uren believes four-year-old Mackenzie Cackett, who suffered a brain tumour, could have still been alive had it not been for mistakes in his diagnosis and treatment at Colchester General Hospital, Essex. He allegedly endured a series of lengthy delays and blunders before dying in May last year. Miss Uren, from Halstead in Essex, said: "It has been such a difficult time. We knew there was something wrong but we were ignored and that...

Soaring demand, a shortage of doctors and "toxic" overcrowding on hospital warns could make this the "worst winter yet" for NHS accident and emergency departments, a senior consultant has warned. Bernadette Garrihy, a member of the board of the College of Emergency Medicine, said doctors were concerned about their ability to provide "a safe and quality service" this winter and advised patients to only attend casualty departments "as a last resort." She said Government measures to ease the pressure on A&E amounted to "a drop in the ocean" and called for all parts of the NHS and social services to...

The Obamacare website has more than annoying bugs. A cybersecurity expert has found a way to hack into users' accounts. Until the Department of Health fixed the security hole last week, anyone could easily reset your Healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account. The glitch was discovered last week by Ben Simo, a software tester in Arizona. Simo found that gaining access to people's accounts was frighteningly simple:

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's highest court has ruled in favor of a hospital that withheld treatment from a terminally ill man despite the family's opposition.

The NHS could become an American-style service paid for through insurance contributions following the appointment of a new chief executive, the head of health at the country's largest union has suggested. Christina McAnea, Unison's head of health, made the comments after Simon Stevens - a former advisor to Tony Blair who is currently an executive for a US private healthcare firm - was announced as the next head of the organisation. She said she was “concerned” about what the move could mean. “Is this the Tory and Lib Dem Government hoping to import America-type values into the NHS, a sort...

Rock legend Roger Daltrey has questioned the effectiveness of the NHS claiming it encourages people to lead unhealthy lives because they know they will get free treatment. The Who frontman, who at 69 is still a picture of good health, said offering state-run free healthcare meant people did not bother looking after themselves. He said: “We have this free NHS, which makes us take our health for granted and means we don’t take responsibility for looking after ourselves. “Most illnesses people suffer from are because of their lifestyles.” His comments came just days after Labour peer Lord Warner’s dire warning

Up to £500m could be recovered from overseas visitors' and migrants' use of the NHS every year, ministers believe. The figure represents a quarter of the costs of treating such patients, the Department of Health data suggested. But ministers said it was a realistic target as some of the spending was unavoidable. The savings would come from a levy on foreigners, deterring health tourism and getting the NHS to claw back money it is owed by other countries. The government is currently consulting on the measures it will be taking to tackle this issue. It has already said a £200-a-year...

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.

Hundreds of hospital kitchens across the country are dirty, have cockroach and mice infestations or are stocking out-of-date food, a MailOnline investigation has revealed. Inspectors found that three-quarters of kitchens are flouting basic food hygiene rules while nearly a third were not properly cleaned. Six NHS hospitals had mice, two had rats, five had cockroaches and another hospital had an unspecified problem with “pests”. … An analysis of 769 environmental health inspection reports revealed that 581 hospitals across Britain are breaking the rules. …

Andy Mitchell, medical director for National Health Service (NHS) England in London said, “At times, throughout the week, even throughout the day, services aren’t safe”. Mitchell’s admission comes after the NHS Confederation said the service will soon be “unsustainable” if radical reforms are not presented before the next general election. The top health officials said the NHS is currently facing "the most challenging period in its 65-year existence,” and that the service might not be able to provide free health care for all patients any more. “Demand continues to rise, drugs cost more, and NHS inflation is higher than general...

Patients are being denied minor treatments because they smoke, The Mail on Sunday has found. In one case, a healthy middle-aged man was told he could not have a ten-minute operation to cut a small benign growth off the side of his head because of his habit. Paul Merrett thought it would be no problem to get the inch-long fatty lump, called a lipoma, removed. … But when he attended King George Surgery in Stevenage, his GP said he could not have the minor operation—which doctors often do under local anesthetic in their own consulting rooms. Mr. Merrett, 46, said:...

They are among the industrialized world’s worst and (gasp) far inferior to U.S. hospitals, per UK Channel 4 video...

<p>Each visit to the United Kingdom brings new horror stories about the National Health Service.</p> <p>Last month, Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, issued a forensic report, commissioned by the government, which found that 14 underperforming hospitals in England had substandard care, contributing to the needless deaths of nearly 13,000 people since 2005.</p>

Each visit to the U.K. brings new horror stories about the National Health Service (NHS). Last month, Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, issued a forensic report, commissioned by the government, which found that 14 underperforming hospitals in England had substandard care, contributing to the needless deaths of nearly 13,000 people since 2005. Earlier this year, it was reported that a single hospital in Staffordshire recorded 1,400 "excess" deaths. Following the July report, letters from patients and relatives of those who died flooded in to newspapers, Sky News and the BBC. Many confirmed poor treatment, if in fact...

Muslim doctors and nurses are to be allowed to opt out of strict hygiene rules introduced by the NHS to restrict the spread of hospital superbugs.Female staff who follow the Islamic faith will be allowed to cover their arms to preserve their modesty despite earlier guidance that all staff should be "bare below the elbow". The Department of Health has also relaxed rules prohibiting jewellery so that Sikh members of staff can wear bangles linked with their faith, providing they are pushed up the arm while the medic treats a patient. The Mail on Sunday reported the change had been...

Never did three words, surely, have a more explosive and utterly disproportionate effect. In a Commons debate last week on the deficiencies of the new 111 emergency service, a Tory MP, Anne McIntosh, suggested one reason why there were too few GPs to answer urgent calls. Since some 70 per cent of medical students were now women, she said, the fact that many of them wanted to have children and then go part-time meant a ‘tremendous burden’ on the NHS if it effectively had to train two GPs to do the work of one. In reply the junior Health Minister...

British politicians used to boast that the National Health Service was — and some left-wing holdouts maintain it still is — “the envy of the world.”These days, beset by scandal after scandal and facing spiraling costs, the NHS would be lucky to attract a covetous glance from an accident-prone Somali, and any U.S. conservative who doubts the urgency of stopping Obamacare before it can be fully implemented would do well to pay attention to the disaster unfolding across the pond. A report released last week revealed that as many as 13,000 patients may have died unnecessarily in NHS hospitals...