This is blog is not a rant—well not too much of a rant. It is an expression of serious frustration about the way the NHS is run and about the willingness of some senior NHS managers to become complicit in something near to dishonesty. Everyone at the frontline knows the NHS is running on empty. […]
Category: David Lock
David Lock: Who has a legal duty to fund post-trial treatment?
If someone has been in a clinical trial, do they have a legal right to ongoing treatment for as long as treatment is clinically appropriate where the clinical trial was a success for that patient? I wrestled with this problem on an individual case recently where a patient got fantastic results from an expensive drug […]
David Lock: Avastin and Lucentis—It’s time for NHS commissioners to act rationally by limiting the choices for wet AMD patients
The news that a Cochrane Review has concluded that Avastin (bevacizumab) is as safe as Lucentis (ranibizumab) to treat patients with wet age related macular degeneration (“wet AMD”), along with other studies that have shown the two drugs have broadly the same level of clinical effectiveness, comes as no surprise to those of us who have been […]
David Lock: Ghana—not a smoker in sight
I have just returned from two weeks in Ghana, a fascinating and challenging country on so many fronts, but significant because I hardly saw a single Ghanaian smoking throughout my time in the country. We went to Ghana because my brother-in-law (who lived out there until earlier this year) was getting married to a lovely […]
David Lock: Do CCGs have the power to pay out for past PCT NHS continuing care errors?
The NHS has paid out vast amounts—probably hundreds of millions of pounds—in recent years as a result of decisions that patients were not entitled to NHS Continuing Care (where the NHS meets the costs of a package of social care and accommodation outside a hospital). Mostly these are claims by relatives of deceased patients who […]
David Lock: Should accident victims who get a payout be entitled to free NHS care?
At a time when NHS bodies are under more financial pressure than ever before there is one anomaly which is worth highlighting. Personal injury victims can be paid damages on the basis that they will claim the cost of private medical care, but then such a person is entitled to keep the damages and demand […]
David Lock: Inconsistent CCG legal duties—can the circle be squared?
There are times when, as a lawyer advising NHS bodies, I get close to advising that the law is unworkable. An example emerged the day when I had to deal with the fact that clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have legal duties to “promote the involvement of patients and their carers in decisions made about healthcare […]
David Lock on the landmark case concerning the future of Lewisham Hospital
The problem of how to tackle poor performing NHS trusts has dogged the NHS for many years. Companies that fail can be put into liquidation, factories close down, and people lose their jobs. However, a failing hospital is not a factory. An overspending hospital cannot “fail” and be closed because that would leave local people […]
David Lock: Suicide, refusing treatment, and consent in the dying process
This is an anonymised story about how a doctor’s misunderstanding of the law around managing the death of a patient with capacity appears to have caused unnecessary suffering. It is a salutary tale about the need for doctors to understand the subtleties of the law on consent to treatment and, in difficult cases, the need […]
David Lock: Should GPs aspire to run medical services businesses?
It is hardly surprising that hard pressed GPs have reacted angrily to unjustified criticisms by the secretary of state for health that they are to blame for faults within the NHS. It is a gross simplification to suggest that removing responsibility for out of hours care from GPs is the main cause of increasing attendances […]