Chris Wormald, senior civil servant at the Department of Health, has suggested that patients should prove their eligibility for NHS care by showing their passport to receive treatment. The proposal was presented as a solution to “health tourism,” a problem which may be responsible for around 0.5% of the total NHS spend. The cost of […]
Category: NHS
Clare Marx: Give sustainability and transformation plans a chance
The NHS is treating record numbers of patients with better outcomes, but it is now facing some of the biggest challenges in its history. Against this backdrop, Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) will be unveiled over the next few weeks. These are being designed by local NHS and social care leaders, working together across 44 […]
Andrew Furber: Should local government run the NHS?
A white paper published by the Conservative government in 1944 proposed that a new National Health Service should be managed by local authorities. [1] The Labour Party was split on the matter, but after their general election victory in 1945 Bevan proposed a plan favouring nationalisation of all hospitals. And so the NHS was born. Nearly […]
Rammya Mathew and James McGowan: The role of shared decision making in a value based NHS
Last month a controversial proposal was made by Vale of York clinical commissioning group (CCG) to deny obese patients access to elective surgery for up to a year. The headlines were alarming and the approach felt wrong. The CCG defended its position by saying that it was “the best way of achieving maximum value from […]
Anna Miller: Asking all pregnant women for a passport before giving birth is simply wrong
St George’s University Hospitals Foundation trust is reportedly devising a pilot scheme to ask all pregnant women to show a passport to prove their right to NHS care before giving birth. Although in some ways this does not mark a policy change—undocumented migrants are already charged for maternity care—it marks a departure from NHS guidelines […]
Laurence Gerlis: Is private medical practice that bad?
During my 30 years as a private GP I have become used to being insulted by other doctors. Some see us as mercenary quacks, with little genuine interest in patients’ needs, who overprescribe and bombard NHS GPs with useless health screening reports. NHS doctors are not volunteers, they are paid. All patients pay for NHS […]
Richard Thorley: Exception reporting—let’s show Jeremy how hard we really work
The day we have all been dreading in obstetrics and gynaecology has arrived. Some trusts started to roll out the new contract for junior doctors last week. The cancellation of strike action recently left a select few determined strike activists fuming, but while it seems most of us welcomed the decision, it has left us bereft of any […]
Partha Kar: Diversity in the NHS matters
The world we live in is in a fascinating space at the moment. Tolerance seems to be at a low ebb—whether that is due to the rhetoric fuelled by the Donald Trumps of this world or not—it has created a climate of interesting proportions. Against the backdrop of this febrile atmosphere, came a speech by Jeremy Hunt, England’s health […]
Bhakti Visani: Experiences of providing psychiatric care in a mother and baby unit
During my F2 year I undertook a four month psychiatry placement, based in a mother and baby unit. Before starting, psychiatry was definitely not in my top 5 list of coveted jobs. I initially saw it as just having to “get through” the four months. Little did I know that this specialised combination of psychiatry, obstetrics, and […]
Humans of the NHS: Telling the stories of frontline NHS staff
“To save a life or to make it better for someone else is why I chose to do this job. The thanklessness of it, however, has never dissuaded me from doing what I do everyday.” – Emergency Medicine Consultant “The patient that sticks in my mind is a young guy who had crashed his car. […]