NAPC News 26 April 2012

Brain-Dead Teenager Lived After Parents Got A Second Opinion

A teenager declared brain dead by four doctors made a remarkable recovery after his parents asked for another opinion moments before his life-support machine was due to be switched off.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust said that he was truly a remarkable case.

NHS Is Failing Gay Men

Gay and bisexual men are neglected and sometimes discriminated against by a health service that tends to focus solely on their sexual health, despite the fact they are more likely to self-harm, attempt suicide and experience depression, according to a recent major study.

Stonewall’s chief executive, Ben Summerskill, said the findings of the report, the largest such study in the world, were ‘deeply troubling’ because the lack of trust could discourage Britain’s 1.8 million gay men from seeking treatment

Diabetes

Diabetes and its complications account for 10 per cent of NHS spending, but the amount could rise to £16.9 billion over the next 25 years, a report by researchers at the York Health Economic Consortium said.

One In Seven Patients Wait Six Months For Hospital Bed

A study by the Care Quality Commission has found that one in seven patients waits longer than six months to be admitted to hospital for surgery, with an extra 150,000 patients suffering increased delays since the Coalition came to power.

Another survey, by the trade union, Unison, claimed that three quarters of its members working in the NHS did not believe they had an adequate amount of time to spend with patients to deliver ‘dignified, safe, compassionate’ care.  Almost nine in ten said they supported legislations to set minimum nurse to patient ratios.

New Drug Halves Pain Levels

A new drug, duloxetine, which costs £22 for a month’s supply, could dramatically improve life for millions of people cripple by painful joint disease.

Research has shown that the drug halved pain levels in patients.

Novartis And Roche Could Face Backlash

Novartis intends to sue the NHS to prevent people who are going blind from getting a cheaper drug that could save their sight.

Novartis wants the NHS to use Lucentis, its expensive drug for macular degeneration, and not Avastin, a cancer drug which is almost identical but is far cheaper.

Similarly, Roche, the pharmaceutical giant, is taking legal action to attempt to prevent the NHS from using a cheaper alternative to its eye disease treatment.

Drugs Strategy: A Social Experiment

The government’s drug strategy is based on thin evidence and risks damaging the quality of anti-addiction measures, according to the UK Drug Policy Commission.

Based on surveys with policy makers and staff tackling drug problems across England, the charity reported that reforms, cuts to the police, health and council services could result in a communication breakdown between organisations, damaging accountability and financial efficiency in drug intervention.

Aspirin’s Healing Powers

Research by scientists at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands has found that taking an aspirin daily after being diagnosed with bowel cancer can reduce the chances of dying from the disease by almost a third.

Patients with colorectal cancer who took an 80 milligram tablet daily for at least nine months were 30 per cent less likely to die over an average follow-up period of three and a half years, compared with those who did not take it.

British Teenagers Among Worst For Sex And Drinking

New research suggests that British teenagers are among the world’s worst for binge drinking and under age sex.

In a league table of 40 mostly high-income countries, England had the fourth highest percentage of youths who have been drunk by the age of 13, with Wales fifth and Scotland eighth.

Britain also had the third highest rate of sexual activity among 13-15 year old girls in the study of 17 Western European nations, with 32 per cent saying they were sexually active, behind Denmark and Iceland with 40 per cent and 36 per cent.

Health Reforms Risk A New Baby P Case

The NHS Confederation has warned that children’s lives will be put at risk by the coalition’s health reforms, with confusion in new organisations risking another Baby P case.

There was ‘deep unease’ in the NHS about the way vulnerable children would be cared for and protected in the new system, the Confederation said.

Serco Awarded £120m Shared Service Deal

One of the biggest shared services organisations in the NHS has been effectively taken over by Serco in a four year £120m deal.

Anglia Support Partnership (ASP) is currently hosted by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust.  It provides services such as IT, estates and facilities, finance and procurement to around 50 organisations, mainly in the NHS.

Under the agreement, Serco will run its operations for four years, with around 600 staff transferring under TUPE regulations and with NHS pension rights.  New employees will not get NHS pensions.  It has also paid £9m to the six NHS organisations which own ASP, part of which covers the cost of its existing assets, and said it would be making substantial investments in the business.

ASP said the agreement secured its future, while allowing for growth into areas such as commissioning advice, cost reduction and efficiency, consultancy and patient administration.  Its turnover was £34m in 2010 but tender documents suggested the maximum contract value could be £400m if it was successful in winning extra work.  Other NHS organisations in the Midlands and East strategic health authority cluster can also contract Serco for services under the deal.

The deal will be Serco’s first venture into shared service provision in the NHS.  It could become both a provider of major commissioning support and a major provider in the East of England, where it has won a contract to provide community services and also prison healthcare services across Suffolk.

Fourfold Variation In Out-of Hours Demand

A fourfold variation in demand for GP out of hours services has been identified in the first detailed data to allow for comparisons between areas.

The Primary Care Foundation has launched its ‘Benchmark’ online tool, containing data on services in 104 primary care trust areas.  The information includes the proportion of patients referred to hospital, assessment times and patient satisfaction.

It is the fourth year the data has been collected, but the first time it has been released online in this format.

The results, based on data from 2010/11, showed there were 50 ‘cases’ of out of hours service use a year per 1,000 population in major conurbations such as London or Manchester, but more than 200 per 1,000 residents in smaller population centres such as Doncaster and Torbay.

The Foundation said this could be because cities tended to have younger populations and more alternative services such as walk-in centres and hospital emergency departments.  However, the report commented that variation in some performance measures were ‘wider than seems explicable’ by external factors such as geography or demographics.

The report also highlighted inconsistencies in PCTs’ monitoring of out of hours services at board level.  ‘A number of providers too have commented on how narrowly the service is looked at by commissioners’, it said.

Cost per head of population varied from less than £5 in Southwark, London to more than £14 in Gloucestershire.