Nhs

Obviously it is wrong to attack NHS staff. But does the government’s new ‘zero tolerance’ policy consider why such attacks take place? There are eternal reasons, such as the inherent nastiness of some people, and wider social ones, such as drug abuse. Are there also specific NHS-related ones too, though? The worst aspects of the NHS are not usually medical: they are to do with a bureaucracy which puts patients last. It is utterly extraordinary, for example, that a waiting time of four hours in A&E is now the norm or even, it would seem, the (often missed) target. Often have I sat there wondering not at the aggression of

Since the Budget, economists have pointed out that Britain is turning into a health service with a government attached. The NHS was protected from what Philip Hammond calls ‘austerity’, yet it has emerged as the big winner from his abandonment of the old Tory idea that government should live within its means. The plan is for more debt, more spending, more tax and a lot more NHS. At the start of the last decade, the NHS accounted for 23 per cent of government spending on public services: this figure is now set to rise to 39 per cent. And then, no doubt, further still. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of

Matt Hancock has been ambitious for a big Cabinet job for a good while. He’s finally got it, and today the new Health Secretary had his first outing in the Commons with departmental questions. Every new Secretary of State wants to make their mark on the job, showing how they’re different to their predecessor, and setting out their priorities for the portfolio. Jeremy Hunt was particularly good at the latter, making patient safety his focus as Health Secretary. Hancock has clearly paid attention to how the longest-serving Health Secretary approached the job, and last week gave a speech setting out three priorities: workforce, technology and prevention. His message was clear

It’s a measure of how much the debate around mental health has changed that Matt Hancock’s latest announcement on social prescribing for mental illness isn’t being written up as mere quackery. The Health and Social Care Secretary today pledged a £4.5 million fund for these schemes, which include gardening, arts clubs, running and so on. Hancock is worried about possible over-prescription of anti-depressants and the associated risk of diagnosis creep, whereby people who are not depressed but quite understandably struggling with life events such as a bereavement are given a medical diagnosis and handed pills that aren’t really going to help them. As I’ve written before, anti-depressants are not without

The government’s cash boost for the NHS isn’t going to solve its problems. That’s the verdict of pretty much every independent spending scrutiniser, including the National Audit Office’s Comptroller, Amyas Morse. He’s said today that the £20bn founding increase announced by Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt will maintain current standards, but won’t enable the health service to grow as the population needs it to. There is also no way that the cash set out recently will solve one of the biggest drains on the health service: the crisis in social care. The Treasury only agreed money for the NHS, not the services that many patients need to be able to

Simon Stevens: the NHS is making ‘significant preparations’ for no deal Brexit This morning Andrew Marr sat down for an interview with the Chief Executive of NHS England. With the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the NHS approaching this week, Marr asked Simon Stevens about the implications of a no deal Brexit on the health service, and whether he was making appropriate preparations for such an event: “There is now significant planning going on around all the scenarios," says @NHSEngland Boss Simon Stevens, including a no-deal scenario to ensure that medical supplies are not disrupted #marr pic.twitter.com/Io5yPctoX8 — The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) July 1, 2018 AM: …When you