Nowadays in healthcare: Wednesday 12 February

Excellent morning and welcome to the everyday blog from the Guardian’s neighborhood for healthcare specialists, supplying a roundup of the key news stories across the sector.

If there’s a story, report or event you’d like to highlight – or you would like to share your thoughts on any of the healthcare problems in the information today – you can get in touch by leaving a comment below the line or tweeting us at @GdnHealthcare.

The Commons health committe has published a report following its annual inquiry into public expenditure on wellness and social care. Richard Humphries summarises the findings on Twitter:

Guardian well being correspondent Denis Campbell writes that the committee has named for some hospitals to end delivering specified services or even shut altogether if the NHS is to remain viable, even although such adjustments are “notoriously controversial”. Campbell reports:

The Commons well being pick committee said in a report that a dramatic expansion of the centralisation of hospital solutions was required to aid the NHS cope with the growing pressures on its budget.

… the MPs say that integrating the presently separate providers, which ministers and NHS leaders say is crucial for the NHS to remain sustainable in the encounter of rising demand induced by ageing, “will also need reconfiguration”.

The BBC says the committee found a lack of clarity over what the money saved in the NHS in England has been spent on, although the Mirror reports that the re-organisation of the NHS is producing it harder to offer decent social care.

In other news this morning, Sir David Nicholson, the outgoing NHS England chief executive, has written for the Telegraph, calling for a programme of transformational modify to frontline care. He says:

… this government’s Health and Social Care Act focused, with excellent cause, on administrative structures. These subsequent changes have to target on the sensible ways we provide front-line care in our communities, and they should be advised, led and built by clinicians on behalf of patients, from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Nicholson is due to give evidence to the public accounts committee this afternoon.

Far more of today’s healthcare headlines:

• Guardian: Cholesterol drug statins must be provided to millions much more, NHS guidance says

• eHealth Insider: Hunt predicts US-Uk ‘single market’

• BBC: Colchester Hospital – Head to get ‘grip’ after cancer scandal

• Pulse: LMC leaders phone for longer patient consultations

• Nursing Occasions: Ward pressures hit pupil placements

• Telegraph: Half of folks with dementia endure malnutrition, report warns

Regular contributor Kailash Chand writes for the network right now, warning that austerity is pushing the NHS into unprecedented territory. He writes:

The NHS has not faced this level of challenge in its historical past. The universal healthcare presented by the NHS is in critical danger of getting to be unsustainable.

To deal with the rising demand on the wellness services, the government have to allow NHS personnel to use their very own clinical judgment in purchase to make workable enhancements. It’s about medical doctors having the freedom to make change for the benefit of the well being support away from politically motivated interference.

Denis Campbell reports for the SocietyGuardian segment on a survey of workers at Public Wellness England, which uncovered “it is not a satisfied organisation”. The survey, Campbell writes, found:

Just 27% feel a strong personal attachment to PHE, only 32% say it inspires them to do the very best in their work and only 36% would recommend it as a excellent location to perform. Probably even far more worrying is that only
34% “believe that [its] nationwide executive has a clear vision for the potential of PHE”, just 31% have self-confidence in the decisions manufactured by senior managers and thirty% really feel the organisation is managed effectively. Several of the
final results – primarily based on questionnaires returned by three,073 people, 61% of the five,000-powerful workforce – recommend a widespread disillusionment.

Columnist Zara Aziz asks no matter whether the NHS wants to ration cancer treatment options.

Elsewhere, Jamie Reed writes for the New Statesman about care.data, warning that government incompetence hazards undermining the project and Richard Murphy writes on the Tax Analysis blog that putting VAT on personal overall health care would increase £2bn for the NHS.

Gemma Finnegan has tweeted about a Twitter chat this evening on social media tips for overall health and wellbeing boards:

That is all for these days, we’ll be back tomorrow with our digest of the day’s healthcare information.

Nowadays in healthcare: Wednesday 12 February