NHS at breaking point, according to British Medical Association

The NHS is at “breaking point” with a decline in the number of hospital beds leading to delays and cancelled operations, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned.

Analysis by the BMA found the number of overnight beds in English hospitals fell by a fifth between 2006-07 and 2015-16. The report found that in the first week of January this year, almost three-quarters of trusts had a bed occupancy rate of 95% on at least one day.

According to the analysis, in 2000 there were an average of 3.8 beds per 1,000 people, but this had dropped to 2.4 beds by 2015. The report said that in November 2016 14.8% of patients spent more than four hours waiting for a hospital bed, having been seen in an A&E department.

“The data demonstrates the increasing pressures on the system. It provides evidence of the underlying cracks within the NHS, such as funding constraints, changes and increases in demand, disjointed care and workforce pressures,” the BMA report said.

It noted that pressures on mental health services were particularly acute, with a 44% decrease in the number of mental health beds since 2000-01.

The document was seized on by opposition politicians, with Labour saying it was a “wake-up call [that] Theresa May must not ignore” and the Liberal Democrats warning the situation was becoming “intolerable”.

The BMA’s chairman, Mark Porter, said: “The UK already has the second lowest number of hospital beds per head in Europe and these figures paint an even bleaker picture of an NHS that is at breaking point.

“High bed occupancy is a symptom of wider pressure and demand on an overstretched and underfunded system. It causes delays in admissions, operations being cancelled and patients being unfairly and sometimes repeatedly let down.

“The delays that vulnerable patients are facing, particularly those with mental health issues, have almost become the norm and this is unacceptable. Failures within the social care system are also having a considerable knock-on effect on an already stretched and underfunded NHS.

“When social care isn’t available, patients experience delays in moving from hospital to appropriate social care settings, which damages patient care and places a significant strain on the NHS.

“In the short term we need to see bed plans that are workable and focused on the quality of care and patient experiences, rather than financial targets. But in the long term we need politicians to take their heads out of the sand and provide a sustainable solution to the funding and capacity challenges that are overwhelming the health service.”

Jonathan Ashworth, shadow health secretary, said: “Thanks to Tory mishandling of our NHS, patient numbers in hospitals are now routinely above the levels recommended for safety. The shameful reality is this overcrowding puts patients at risk and blows apart ministers’ claims to be prioritising safety.

“The number of overnight hospital beds has decreased by over a fifth and combined with Tory neglect and underfunding this has left nine out of 10 hospitals dangerously overcrowded this winter.

“Almost all hospitals have been running over the safe 85% mark for bed occupancy while 60 hospital trusts are over 95% this winter. The response from ministers is to blame others and bury their heads in the sand.

“This government’s mismanagement is failing our NHS and failing patients. The prime minister must wake up to this crisis and ensure that the NHS and social care have the funding and support needed in the budget next month.”

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem spokesman and former health minister, said: “Chronic bed shortages should be the exception not the rule. The situation is getting intolerable, with more cancelled operations, longer delays and those with mental health issues being systematically let down.

“Ultimately we could reduce the need for hospital beds by improving preventive care. But cutting both preventive services and beds leads to disaster. That is what we are now witnessing.”

An NHS Improvement spokeswoman said: “The NHS has been under real pressure this winter, as it copes with a surge in demand for emergency services the knock-on effects are felt throughout our hospitals.

“Our hospitals are extremely busy but we are working tirelessly alongside providers to help them manage and to support more efficient use of the number of beds available.”

The BMA’s report is published before the NHS Improvement’s figures for the third quarter of 2016-17, which are expected to show the parlous state of trusts’ finances.

NHS Improvement’s chief, Jim Mackey, has acknowledged trusts will miss the £580m deficit “control target” and forecasters have predicted the combined black hole in their finances could reach nearly £1bn by the end of the year.

The Department of Health disputed the BMA’s analysis, insisting figures from before 2010-11 could not be compared with those afterwards; the earlier figures included NHS-provided residential care beds and were compiled on an annual basis, while the more recent figures were published quarterly and only included beds under the care of consultants.

A spokesman said: “This analysis is inaccurate, the figures come from two different time periods when the way of counting beds was different, and so they aren’t comparable.

“Our hospitals are busier than ever but thanks to the hard work of staff, our performances are still amongst the best in the world. We have backed the NHS’s own plan for the future with an extra £10bn by 2020.”

NHS at breaking point, according to British Medical Association

I"m 43 and schizophrenic. According to the statistics, I"ll be dead in 17 years | Joshua Gliddon

You’ve got a choice. You can either buy cigarettes, or get food to see you through the week. For most people it’s a no-brainer. Of course you’d buy food. But if you’re suffering from schizophrenia, living on the disability support pension and facing other psycho-social challenges, then the choice isn’t so clear.

“Some of my patients will choose cigarettes over food,” my clinical specialist nurse told me. “They also drink huge amounts of coffee. I’ve even seen people eating dried coffee from the tin.”

So what’s going on here? I’m schizophrenic, and aside from dealing with the symptoms of the illness, there’s another statistic which I’m struggling to come to grips with. People with schizophrenia tend to live between 14 and 20 years less than the general community.

Every year, 9,000 Australians with a serious mental illness will die prematurely. We face higher incidence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, very high levels of unemployment, and many of us are in temporary housing. It’s not a good mix.

I’m also 43. The average life expectancy for a non-indigenous Australian male is around 80 years, a bit longer for women. I smoke, and weigh more than I should. According to the statistics, I’ve got about another 17 years left in me. That’s quite sobering.

Professor Amanda Baker, a senior researcher at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) specialising in schizophrenia, told me there are a number of reasons why people with schizophrenia have reduced life expectancies. The big ones are poor lifestyle, unemployment and social isolation. She said that around 85% of people with schizophrenia smoke, compared with approximately 20% of the general population.

One of the main reasons people smoke, she said, is that the medications used to treat the illness are often sedative and dulling, and so people use tobacco and caffeine heavily because they’re stimulants.

The medications also have other side effects. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the anti-psychotics used to treat schizophrenia have a negative effect on metabolism. When I was first put on Olanzapine, a potent anti-psychotic, I put on about 25 kilos in a matter of months. I’ve moved onto a different medication since then, but it’s also weight unfriendly, and despite doing moderate exercise, I’ve never been able to shake the weight I gained.

According to Baker, until recently there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to the physical health aspects of serious mental illness. Clinicians didn’t discourage patients from smoking because there was a pervasive attitude that you “don’t upset the schizophrenics.”

Not so long ago it was also OK to smoke in psychiatric institutions. Public facilities have clamped down on that, but smoking is still common in private hospitals.

Is there anything that can be done?

“People with schizophrenia are generally more dependent, and have less coping skills than the general population, and that makes it very hard for them to give up or make lifestyle changes,” Baker said.

So the initiative needs to come from both patients and their care team. While psychiatrists in the past were only focused on medication and the mind, these days, said Baker, they are being encouraged to have a wider view of their patient’s health, both physical and mental.

What needs to happen is a greater focus by clinicians on the overall wellbeing of their patients. Baker said this is finally occurring.

“Psychiatrists are being encouraged to look after the physical, as well as mental health of their patients, and that means addressing smoking, as well as diet and exercise,” she said.

That’s a good start, but for the meantime, people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia will continue to die young. And that is a major downside of being sick.

I"m 43 and schizophrenic. According to the statistics, I"ll be dead in 17 years | Joshua Gliddon

BPA A Concern For Breast Cancer? Not According To Research By Top Environmental Group

A enormous synthesis of information from the National Toxicology Plan and consensus reports from worldwide cancer authorities has recognized 102 chemical substances as critical for breast cancer research and prevention. The listing, compiled by researchers from the Silent Spring Institute and the Harvard College of Public Health, is derived from studies of chemical exposures and mammary gland tumors in rodents and how these might translate into human exposures, and cancer hazards, as measured by biomarkers in blood, urine, saliva, breast milk, and hair.

The Silent Spring Institute, named in honor of the crusading environmentalist Rachel Carson, who died of breast cancer, describes the study as “a street map for breast cancer prevention by identifying large-priority chemical substances and evaluating resources to measure exposure.”

And as this kind of, it will come as a shock to many girls concerned about such risks—or at least repeatedly warned about them by the media—that bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous element in cans and plastics, is not on the list, even although there is a section for “endocrine disrupting” chemical compounds. Alternatively, the review draws interest to much much more potent estrogenic chemicals than BPA, such as Estradiol-17b, a component of oral contraceptives and hormone therapies, which has entered domestic wastewater—and potentially consuming water—via urination.

The contraceptive pill – are we all drinking its hormonally active waste goods? (Photograph credit score: Wikipedia)

The research rebuffs dogged attempts by a handful of researchers to indict BPA as a set off for breast cancer in the encounter of mind-boggling research by the Environmental Protection Company (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it poses no such danger. Last year, researchers at Tuft’s researchers had been forced to backtrack on a declare that they had demonstrated that BPA induced breast cancer in rats soon after their statistical proof fell apart underneath scrutiny. Both the Silent Spring study and the Tufts’ study had been published in the same journal, Environmental Wellness Perspectives, which is published by the National Institute of Environmental Wellness Sciences (NIEHS).

While a handful of of the chemical substances in the Silent Spring examine will be familiar to the public—for instance, acrylamide, a merchandise developed when some starches are cooked—many will not, even even though exposures are through acquainted routes, this kind of as cigarette smoke or diesel exhaust fumes. Similarly, most girls will be unaware of the unintentional environmental consequences of oral contraceptives.

There is, even so, a lengthy journey from identifying priority carcinogens based on rodent scientific studies and human biomarkers to proving real carcinogenicity in people, specifically as exposure to these chemical compounds is generally really reduced. Whilst there is great proof that acrylamide is carcinogenic in rodents, research has, so far, failed to show related proof in people. One particular essential methodological issue: provided the ubiquity of cooked meals in people’s diet programs, how do you uncover a population that hasn’t been exposed to acrylamide?

And given, as the review authors note, that even the “best-established chance variables for breast cancer are related with pretty modest increases in risk” (i.e., “HRT, alcohol, bodily inactivity, reproductive historical past, and loved ones history of breast cancer”) weak associations based on lengthy-phrase chemical exposures are going to be very challenging to detect, and danger generating several false positives.

Nonetheless, it can make sense to focus on the chemicals for which there is a consensus that they could pose a hazard (with BPA, there is a very modest group of NIEHS-funded scientists on 1 side, and virtually each and every other regulatory agency in the world on the other).

2nd, this review is a reminder that Susan Komen for the Remedy, which also discounted the breast cancer risk from BPA was appropriate to do so, even as it faced expenses from Mom Jones magazine that it was only carrying out so at the behest of industry funding.

Third, and possibly the most essential policy and media implication rising from this examine, is that there are 102 much better candidates for research funding than BPA. In accordance to figures circulating on Capitol Hill, the NIEHS alone has invested 179 million dollars on researching the chemical more than the past decade. If anything at all, the EPA and FDA, which has spent uncounted hundreds of thousands carrying out they’re personal research, are now more specified than ever that BPA does not pose a risk to customers, regardless of whether young or old. With more and more constrained government funding, it is time to think about the chance fees for other consensus-driven public overall health priorities, when the return on investment in BPA investigation increasingly looks like a diminishing commodity.

BPA A Concern For Breast Cancer? Not According To Research By Top Environmental Group

Flame Retardant Soda Is Safe To Drink According To FDA

by Prolonged Island Lawyer Paul A. Lauto, Esq./www.liattorney.com

A lot of of us have heard of flame retardant pajamas for young children, but far less have heard of flame retardant soda.  We wouldn’t consume flame retardant pajamas, so why does the FDA say it is secure to drink soda containing flame retardant?

There are a multitude of health preserving motives not to drink soda and other assorted soft drinks, but one reason in specific is Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO).  BVO is a vegetable oil derived from corn or soy and is utilized in citrus flavored sodas and soft drinks, as an emulsifier to aid the flavoring from separating.  Brominated Vegetable Oil sounds harmless, however the FDA limits its use to 15 elements per million to ensure that it is safe for our consumption.  Notwithstanding the FDA’s approval of BVO, it is banned in soft drinks in Europe and Japan, as they feel it is unsafe for human consumption.

BVO was initially patented for use as a flame retardant, but the FDA has deemed it protected to be employed in soda since 1970.  BVO is deemed toxic by numerous such as the FDA, which is why they have limits on its usage.  In addition, BVO has been associated with critical ailments which includes but not constrained to, neurological impairment, hormone disruption, thyroid dysfunction, infertility, memory reduction and heart lesions.

It is estimated that BVO is contained in about ten% of soft drinks consumed by Americans.  If you agree with the FDA and believe it is safe for  your family to drink soda containing a flame retardant with probably grave side results to your health, then that is undoubtedly your appropriate.  However, if you do not believe the FDA is infallible and totally free of outside influence, then stand up for your households and stop drinking soda that includes BVO.  Better nevertheless, quit  buying and consuming soda altogether.  Some day when your kids are outdated enough to totally recognize, they just may well thank you.

Lomg Island Attorney
Paul A. Lauto, Esq.

www.liattorney.com

Flame Retardant Soda Is Safe To Drink According To FDA

Placebo sleep aids your brain function better according to new research

This was, in fact, a lie.

The participants were then randomly assigned to two groups.

One particular group were informed that their deep, or REM, sleep had been above typical the evening ahead of, at 28.7 per cent REM rest.

They have been informed that this was a sign that they have been mentally alert.

The other group have been advised their REM sleep from the evening before had been beneath average, at sixteen.2 per cent REM rest.

The two groups had been given a lecture on how getting much more and greater rest improves cognitive perform.

Participants had been informed that, on common, regular grownups commit in between 20% and 25% of their sleep time in REM sleep and that people who commit less than 20% of their time in REM sleep have a tendency to complete worse on tests of understanding and memory, whereas folks who commit more than 25% of their time in REM rest have a tendency to complete greater.

All participants have been then offered a test which assessed auditory interest and speed of processing, abilities most affected by rest deprivation

The participants who had been informed that they had seasoned under typical rest good quality, tended to execute worse on the test, irrespective of how nicely they originally felt they had slept.

Individuals in the above typical rest top quality issue carried out considerably greater on the check

In accordance to the analysis, led by Christina Draganich and Kristi Erdal: “In these experiments, cognitive working appeared to be mediated by placebo data, as it was dependent on the assigned rest quality informed to the participants as opposed to their actual self-reported rest good quality”.

Placebo sleep aids your brain function better according to new research