Acute Care – Page 461
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News
Breast cancer drug Herceptin 'prolongs life'
Researchers from the Royal Marsden Hospital in London have confirmed that giving Herceptin to women with certain types of breast cancer does prolong their lives. The study, published in The Lancet, followed women for two years after treatment and found a 2.7 per cent ...
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News
Inpatient waiting times fall
The number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks for inpatient treatment in England fell by 22,500 from October to November 2006. Latest waiting time figures published by the Department of Health show that the median waiting time at the end of November was 6.9 weeks, with just 212 people ...
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News
£100m to help increase NHS energy efficiency
Health minister Andy Burnham has announced £100m funding to help NHS trusts meet their energy efficiency targets. Seven out of 10 are already on track, he said, but more should be done to reduce carbon emissions and deliver savings that will be ploughed back into patient care.For more information click ...
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News
Heart disease deaths down 35 per cent
Investment and reform in services to tackle coronary heart disease is saving lives, says a progress report on implementing the national service framework for CHD today. Shaping the Futuresays premature deaths from CHD are down 35.9 per cent since 1996, on course to meet ...
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New grade: BMA backlash expected
Government proposals to reduce a glut of over 3,000 consultants by creating a sub-consultant grade will be 'bitterly opposed' by the British Medical Association, the draft workforce strategy warns.
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DoH plans mark rewriting of relationship with professions
If one image of the dole queue helped finish off Labour in 1979, just imagine what might happen if the jobless wore white coats. The prospect of making large numbers of consultant posts redundant is one rarely articulated in public. That changes this week with HSJrevealing ...
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News
Plans for consultants 'absurd', says BMA
British Medical Association consultants committee chair Dr Jonathan Fielden has criticised the Department of Health’s draft pay and workforce documents, revealed in HSJtoday. He said: ‘It is absurd to suggest that the NHS in England needs fewer hospital consultants. ‘To suggest that there should be fewer consultants, and of a ...
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News
Stomach pain tops Christmas complaints
Stomach and jaw pain dominated calls to telephone helpline NHS Direct over Christmas, statistics show.Vomiting, toothache and diarrhoea were also among the top 10 reasons for calling the helpline in England.Over the whole of 2006 the service received around 7 million calls, while during the Christmas period there were a ...
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News
Sir Liam demands faster progress on safety
Chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson has called for more speed in improving patient safety in his newsletter published today.Although Sir Liam praised a 'greater awareness among clinicians, managers and policymakers that patients are not as safe as they should be', he said that the pace of change had ...
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News
High take-up for optician training
More than 90 per cent of opticians met the requirement for continuing education and training (CET) by the 31 December 2006 deadline.Final figures for the first cycle released by the General Optical Council show that 95 per cent of optometrists, 89 per cent of dispensing opticians and 86 per cent ...
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Comment
Martin Pearson on warm glows and icy winds
'Directors and managers of today's organisations need to recognise that they are there not only to create cost-efficient and financially successful health businesses but also to lead services in a way that saves the world from further degradation and climate chaos'
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News
Health figures honoured
Christie Hospital trust chair Joan Higgins has been made a DBE in the New Year Honours list. NHS Confederation chair Peter Mount, former Greater Manchester strategic health authority chief executive Neil Goodwin, Royal College of Nursing president Roswyn Hakesley-Brown and health economist Anne Mills have been made CBEs.To see the ...
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News
2007 a make or break year for NHS, says think tank
A failure to tackle rising costs and to invest in modern services means that 2007 is a make or break year for the NHS, according to a report by think tank Reform. The report says the service's long-term strength has been sapped by the lack of an underpinning costed reform ...
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News
Trust faces bill for dropped PFI deal
A £167m scheme to centralise a hospital trust's services on one site has been dropped at a likely cost of £10m. Essex Rivers Healthcare trust made because the decision because the opening of a new independent treatment centre would have made it unaffordable and because the plans did not align ...
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News
DoH publishes diagnostic test figures
The Department of Health has for the first time published waiting-time figures for all diagnostic tests for every acute trust.
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News
New rules for providers on data
Providers will be contractually obliged to provide information to help commissioners decide whether they should continue to buy services from them.
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News
Stroke patients 'die needlessly', says report
Stroke patients in England 'die needlessly or suffer more serious disability than they should' because they continue to be denied fast access to brain scans and clot-busting drugs, according to a report published by the Commons public accounts committee.
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News
Maternity unit's near miss
A trust has reversed its decision to close a maternity unit after threats from a local MP to raise the issue with the prime minister.
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News
BMA concern over research funds
The British Medical Association has expressed concerns about a possible shortfall in funding for research, after chancellor Gordon Brown formally announced the creation of a new body to oversee the merged research budgets of the NHS and the Medical Research Council.
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News
Resignation over list controversy
One member of staff has resigned and another has been disciplined at a Lincolnshire trust at the centre of waiting list irregularities.