NHS facing a 'deepening financial crisis' says Head of Health Policy at the BMA

Beyond the Nicholson challenge: How the comprehensive spending review protection for the NHS hides a deepening financial crisis

2013-07-11

(Press-News.org) Chancellor George Osborne has announced an increase in health spending of 1.9% for 2015/16, but taking inflation into account the true figure will be just 0.1%. And although politicians are promising to protect and increase the health budget every year, the latest Comprehensive Spending Review shows that the reality to be quite different.

According to Ford, the NHS will have had to find £20 billion in efficiency savings by then and build even more savings on top. With demand for services rising by 4% per year, the NHS will have to generate further savings of £4.25bn to meet the pressures arising from an increasingly older population and technological change, resulting in a total of £24.25bn savings by 2016 – or a quarter of its total budget.

Ford says most of the £5.8bn efficiencies made in 2011/12 came from pay freezes and one-off cuts and it is "totally unrealistic" to think that a quarter of the budget can be saved in this way. He believes the scale of savings would require "pay and staffing levels to be decimated" making the service "unviable".

He draws on a recent BMA survey which showed that around two third of doctors want to make changes but due to lack of time, capacity or support are unable to do so and "feel frustrated and disempowered".

He says the "NHS is facing a deepening crisis [and] the recent comprehensive spending review must serve as a wake-up call".

### END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Lack of cultural understanding makes forced marriage victims wary of social services, study finds

2013-07-11

Victims of forced marriage and honour violence in the UK are hesitant to seek professional help because they are worried social workers will not understand their cultural differences, according to new research presented today at Royal Holloway University. Researchers at Royal Holloway have called for social workers to receive mandatory training on sensitive issues surrounding different cultures and religious backgrounds, so that they understand that normal practices, such as involving family members, may not be the best solution in forced marriage cases. The study, ...

Researchers set out path for global warming reversal

2013-07-11

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can reverse the global warming trend and push temperatures back below the global target of 2°C above pre-industrial levels, even if current policies fail and we initially overshoot this target. This is according to a new study, published today, 11 July, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which shows that ambitious temperature targets can be exceeded then reclaimed by implementing BECCS around mid-century. The researchers, from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, show that if BECCS is ...

Do antibiotics in animal feed pose a serious risk to human health?

2013-07-11

David Wallinga from Keep Antibiotcs Working: the Campaign to End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture, believes that physicians and policymakers have "overlooked the critical role played by the ongoing overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry." He understands the interest in creating a pipeline of new antibiotics, but says overall reductions in antibiotic use "should come first." He points to data showing that, in 2009-11, 72% of all US sales of antimicrobials comprised those routinely added to water or animal feed. These, he says, are "additives in feed ...

BMJ investigation finds GPs being forced to ration access to hospital care

2013-07-11

Some CCGs have tightened the thresholds for access to "low priority" surgery such as hernia and joint problems, while others have introduced new systems to restrict the flow of patients being sent to hospital. The BMJ's investigation also found that only four of England's 211 new GP led organisations, which assumed statutory responsibility for commissioning around £60bn of NHS care on 1 April 2013, have adopted new guidelines to help widen access to IVF treatment. This has led to disparities in availability across England. A few CCGs have removed referral restrictions ...

UK leads the way in race for new temperature definition

2013-07-11

Scientists at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have performed the most accurate measurement yet of the Boltzmann constant. While the impact of such an achievement is not immediately obvious, the measurement could revolutionise the way we define temperature, replacing the standard method that has been used for over 50 years. The new measurement is 1.380 651 56 (98) × 10−23 J K−1, where the (98) shows the uncertainty in the last two digits, which amounts to an uncertainty of 0.7 parts per million --almost half the previous lowest uncertainty. The ...

Later cord clamping after birth increases iron levels in babies

2013-07-11

Delaying clamping of the umbilical cord after birth benefits newborn babies, according to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. The authors found babies' blood and iron levels were healthier when the cord was clamped later. In many high income countries, it is standard practice to clamp the umbilical cord connecting mother and baby less than a minute after birth. However, clamping the cord too soon may reduce the amount of blood that passes from mother to baby via the placenta, affecting the baby's iron stores. On the other hand, delayed cord clamping, ...

Location of body fat can elevate heart disease, cancer risk

2013-07-11

Individuals with excessive abdominal fat have a greater risk of heart disease and cancer than individuals with a similar body mass index (BMI) who carry their fat in other areas of the body, according to a study published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Death and disease risk associated with excess body weight can vary among individuals with similar BMI. Ectopic fat, or fat located where it is not supposed to be, in this case being visible in the abdominal area, could be the cause of this difference in risk. It's widely known that abdominal ...

Dye-sensitized solar cells rival conventional cell efficiency

2013-07-11

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have many advantages over their silicon-based counterparts. They offer transparency, low cost, and high power conversion efficiencies under cloudy and artificial light conditions. However, until now their overall efficiency has been lower than silicon-based solar cells, mostly because of the inherent voltage loss during the regeneration of the sensitizing dye. In a Nature publication, EPFL scientists have developed a state solid version of the DSSC that is fabricated by a new two-step process raising their efficiency up to a record 15% ...

Size matters for creatures of cold polar waters

2013-07-11

Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool, Plymouth, and Radboud, Netherlands, have challenged the view that giant animals are found in polar seas because of a superabundance of oxygen in cold water. It is thought that giant insects and other creatures hundreds of millions of years ago evolved due to a superabundance of oxygen and that this could also explain the existence of giant sea creatures today. The new research, published in Functional Ecology, however, suggests that this may not be the case. The research suggests that large animals survive in polar oceans ...

New virus discovered in stranded dolphin

2013-07-11

Researchers at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues have identified a new virus associated with the death of a short-beaked dolphin found stranded on a beach in San Diego. It is the first time that a virus belonging to the polyomavirus family has been found in a dolphin. Results appear online in the journal PLOS ONE. Polyomavirus is known to cause disease in birds, but in mammals it is usually mild or subclinical, explains lead author Simon Anthony, PhD, a researcher in the Center for Infection and ...

NHS facing a 'deepening financial crisis' says Head of Health Policy at the BMA

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: