The following stories were selected from those sent as daily alerts under the search term ‘NHS’, and ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ from the Google alerts service. Please send any comments to Alan: [email protected]
18 February
Privatisation approaches £6 billion
Common space: https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/3483/privatisation-of-english-nhs-approaches-6bn-in-last-three-years
[15 more stories]
TTIP protest at Worthing (local)
Worthing Herald: http://www.worthingherald.co.uk/news/local/worthing-and-adur-residents-back-campaign-against-trade-deal-1-7219314
NHS providing poorer care as funding crisis deepens
Chilling verification of Chomsky’s model for privatisation: under-fund, make it bad, make it private to ‘make it better’.
1,100 ‘never’ NHS incidents in 4 years – in the same vein:
Sky News: http://news.sky.com/story/1643885/1100-nhs-never-disasters-in-four-years
Drug procurement panel members in pay of Big Pharma
A particularly stark example of the ‘revolving door’ of privilege and its effects on public service.
General practice also suffering cash crisis
Not news to us…
19 February
GP surgeries in crisis
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gp-surgeries-the-forgotten-crisis-in-the-nhs-a6881201.html
Agency fees breach government limits in 90% of trusts
Can 9 out of 10 hospitals be wrong? More to the point, why are they forced to be?
20 February
NHS over-spend approaches £2.3 billion
BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35608992
Daily Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-facing-worst-cash-crisis-7403388
(see also our own press release on this, sent out 4 days previously (including to both the above outlets), referring to John Lister’s work: https://keepournhspublic.com/blog/press-release-nhs-2-billion-in-the-red-and-rising )
Street protest in Ilkley (local)
38 degrees group protesting about the NHS
Ilkley Gazette: http://www.ilkleygazette.co.uk/news/14289580.NHS_campaign_group_takes_to_the_streets_of_Ilkley
22 February
Staff cuts Hunt’s solution to the NHS budget crisis
23 Feburary
Leading QC says TTIP great risk for NHS
Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/22/ttip-deal-real-serious-risk-nhs-leading-qc
Maternity ‘personal budgets’ advocated by maternity services review
The key concern emerging seems to be that ‘choice’ does not equate with ‘safety’, and how do women tell? This also increases the need for maternity services to ‘compete’ with one another, bid competitively, etc. At cost.
ITV News and widely elsewhere: http://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-23/pregnant-women-should-have-a-personal-nhs-budget-for-a-midwife-review-finds
Junior doctors’ new rotas flawed – doctors furious
STOP PRESS: There’s a Better Way…
You can now get alerts sent about health stories yourself. This is much better than a regular, ‘supplied’ service because you can choose what key words trigger the alerts: “Keep Our NHS Pubic”, “NHS”, “health” – your choice. Then you can adjust the settings to improve the coverage. This has the added advantage that local stories to you can be searched for, as well as national. Alerts can be set up to send you an e-mail as a story breaks, or summarise them under headings you decide once a day.
This is done through Google news and Google alerts: free services anyone can set up. To find out how to do this, go to the Steering Group, News & Events section and look for the “starter set of instructions”.
… and please don’t forget, your smartphone or tablet will have free apps that look for and filter news, too: try configuring those for health stories, or the NHS, as well.
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