Parking fee increases ‘exorbitant’ – Patients Association

NHS hospital parking fees have been criticised as a ‘tax on the sick’, with over a quarter of trusts having increased prices in the year to last April, figures from 197 hospitals and mental health trusts show. Patient groups have called for parking to be free, as it mostly is in Scotland, Wales and...<<Read More>>

Trusts should not pay for FOI requests – FTN

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests should be limited, with those filing the requests to cover the costs of producing a reply except for the most minor queries, the Foundation Trust Network (FTN) has suggested. Trusts can only charge requesters...<<Read More>>

Negligence claims cost NHS £15.7bn

The NHS is facing a bill of £15.7bn due to a rising number of clinical negligence claims, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee. This cost has increased by over 10% in a year. This year there were over 8,500 claims – an increase of 30% from 2009/10. This rise is mainly the...<<Read More>>

Patients’ funding is being spent on reforms – Labour

Labour is claiming that money from the health budget is being held back to cover the cost of the NHS reforms, ahead of the debate in Parliament on the amended Health & Social Care Bill today and tomorrow. They claim that 2% of the £89bn budget is being...<<Read More>>

German company could take over NHS hospitals

Freedom of Information requests have revealed that a German company has been in talks to take over 10 or even 20 NHS hospitals – contradicting the Government’s pledge that the NHS will not be privatised, critics say...<<Read More>>

£600m back office savings could be redirected to NHS frontline

 £600 million could be available for NHS frontline health services through streamlining the way health organisations run their back offices, an independent review has found. The review, commissioned by the Department of... <<Read more>>

No pain free solution, says NHS Confederation

The NHS Confederation has said that the NHS will have to experience a certain amount of pain to deal with the financial challenges it faces. Jo Webber, deputy director of policy at the NHS Confederation said: “The NHS faces a cocktail of financial...

The fiscal future of the NHS: an economist’s rant

As the NHS enters its seventh decade, it is reasonable to ask what its future might look like in fiscal terms; that is, do we have a model that is sustainable under the auspices of public expenditure?...

The jumbo jet and the postage stamp

When the Department of Health released the latest NHS finance figures predicting a surplus for the NHS of £1.8 billion for 2007/8 under the banner “NHS on sound financial footing to plan for the future,” the press release included quotes by the health secretary and the chief executive of the NHS which both reinforced the view that the predicted surplus is good news...