Health and care sector latest developments

NHS was on brink of collapse during pandemic, Covid inquiry report finds 

The report into the impact of the Covid pandemic on the NHS has found that the NHS in England came close to collapse and only avoided it because of the efforts of healthcare staff. 

Among the report’s findings are that a squeezed budget in the years leading up to the pandemic meant the NHS entered it with not enough beds or staff and struggled to cope with the surge in Covid patients. 

The report also found that disruption to cancer screening and a drop in people coming forward with signs of the disease led to missed diagnoses and ended up costing lives. 

The government’s ‘stay at home’ messaging is also questioned by the report, as it inadvertently led to people believing that healthcare spaces such as A&E and other settings were closed. 

Director of policy at the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, Dr Layla McCay, urged the government to act swiftly on the inquiry’s recommendations and said that it is vital that the lessons from the report ‘translate into meaningful action, strengthened preparedness, and a more resilient health and care system for the future.’ 

Rise in number of meningitis cases liked to Kent outbreak 

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said earlier today that seven new cases of meningitis in Kent have been confirmed, taking the total number to 27. 

The Guardian has reported that officials believe that the use of preventative antibiotics and targeted vaccination are proving effective, although Kent’s director of public health, Dr Anjan Ghosh, has said that he unable to confirm at this stage whether the outbreak has been contained. 

Meanwhile, 40 MPs have signed a letter to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, calling on the government and health officials to work with universities across the country on catch-up vaccination programmes and to improve awareness. 

Shake up in NHSE’s top team as chairs for seven regional teams announced 

NHS England chief executive, Sir Jim Mackey, has announced changes to the organisation’s top team and said that they will ‘ensure we are able to focus on the priorities ahead’. 

David Probert (CEO at University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust) and Mark Cubbon (CEO at Manchester University FT) will leave the national team in the coming months, with Matthew Coats (CEO of West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals Trust) joining as a temporary adviser to the New Hospital Programme. 

Sarah-Jane Marsh will combine her current role of head of urgent and emergency care with being chief operating officer for NHSE. 

Meanwhile, Sir Jim has revealed the names of seven chairs for NHS regional teams, ahead of the service moving to its new ‘operating model’ next month. 

The chairs, all of whom apart from one will take up their roles from April, are: 

• East: Nick Carver – current chair of Nottingham University Hospitals Trust
• London: Ian Peters – current chair of the UK Health Security Agency
• Midlands:  Russell Hardy – current chair of South Warwickshire University Foundation Trust and three other trusts in the ‘foundation group’ established under Mr Hardy’s chairmanship.
• North-West (starting 1 May): Kathy Cowell – current chair of Manchester University Foundation Trust.
• North-East and Yorkshire: Bill McCarthy – most recently interim chair of Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust.
• South-East: Jonathan Montgomery – current chair of Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust and professor of Health Care Law at University College London.
• South-West: Dame Gill Morgan – most recently chair of Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, formerly a CEO of local and national NHS organisations and of the NHS Confederation. 

Royal college says maternity taskforce ‘missing integral expertise’ 

Sarah Thornton, the vice president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, has said that the government’s new maternity and neo-natal taskforce is missing ‘integral’ expertise, after no anaesthetists were included in the core group set up to tackle ongoing failures in care. 

The profession is not represented among the 17 core members of the new taskforce which was announced earlier this week. 

Ms Thornton said that anaesthetists ‘play an essential role in delivering safe maternity care, and their expertise should be integral to the maternity and neonatal taskforce’. 

She added that the Royal College was working with the DHSC to ensure anaesthetists they are fully represented. 

Select committee statement on government’s response to community mental health services report 

Layla Moran MP, the chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, has given a statement to parliament on the government’s response to the committee’s report on community mental health services. 

Ms Moran said she was disappointed with the government’s decision to reject the committee’s recommendation to extend the pilot programme for six 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres by 12 months beyond April, but that she was pleased the government agrees that learning from the pilots should be rolled out nationwide. 

She also called for the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector to be embedded in the design of services and highlighted the committee’s recommendation for the original mental health investment standard (MHIS) to be written into legislation. 

Former hospital CEO to lead ICB cluster 

Mark Hackett has been appointed as chief executive executive of Cornwall and Devon integrated care boards for an initial 12-month period. 

Mr Hackett has previously been chief executive of University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust, Southampton Hospitals, and Swansea Bay Health Board, and he has most recently been interim chief executive of University Hospitals Plymouth Trust, overseeing an improvement in emergency care.   

Former national director appointed CEO of trust 

Adam Sewell-Jones has been appointed as chief executive of Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust. The £1.7 billion trust has major operational performance problems and is in severe financial difficulty. 

Mr Sewell-Jones is currently CEO at East and North Hertfordshire Teaching Trust and has previously held national roles at NHS Improvement and served as a director of provider sustainability and as regional director for the South-West. 

He will take up his new position later this year. 

Welsh Confed responds to NHS Wales activity and performance stats for January and February 

Director of the Welsh NHS Confederation, Darren Hughes, has commended the ‘hard work of NHS staff and leaders who are driving noteworthy progress’ in NHS waiting times in Wales. 

In January of this year, there were just over 713,000 referral to treatment (RTT) patient pathways waiting to start treatment – a decrease of around 27,900 since December and the lowest since April 2022. It is the eighth month in a row where the figure has fallen. 

There was also a positive decrease in treatment waiting lists, with just over 22,300 pathways waiting longer than one year for their first outpatient appointment – a decrease of over 11,000 from the previous month (33,700), and 78.2 per cent less than the peak in August 2022. 

Mr Hughes called for ‘a long-term capital investment strategy to modernise NHS estates and infrastructure (including digital), an achievable plan to stabilise social care, an all-Wales long-term workforce plan for the NHS and social care workforce, joint performance and financial frameworks, and a cross-governmental shift towards prevention to drive down demand on health and care services’.