Health and care sector latest developments

 High norovirus levels keep pressure on hospitals 

Norovirus levels in hospitals in England are 80 per cent higher than the same period last year, new data published today shows.

784 patients a day were in hospital with norovirus last week (week ending 19 January 2025), up from 650 the previous week. They are the highest levels seen in hospitals in any January since 2020. 

Meanwhile, flu rates have dropped since their peak but remain almost 2.5 times higher than last year, with 3,833 patients in hospital with the illness on average each day last week.

Acute director at the NHS Confederation, Rory Deighton said that the figures show the NHS is in “a state of vulnerability”. He added: “…it’s clear as day that the NHS remains under considerable strain with the ripple effect of pressures from winter viruses still being felt across all parts of the system, including primary care.” 

Demand continues to pile onto the breadth of health and care services in Wales 

The latest NHS performance statistics for Wales have revealed that, in December 2024, there were 6,742 life-threatening calls to the ambulance service, 17.7 per cent of all calls. An average of 217 immediately life-threatening calls were made each day, the highest on record. 

Performance against both the target of 95 per cent of new patients spending less than four hours in emergency departments, and the target of no patient waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments, worsened compared with the previous month. 

Responding to the figures, director of the Welsh NHS Confederation, Darren Hughes, said: “Despite advanced winter planning, virtual wards, discharge hubs, same day emergency care units and other initiatives, the reality is the NHS and social care are struggling with old and insufficient estates, pressured budgets, workforce challenges and record levels of demand. Without a shift to long-term thinking, planning and budgeting, it will be very difficult for health and care leaders to pull the system out of this vicious cycle.”

Leak reveals national plans to tackle A&E crisis 

An early ‘confidential working draft’ of a plan containing reforms that NHS England and the government are proposing to address the crisis in urgent and emergency care has been obtained by the HSJ. 

The national Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) improvement plan is set to be published in the coming weeks.

The draft plan is said to confirm a target for 2025/26 to increase four-hour A&E performance to 78 per cent – the same target as in 2024/25 – despite health secretary Wes Streeting having originally pledged to return the NHS to meeting the 95 per cent standard by 2029. 

The new proposals are centred on ten ‘action’ points for trusts and systems, which are:

• Improving vaccination rates and targeted preventative winter virus care.
• Reducing 111 calls put through to 999 or directed to emergency departments.
• Improve 'hear and treat, 'see and treat', and reduce avoidable  conveyances.
• Reducing ambulance handover delays.
• Rapid triage at the front door to navigate patients quickly to the right care and avoid admission wherever possible.
• Getting into a hospital bed more quickly for those who need one.
• Improving access to specialist out-of-hospital provision.
• Shorter length of stay.
• Reduce discharge delays.
• Standardising and scaling the six core components of neighbourhood health.

 The draft plan also says that new payment models for urgent and emergency care (UEC) will be trialled in a range of systems this year. 

The plan says system leaders want to trial a new funding model because the current ‘block contracts’ for UEC ‘can stifle innovation and make it more challenging to develop services closer to home’. 

The trials would include testing alternatives to incentivise an increase in care delivered in the community, or in same-day services. 

Children hospitalised for mental health soared by 65 per cent in a decade 

A rise in teenage girls self-harming and suffering ‘starvation from an eating disorder’ has driven a dramatic increase in emergency hospital admissions for children with mental health problems. 

Researchers at University College London found that in the decade to 2022 there had been a 65 per cent increase, to nearly 40,000 patients a year, in the number of five to 18-year-olds admitted to acute hospital wards in a mental health crisis. 

Experts said the study, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, highlighted ‘the alarming deterioration in the mental health and wellbeing of our children and young people’, which has been linked to smartphones and social media. 

High-risk hospitals delayed despite government assurances

At least two trusts whose hospitals rely on high-risk concrete will not open replacements until after 2030, despite theoretically being prioritised by government. 

The government previously said replacement of the seven ‘RAAC’ or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete hospitals would ‘proceed at pace due to the substantive safety risks’ and ‘exempted’ them from its review of the new hospitals programme. 

The hospitals were all previously slated to be replaced by 2030, and a government-commissioned report said beyond that date their RAAC structures will pose a fundamental safety threat to patients and staff. 

Although these schemes were theoretically exempt from the review, its report on Monday gave them new dates to begin construction. Six are slated for 2027/28 and one, Frimley Park, won’t start until 2028/29. 

Off the back of this, it has been confirmed for the first time that two schemes won’t be complete by 2030, while others also look doubtful.

Chief executive and finance chief to leave ICB £90 million in deficit 

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB chief executive, Peter Axon, has said he will leave his post in the summer after three years in the role, while the ICB’s chief finance officer, Paul Brown, will also be serving six months’ notice and departing in the summer. 

Both have worked in the Staffordshire system for several years and in the NHS for decades. 

The announcement comes a few months after the Staffordshire and Stoke system was added to NHS England’s financial ‘investigation and intervention’ programme, due to NHS England having the ‘greatest [level of] concerns about delivery of [its] financial plan’. This requires them to bring in consultants to advise on reducing spending. 

The system has a £90 million deficit plan for 2024/25, which it expects to miss by £60 million.  

Dame Jenny Harries to step down as UK Health Security Agency’s chief executive 

Dame Jenny Harries has announced that she is to step down as UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) chief executive in early summer.

Dame Jenny was appointed as UKHSA’s first chief executive in April 2021 and created a new health security organisation during the COVID-19 pandemic with specialist scientific, data and operational expertise to protect the public from infectious diseases and other hazards to health.

UKHSA’s chief scientific officer, Professor Isabel Oliver, has also been appointed to the role of chief medical officer for Wales, where she will replace Sir Frank Atherton who recently retired. Professor Oliver has led the development of UKHSA’s science strategy and the delivery of many of the agency’s scientific functions and services.