Jeremy Hunt responds to Donald Trump’s tweet that the NHS is ‘going broke and not working’
Jeremy Hunt and Donald Trump have come to blows on Twitter this week, as the US President attacked the NHS in the wake of Saturday’s demonstration. Thousands marched on Downing Street, calling for more funding for the NHS, following which, Trump tweeted that the NHS is ‘going broke and not working’. The Health and Social Care Secretary responded standing up for the NHS, stating that no one in the UK “wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover. [The] NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance”. Hunt was not the only politician to rebuke Trump, with Jeremy Corbyn and Baroness Jolly, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson also speaking out.
Read more on The Independent
A&E waiting times in January are the worst on record
Newly released NHS England figures show that waiting times in major Accident and Emergency departments in January are the worst on record. The national target of 95 per cent of patients being seen within four hours were a pipedream, as just 77.1 per cent were treated within this timeframe. The numbers of patients who had “trolley waits” – waiting more than 12 hours for a bed, had more than doubled from December, reaching an all-time high of 1,043. A quarter of all of these waits were at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, who have apologized for “third world” conditions.
Read more on The Telegraph.
Report finds staff at Liverpool NHS Trust treated “appallingly”
A report by NHS Improvement has found that Liverpool Community Health Trust had “appalling instances of staff treatment”. The findings detailed how the Trust had disciplined and suspended staff who were whistleblowers around poor care and plans to cut staff to save money. The panel led by Sir Bob Kirkup, found evidence of bullying and harassment between 2010 and 2014, and the trust also attempted to “conceal” the extent of the incidents taking place.
Read more on The Guardian
200 NHS trusts fail cyber security assessment
All 200 NHS trusts tested to date have failed an on-site cyber security resilience test, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has been told. The remaining 36 trusts do not have a timeline to be tested. Will Smart, the Chief Information Officer at NHS Improvement addressed MPs, telling them that since WannaCry in June 2017, £21m has been invested to improve cyber security and another £150m has been identified to improve systems and resilience over the next two years.
Read more on The Register.
Jeremy Hunt ranks social media as bad for children as smoking and obesity
The Health and Social Care Secretary has made claims that social media can be as damaging to children as smoking or obesity. His comments are in reference to the effects using social media platforms can have on the mental health of young people, come at the launch of a £5m programme for primary school teacher mental health training. There is growing government concern over the impact of young people’s use of smart phones, as Ofcom reports that children aged between five and 15 now spend on average more than 15 hours a week online.
Read more on City A.M.
Quote of the week – Will Smart on lessons learnt from WannaCry:
“The NHS responded well to what was an unprecedented incident, with no reports of harm to patients or of patient data being compromised or stolen. In total, 1% of NHS activity was directly affected by the WannaCry attack.”
Read more in the Lessons learnt review of the WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Attack