|
| | Information here is an archive of news items provided for patients registered with the Minster GP Medical Practice, Lichfield which provides GP services to registered patients residing within the City.
Remember that archive information may, of course, be out of date as it is not checked periodically after archiving.
Tuesday 4th September
2001: Operations abroad.
|
| The Government has now accepted
the European Court verdict that patients who face a long wait for an
operation in England should be allowed to seek assistance from any EU
country. This is an extension to the current E112 system. It will take
until 2002 for the appropriate systems to be put in place. Unfortunately,
no money has been made available to support this option. Funding for
foreign operations will be taken away from existing budgets and this will
threaten the proposed improvements in the NHS. For example, the capital
cost of building the fast track hospitals mentioned below will be provided
but the revenue required to fund the operations may be cut by funds diverted
to Europe. |
Thursday 16th August 2001:
Fast track hospitals.
|
| The Government proposes that
special hospital centres be set up to separate waiting list operations
from emergencies. Hopefully, this system will allow better planning and
reduce last minute cancellation of operations particularly hip
replacements and cataract operations. Locally, one of the first 6 in the
country will be at New Cross hospital Wolverhampton which is expected to
open in November 2002. This will be followed by Good Hope (10th on the list)
in 2004. |
Thursday 25th January
2001: Hospital beds.
|
| In answer to a question put by
Sir Paddy Ashdown, the Health Minister disclosed that hospital beds available
for overnight stay has fallen by 12,558 since the general election. The
total available in 2000 was 186,290 compared to 198,848 in 1997. |
Wednesday 3rd January
2001: Meningitis C.
|
| 18 million doses of vaccine
against meningitis C have been given. The latest figures show a drop of
90% of cases of meningitis C in teenagers and 83% in babies. We are now
allowed to keep stocks of the vaccine for those children and teenagers
(born after 1st September 1981) that missed the campaign. Just make an appointment with the practice
sister. It is particularly important that youths going to university/college
for the first time are protected. Please note that the vaccine does not
protect against meningitis B. The search for a vaccine to protect against
meningitis B continues. |
Monday 4th December 2000:
Winter Crisis.
|
We have known since the summer
that there would be problems locally with health care provision during
this winter even without a flu epidemic. The Government has now publicly
admitted this.
The effects of a flu epidemic on hospital admissions should be
significantly less given the Government's support regarding our annual flu
immunisation programme which included the over 65s 10 years ago! We
achieved the Government's target 2 months earlier than they expected.
However, other winter hospital admissions will be unchanged and there will
be cancellations of planned surgical procedures including hip
replacements. The Government's announcement of increased funding was too
late and will take time to reap benefit. The Chancellor's first
spending round raised public expectation as the "total" of
£21billion was bandied about. But this figure was arrived at by
"spin"; also known as double and triple counting. The same money
was "spent" publicly several times over.
The recent influx of funds to the NHS should have happened in 1998 not
2001. But there is never any point in talking about what might have been.
The NHS stands on the threshold of achieving parity of health care with
our European neighbours and this must be applauded.
Our concern is that district general hospitals will seem more attractive
places to place the majority of the new money and our local hospitals may
not have a loud enough voice to ensure the locality receives its fair
share. |
Thursday 23rd November 2000:
Hospital infections.
|
| Whilst it is true that it is
possible to reduce the chances of picking up an infection in hospital by
15%, the total figures involved are not the 100,000 patients per year with
5000 deaths. These figures are based on American research carried out in
the 1970s. As the Health Minister pointed out, major changes have taken
place in the last few years. Now every acute hospital has an infection
control team looking at risk areas as well as managing those infections
that do occur. |
Thursday 23rd November 2000: Disability
Allowance for children
|
| As from 9th April 2001, the starting age for
the higher rate mobility component of the Disability Living Allowance
(DLA) will be reduced from age 5 to age 3. |
Wednesday 22nd November 2000: Long
haul flights and thrombosis
|
| How to reduce the risk. Click
here |
Monday 20th November 2000: Proposed
increase in number of GPs
|
The Government's proposal to increase the
number of GPs by 2000 is not what it seems. 1100 were already planned so
the real increase will only be 900. Even more if existing GPs retire
before the usual age. The NHS Plan needs sufficient manpower for it to
work. The number of hospital consultants is set to increase by a much
greater percentage with GPs providing more follow up to increase
throughput. We are happy to take on this work but the number of GPs
available must be realistic. The plan to use nurses like we do depends on
there being sufficient trained nurses available which is not the case for hospitals
let alone NHS walk in centres and GP surgeries.
A summary of the NHS Plan is available on site
Click
here.
The Minster Practice started work on its own plan for the 21st Century
in response to a challenge from Tony Blair at the end of 1999 and before
anyone knew about the NHS Plan that was going to be formulated. Click
here for more information. |
Wednesday 15th November 2000: NHS
waiting times
|
| Government figures show a reduction in
waiting LISTS of 4.8% though also an increase of 2.5% for those waiting
longer than 12 months. This fits with independent research showing that
waiting TIMES for the third quarter of this year were the worst since they
started calculating the figures at the beginning of 1998. The average
wait from a GP referral letter to getting inpatient treatment is currently
about 29 weeks. Locally the wait is much longer as the Health Authority
insists that people must be on the inpatient waiting list (which you only
get on after having waited for an outpatient appointment) for 6 - 9 months
for a condition requiring "soon" treatment and 12 months for
"routine" conditions. This is strictly applied even though there
is consultant time and theatre time available. At the same hospital with
the same consultant, residents living outside South Staffs Health
Authority area incur no such barriers to treatment. |
Friday 20th October 2000: Polio
vaccine (Phone call received from HA 12 noon)
|
| Since the information below was displayed on
the website we have been informed that Evans vaccine has now been included
in the recall. We will be using Smith Kline Beecham vaccine whilst we have
stocks. At the moment we only have 10 dose vials so we will have to group
patients together as unused doses would otherwise be wasted. An opened
vial has to be destroyed at the end of a session. You are advised to
receive other vaccines as usual schedule and we will contact you about
your polio vaccination when we have a group of patients requiring the
vaccine. |
Friday 20th October 2000: Polio
vaccine (Fax received from DoH 10am)
|
The practice suppliers are Evans and Smith Kline Beecham for
polio vaccine. Only vaccine
from another manufacturer, Medeva, is affected by the recall. In spite of
assurances to Government given by Medeva, UK sourced bovine material was
still being used in the manufacturing process. This was in breach of
Government guidelines issued in 1989 and a European directive issued in
1999 which will have the full force of law from March 2001. The risk
arising from vaccine manufactured in breach of this guidance is
"incalculably small" as the bovine material has not been shown
to carry BSE infection and the purification process removes this material
before dispatch.
Medeva has now stopped manufacturing the vaccine. Smith Kline Beecham have
told the Department of Health that they have sufficient stocks to meet the
demand but we have been advised that delivery of our vaccine may be
disrupted as practices with Medeva stocks cannot use them and need fresh
supplies from Smith Kline Beecham. Childhood immunisations will proceed as
usual with later attendance for polio if we are out of stock. If you are
attending for travel immunisation and only require polio you may wish to
confirm stock availability before attending for your appointment. |
Wednesday 11th October 2000: Ambulance
response times
|
| Reading recent press articles after a Health
Which? article may have concerned you. If you just saw the performance
table in Health Which? you would have been even more concerned as
Staffordshire Ambulance Service was one of only 4 services highlighted as
having no improvement or worse performance in 1999/2000 compared to
1998/99. The facts are much different. The performance table lists 21
ambulance services but only 12 have comparative figures between these 2
years. Of those 12, 4 are highlighted but 2 show no change between the 2
years. One of those 2 is Staffordshire with 87.4% in both years. In fact,
Staffordshire is once again the top performing service and has already exceeded
the 2001 target of 75% of category A 999 calls being reached within 8
minutes of the 999 call. Given the size and population spread in Staffordshire
this is a marvelous achievement. Neighbouring East Midlands only achieved
37.8%!! |
Tuesday 10th October 2000: NHS
cancer standards
|
| The Government's latest standards for NHS
waiting times for treatment of cancer have been announced. Click
here. |
Monday 9th October 2000: NHS
Beds
|
Tuesday 8th August 2000: The
NHS Plan
|
| A summary of the Government's plan for the
NHS is now available on this site. Click
here. |
Good Hope and Heartlands (East Birmingham)
Hospitals are amongst the hospitals unable to cope with current number of
emergency admissions let alone the usual winter pressures. Average bed
occupancy across the NHS is 85% compared to 60% in France & Germany.
This high rate leaves little margin for coping with an upsurge in
emergencies which are currently running at 16% higher than last year. The
rundown in total beds continues; UK has half the hospital beds per 1000
population compared to France.
The Government has provided £60 million to improve the annual flu
immunisation campaign in the hope of reducing the high rate of flu
complications which occurred last Christmas. Click
here for details about our flu immunisation service. |
| Saturday 7th
October 2000: Number of GPs |
Professor Brian Jarman, an
expert on general practice, talked on Radio 4 today about primary care
services in Cuba which he found to be better than the UK. The number of
GPs was 1 for 500 people compared to 1 for 1900 in the UK. He pointed out
that whilst there was much in the Government's NHS Plan that he fully
supported he believed that they were wrong about limiting the increase in
GPs by only 2000. 1400 of these had already been planned before the NHS
Plan was published. The GP is the cornerstone of NHS services yet primary
care funding has dropped from 10% of the NHS budget in 1948 to around 5%
now and the investment is falling. The average GP carries out around
10,000 consultations per year and the decisions that have to be made in an
8 minute consultation are now very complex. Just looking at the potential
interactions between the wide range of medications being taken by patients
shows this complexity without looking at progress in disease management
and the range of investigations available.
A summary of the NHS Plan is available on site
Click
here.
The Minster Practice started work on its own plan for the 21st Century
in response to a challenge from Tony Blair at the end of 1999 and before
anyone knew about the NHS Plan that was going to be formulated. Click
here for more information. |
Thursday 3rd August 2000: Lung
cancer deaths and smoking.
|
| The message is "Don't give up giving
up". Click here for more
details. |
Saturday
29th July 2000: Representation of the people in the new NHS
|
The Government plans to close down Community
Health Councils (CHC). These are independent statutory bodies representing
the interests of patients. This week's Lichfield Mercury presented
disturbing information regarding Good Hope Hospital. The report was based
on the findings of a CHC visit. The replacement will be a named
"patient advocate" for each NHS facility. Would such a person at
Good Hope have been independent enough to report the problems highlighted?
CHC have no rights to inspect GP facilities but we have always welcomed
such independent inspection and comments. We already have a named patient
advocate (and a deputy if she is away) but she is an employee so cannot be
seen to be independent. The absence of the CHC makes it even more
important for us to have an active patient participation group. There are
still vacancies. If you are interested click here
to go to our web page about the PPG.
|
Friday 28th July 2000: Mobile
telephones and children
|
| There is still no firm evidence that the
microwave radiation from mobile telephones is harmful. However, there is concern
that any unrecognised health risks from mobile phones would affect
children most. This is because smaller heads, thinner skulls and higher
tissue conductivity lead to the absorption of more radiation than adults.
Not only is absorption higher but childrens' brains are still developing
up to age 16 so the effect of the radiation is greater. The Government
advises that mobiles should not be used by those 15 and under for
non-essential calls. Mobile phone operators are being asked to check base
stations near schools to ensure that the beam of greatest intensity does
not fall across school grounds.
|
Monday 24th July 2000: Vanilla
and chocolate.
|
|
Scientists have found that The smell of vanilla can cut cravings for
chocolate and other high calorie treats like fizzy drinks. Appetite for
boiled sweets, savoury snacks or alcohol was unchanged. The resulting
change in appetite resulted in weight loss in those at least 1 stone
overweight. Vanilla resulted in weight loss of 5lbs compared to 3lbs for
lemon. Vanilla scented patches will be launched later this year. Unlike
medical patches like nicotine and HRT, nothing is absorbed through the
skin; the patch just holds the smell. |
Friday 21st July 2000: Cisapride
Prepulsid withdrawn
|
| From 28th July the licence for cisapride
will be withdrawn as there are concerns about its safety. Abnormal heart
rhythms are a very rare side effect but can be serious causing
palpitations, breathlessness, and fainting. Worldwide 175 deaths may have
occurred as a result of this side effect. Pending a European wide review
of safety and benefit the UK Committee on Safety of Medicines and the
Medicines Control Agency have decided to withdraw the licence. Cisapride
can be stopped immediately (the only problem may be return of the
condition being treated) and there are no lasting effects once the drug is
stopped. |
Wednesday 19th July 2000: NHS
funding 2001 - 2004
|
The promised extra funding for the NHS to
move it nearer the European average has been announced: £4.2 billion
2001/02, an additional £4.9 billion for 2002/03 and a further £4.6
billion for 2003/04. Thus by April 2004 the NHS budget will be £13 billion
higher than this year.
The
last comprehensive spending review announced £21 billion extra but this
was actually £7 billion in each of 3 years. This Government also made
statements about the NHS that suggested even more funding but each
announcement was from the original £7 billion.
This time we are assured
that there will be no double counting though we are waiting for the NHS
master plan to see how much control the Government will want over the use
of this funding.
Finally, the local health authority's plans for any closure of Lichfield
hospital services will probably be unaffected by the extra funding it will
receive. |
Monday 26th June 2000: Breast
cancer and genetic testing
|
| A Scottish company has been licensed by an
American biotechnology company to test for genes involved in 2% of cases
of breast cancer. This may lead to unnecessary tests, inaccurate
predictions and unnecessary anxiety. Click
here to read about the correct indications for genetic testing. |
Friday 16th June 2000: Oral
contraceptive pills and thrombosis
|
A study in New Zealand has just been
published which confirms previous studies with regard to the increased
risk of thrombosis in users of third generation pills containing gestodene
or desogestrel. The study looked at figures for the worst type of problem
namely fatal pulmonary embolism (a clot is dislodged and blocks the
circulation through the lungs). Using the death rate for non users as a
baseline, users of 2nd generation pills (containing levonorgestrel)
had a rate 5 times higher and users of 3rd generation had a rate 15 times
higher. The average age at death was 29. However, this complication is
very rare with an estimated risk of 10.5 for every million women taking
the pill for a year. The risk of this event in pregnancy is very much
higher. The rarity means there is no need to stop taking the pills (and thereby
run the risk of pregnancy) but you might like to discuss the subject with
your doctor when you next attend for review.
One new concern has arisen and that is Dianette which is used for acne and
also for contraception. The numbers in the study were small so the
information may be inaccurate but the rate of fatal pulmonary
embolism was 18 times higher. If Dianette is no longer required for acne
control switching to an ordinary contraceptive pill at your next review
might be advisable. |
Wednesday 14th June 2000:
Meningitis C vaccine
|
| As this vaccine is not live it cannot cause
meningitis. This form of meningitis is extremely serious. Last year, there
were 1530 cases of meningitis and septicaemia. 150 died. This figure was a
lot lower than a few years ago as 13.5 million doses of the vaccine have
been distributed in the UK. These have reduced the number affected in the
immunised population by 75% and the protection is long lasting. Serious
adverse reactions to all vaccines are monitored closely. The total number
of reactions which may have been related to this vaccine were 4756 out of
13.5 million doses; most of these were minor with quick recovery and no
lasting harm. The number of serious adverse reactions was less than 1 in
10,000. This is a small figure compared to the number of cases of
meningitis prevented. As already mentioned, it is not a live vaccine so
cannot cause meningitis. Protection is not 100% and there are other causes
of meningitis so awareness of symptoms remains important.
|
Wednesday 7th June 2000:
Trilucent breast implants
|
| These implants with a silicone shell around
a soya bean filler were withdrawn from sale in March 1999. The Medical
Devices Agency has now recommended that women fitted with these implants
should have them removed. The company has set up a patient help line: 0800
028 6622.
|
Wednesday 7th June 2000: Hospital
waiting lists
|
| At the end of April 1,054,000 patients were
waiting for health service treatment in England. 16,600 more than March
but 104,000 less than March 1997. |
Monday 5th June 2000: ...
and no exercise either
|
| Children should get at least 1 hour's
exercise each day but 33% of boys and 38% of girls do not achieve the 7
hours of active play per week. Couple this with a poor diet and the risk
of heart disease in the future is very great. The British Heart Foundation
has prepared a free leaflet "Get Kids on the Go".
Telephone 0870 600 6566. |
Friday 2nd June 2000: Junk Diet
Children
|
A study published today showed alarming
details about food eaten by children. Four out of 5 children eat little
more than chips, white bread, crisps, biscuits, ketchup, chocolate bars
and fizzy drinks. The intake of salt is massive and would have been worse
if the salt content of bread had not been reduced Boys age 5 to 18 eat
12.5g of salt per day compared to the recommended level of 6.5g. Sugar
intake is also massive (31% instead of 11%) and often "hidden",
e.g. Sunny Delight is only 5% fruit juice with the rest being mainly
heavily sugared water and thickeners such as gum.
National guidelines recommend children eat 5 helpings of fruit &
vegetables each day but the average consumption is less than half that. |
Thursday 1st June 2000: NHS
Census Day
|
| The Government has just launched a £500,000
drive to seek the views of the public regarding the creation of a 21st
century NHS. The reply paid cards arrived today and originally had to be
returned by Monday 5th June. It has now been admitted that the postal
service chosen by the Government is allowed a 4 day delivery delay. As a
result the Secretary of State has announced an extension of the deadline
to last postal collection on Monday 5th. The cards are available from
reception and subwaiting but you might prefer to respond on line at |
|
The Minster Practice, Lichfield
