The NHS is rolling out an expanded mental health support service for Armed Forces veterans, as a survey found that more than half find it difficult to speak up about mental health issues. The health service has today (9 January) launched a new campaign to highlight its Op COURAGE service, which now includes enhanced specialist […]

NHS staff faced the busiest week for ambulances so far this winter with more than 93,500 arriving at hospitals to hand over patients, alongside significant performance improvements. New weekly data shows that extensive winter NHS planning is continuing to pay off, with hours lost to ambulance handover delays more than halved compared to last year, […]

Four million more GP appointments a month are being delivered for patients compared to the same month before the pandemic, as part of the NHS primary care access recovery plan. New NHS data published today shows more than 31.4 million appointments (excluding vaccinations) were delivered by GP practices in November 2023, making it the busiest […]

Commenting on the latest round of industrial action, NHS National Medical Director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said: “As the longest strike in the history of the NHS begins during one of the busiest and most challenging weeks of the year – the health service is experiencing the winter pressures of flu and Covid combined with […]

Record industrial action this week could see one of the most difficult starts to the year for health services across the country, the NHS has said today. Junior doctors strike from tomorrow (Wednesday 3 January) at 7am, until 7am on Tuesday 9 January – the longest consecutive strike action ever taken in the history of […]

More people than ever before are getting tested for cancer with almost 3 million checks over the last 12 months, new analysis shows today. Almost 3 million people (2,980,258) were seen for urgent cancer checks over the last year (Nov 2022 to Oct 2023) – the highest year on record. Up by 147,960 on the […]

Nurses, doctors and surgeons are among dozens of NHS staff on the 2024 New Year Honour list, released today (Friday 29 December).   The head of the NHS, Amanda Pritchard, praised the efforts of those recognised in what has been another challenging year for the health service.    This year in the NHS’s 75th year, staff have dealt with […]

Thousands of people were in hospital with winter viruses last week, including over 940 patients with flu, as staff contended with significant winter pressure on top of the impact of industrial action. The latest figures for the week to Christmas Eve show there were an average of 942 patients with flu in hospital each day […]

The number of visits to the NHS website’s running programme is expected to quadruple in the first week of January as people attempt to achieve their new year’s resolutions. Figures from NHS England, which runs the NHS website, show that visits to the Get running with Couch to 5K page received 51,900 visits in the first week […]

Data on the recent industrial action by junior doctors and hospital dental trainees can be found on the NHS England website here: NHS England » Industrial action in the NHS. Since strikes began, the cumulative total of acute inpatient and outpatient appointments rescheduled is now 1,219,422. Junior doctors and hospital dental trainees began their strike […]