Jacqui Wise

Spending on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism services in England is “running out of control” with some areas seeing costs rise 10-fold in a year, NHS leaders have warned. The NHS Alliance—which represents NHS organisations in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland—is calling for a national tariff for ADHD and autism services because unregulated private providers are capitalising on the soaring demand for assessments. A steep rise in demand for services since the pandemic, and the lack of NHS capacity, has led to an influx of new independent providers. This has been fuelled by patients’ right to choose, which allows people seeking diagnosis for themselves or a child to select any qualified provider, the organisation said. Although the right to choose has helped reduce some of the longest waits for assessments, the NHS Alliance said this has come at a cost to the NHS’s budget. There …

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has suspended the use and sale of Avacopan Vifor (also known as Tavneos) for new patients in the UK. Officials said that the data supporting its use were “no longer sufficiently reliable” and that “the available evidence no longer supports a positive benefit-risk balance” for the medicine. Tavneos is used to treat some rare autoimmune diseases affecting small blood vessels. The MHRA said that it had carried out a review after questions were raised about the integrity and data reliability of the pivotal clinical study underpinning the medicine’s authorisation. In June two academic authors of a phase 3 trial study, known as Advocate, requested that the New England Journal of Medicine retract their 2021 study.12 This followed an investigation by the …

Increasing numbers of young children are ending up in hospital emergency departments in a mental health crisis because their families or carers don’t know where else to turn, official data have indicated. NHS England data, obtained by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), also showed that waiting times of 12 hours were also on the rise among children aged 6-17 attending emergency departments with a recorded mental health related diagnosis or presenting complaint.1 Data show that, in 2025, 75 491 children attended a hospital emergency department with a recorded mental health concern—a 36% increase since 2019. The sharpest rise was seen among 6-9 year olds, up by 62% in six years, from 3870 in 2019 to 6269 in 2025. There was a 41% increase in admissions for 9-15 …

Scotland’s 14 regional health boards will be replaced with two strategic health boards, first minister John Swinney has said. The 11 health boards on the mainland will be merged into two bodies covering the west and east of the country under the proposals. The three existing health boards for Shetland, Orkney, and the Western Isles could be merged with local councils, but details have yet to be confirmed. Final decisions will be taken only after consultation. Swinney set out a brief outline of his plans for “simplifying” the health service in Scotland in his programme for government speech on 1 September.1 “This will be the most significant structural reform of the NHS in the era …

Patients with cancer who received most of their immunotherapy treatments earlier in the day experienced longer overall survival than those who received their treatments later in the day, new findings suggest.1 The findings made national headlines, but independent experts and the researchers of the study themselves have urged caution over interpreting the results, explaining that further study and randomised trials would be needed to confirm the findings. Lead study author Paul Lorigan, consultant medical oncologist at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, said, “The most important message from this research is that there appears to be a signal worth investigating further.” Published in the British Journal of Cancer , the study analysed outcomes for 2631 patients with advanced cancer who received immune checkpoint inhibitors at the Christie hospital between January 2018 and December 2023. The study included patients with metastatic lung cancer (45%), melanoma (23%), renal carcinoma (18%), head and …

UK trained doctors now have much greater odds of securing NHS specialty training places after a prioritisation law was introduced, an analysis has shown. This new work, from think tank the Nuffield Trust, looked at provisional data from NHS England, showing that international medical graduates (IMGs) are now much less likely to get a specialty training place since the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act came into force in March.12 In 2025, 28% of doctors accepting a specialty training place were from what is now defined as the “non-priority group”—which includes most IMGs. But this has now fallen to just 1.8% in the first recruitment round in 2026. This is despite doctors in the non-priority group still applying to specialty training posts—making up just over half (51%) of all applications in 2026. In 2026, only five of 16 medical specialties had any accepted places from non-priority candidates. These were emergency medicine, cardiothoracic surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, and paediatrics. The Medical …

Three quarters of A&E staff experience or witness violence and aggression in their department on a daily or weekly basis, a survey has indicated. Long waits, overcrowding, and corridor care are making an existing problem worse, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) warned in a new report.1 These conditions exacerbate patient frustration, reduce privacy, and place staff under greater pressure, which all combine to make incidents more likely, the RCEM said. The latest performance figures from NHS England show there were 47 000 patients waiting over 12 hours for an emergency admission in July 2026. On average around 2300 patients received corridor care per day.2 A recent BMJ investigation found that eight in 10 trusts are caring for emergency department patients in corridors or other unsuitable places.3 Stories of lengthy waits and corridor care are also frequently making …

More than 200 NHS staff have been sacked and 2000 sanctioned for inappropriately looking at patient records in the past five years, an investigation has revealed. However, at least a quarter of NHS trusts in England have not carried out any recent or proactive checks to look for such inappropriate access of patient data, according to the joint investigation by Health Service Journal and Sky News.1 Data from 141 trusts who responded to freedom of information requests found that, since 2022, at least 214 staff have been dismissed and three suspended. At least 540 were given final written warnings, and more than 1300 cases resulted …

Exposure to higher levels of exhaled carbon monoxide is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, even among people who have never smoked, a study suggests.1 Examining data from 512 000 adults, researchers found that smokers had a 30% lower risk of developing Parkinson’s than those who had never smoked. But more surprisingly, non-smokers with signs of exposure to carbon monoxide were also found to have a lower chance of developing the progressive neurological condition. Several previous studies have documented lower risks of developing Parkinson’s disease among smokers. While nicotine has been suggested as a possible protective compound, this has not been proved. The new study suggests that exposure to carbon monoxide, a known byproduct of smoking, could be responsible for this apparent protective effect. Carbon monoxide is an invisible gas that can enter the human body through smoking and other environmental exposures such as solid fuel use. Experts, however, say that people should not take up smoking as protection against Parkinson’s. They say that any potential …

Ministers have announced £32m for projects to strengthen hospitals’ resilience to extreme heat, as part of a £1.5bn capital investment package. It follows the hottest summer on record, which left a string of NHS trusts declaring critical incidents and hospital staff at times enduring indoor temperatures exceeding 41°C.12 The £32m is for projects to improve cooling and ventilation infrastructure, which the government claims will help hospitals adapt to more frequent periods of extreme heat. The investment will include £527 000 to replace air conditioning in a unit at Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire, £791 000 to improve cooling within operating theatres at St Peter’s Hospital in Ashford, Surrey, and £154 000 for Manchester Royal Infirmary to replace the chiller for the hospital’s positron emission tomography scanner. However, the £32m equates to just …