The Health Foundation This analysis examines variations in waiting times across ICB geographies to understand the extent of progress towards recovering pre-pandemic waiting times, including changes in referrals and activity. To do so, we analysed data from ICB footprints before the April 2026 boundary changes for 2025 and compared them with 2019 data by reconstructing … Continue reading A growing gap? ICB variation in elective care waiting times in 2019 and 2025
Posted: April 29, 2026, 6:23 am
Department of Health and Social Care This is the government’s formal response to the Health and Social Care Committee’s report ‘The First 1000 Days: a renewed focus’, published in January 2026. The Committee’s report set out its conclusions and made recommendations on the following themes: Family Hubs and Start for Life programme; health visitors; workforce; … Continue reading Government response to the Health and Social Care Committee’s fifth report of session 2024 to 2026, ‘The First 1000 Days: a renewed focus’
Posted: April 24, 2026, 7:51 am
Patient Information Forum This report looks at actions taken by health organisations on health and digital literacy. The number of organisations with a health literacy policy in place stood at 26% with 15% in development – 41% in total compared to a total of 33% in 2023. This is progress since 2019 when the number … Continue reading Health and digital literacy survey 2025/26
Posted: April 24, 2026, 7:50 am
Healing Justice London This report reflects on the Covid-19 pandemic and the experiences of disabled and clinically vulnerable communities in the UK and Ireland, and what we can learn from them in building for our current moment. The research seeks to make sense of Covid-19 within a social justice framework. Breathing spaces: crisis, denial, and … Continue reading Breathing spaces: crisis, denial, and building collective care in the age of pandemics
Posted: April 24, 2026, 7:48 am
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) The PHSO’s new five-year strategy is built around three priorities: driving public service improvement; improving user experience; and raising awareness and trust. The strategy sets out how the PHSO will take a more active role in using complaints data and evidence to identify risks, prevent harm and strengthen accountability … Continue reading Our strategy: 2026 to 2031 – Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)
Posted: April 24, 2026, 7:47 am
The King’s Fund report This report, co-written with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and commissioned by the Health Foundation, draws on expert interviews, literature review, and analysis of existing sustainability metrics to examine how national and local NHS bodies are held to account for sustainability. Environmental sustainability in the NHS: a new approach to national … Continue reading Environmental sustainability in the NHS: a new approach to national leadership and accountability
Posted: April 24, 2026, 7:45 am
The King’s Fund commissioned work The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is currently rebuilding its regulatory model following several reviews that were critical of its approach, and The King’s Fund is working with them to support this work. As part of this partnership, we were asked to do some work focused on what makes care outstanding. … Continue reading What makes care outstanding?
Posted: April 22, 2026, 7:54 am
Re:State This report looks at the issues facing social care including underfunding, regional disparities, and distributive unfairness. It finds that unmet need is soaring, with over two million later-life and 1.5 million working-age adults not accessing the social care they need. England currently has a single funding model for working-age and later-life social care. Yet … Continue reading Beyond caring: a new funding model for later-life social care
Posted: April 21, 2026, 7:53 am
Alzheimer’s Society This report reveals huge gaps in dementia training across social care: half of staff receive just one to two hours of dementia learning despite 70% of care home residents living with the condition. It argues that these shortfalls in training are leaving social care staff unprepared, unsupported, and putting people with dementia at … Continue reading The training gap: a hidden injustice in dementia care and how to fix it
Posted: April 21, 2026, 7:52 am
Kings Fund In 2025, 26% of British adults were satisfied with how the NHS runs – a statistically significant 6 percentage point increase from 2024, and the first increase in satisfaction since 2019. 2025 also saw the largest fall in dissatisfaction in 25 years, falling from 59% in 2024 to 51%. Public satisfaction with the … Continue reading Public satisfaction with the NHS and social care in 2025 (BSA)
Posted: April 21, 2026, 7:31 am
NHS Improvement News and Alerts
Hospital patients at every NHS trust across England can now check their referrals and appointments through the NHS App, making it easier for millions of people to manage their care in one place. Around two-thirds (64%) of all hospital appointments are currently visible through the app, with many patients also able to reschedule or cancel appointments – helping to cut the number of missed […]
Posted: April 28, 2026, 9:30 pm
Every maternity service in England will need to meet new clinical standards, set out by the NHS, to significantly reduce the number of women who die each year during or after pregnancy. All pregnant women will be offered an early risk assessment for venous thromboembolism – blood clots that form in deep veins and are […]
Posted: April 23, 2026, 10:50 am
Millions more people are now benefiting from lifesaving bowel screening compared to a decade ago, as the NHS urges even more people to get tested. Almost 7 million people have had bowel screening from the NHS during 2024/25, compared to around 4.7 million in 2014/15. Since bowel screening started 2 decades ago, the NHS has […]
Posted: April 20, 2026, 9:16 am
Millions of eligible older people and those with a weakened immune system can now get potentially lifesaving protection from COVID-19 with NHS spring vaccinations starting this week. Tens of thousands of appointments are now available across the country every day at GP practices and community pharmacies for people aged 75 and over, older people in […]
Posted: April 20, 2026, 7:20 am
A&E waiting times have fallen to a five-year low, despite the NHS seeing record numbers of patients in March as the health service experienced a ‘prolonged winter’. There were a record breaking 2.43 million total A&E attendances in March – 16,000 more than the previous record high in May 2024. Despite the bumper demand, almost […]
Posted: April 16, 2026, 10:06 am
The NHS is urging patients to seek medical care as normal as resident doctors continue strike action over the weekend. The latest round of industrial action is set to end at 6:59am on Monday 13 April and NHS staff have been working tirelessly to ensure as many services as possible are able to run during […]
Posted: April 10, 2026, 11:01 pm
The NHS is urging patients across England not to put off coming forward for the care they need during this week’s resident doctor strikes. Industrial action begins at 7am on Tuesday 7 April and runs for six days until 6:59am on Monday 13 April, with hospital teams across the country working to minimise disruption for patients. In addition to prioritising urgent […]
Posted: April 5, 2026, 11:01 pm
Millions of older people can now get protection against a virus which causes serious lung infections like bronchitis and pneumonia – preventing potentially thousands of hospital admissions a year. All adults aged 80 and over, and people living in a care home for older adults, are now eligible for the NHS respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) […]
Posted: April 1, 2026, 11:01 pm
A new life-changing treatment option – GLP-1 drug semaglutide known as Wegovy – is set to be available on the NHS within months, with 1.2 million people with cardiovascular disease eligible to receive the treatment to help prevent heart attacks and strokes over the next few years. People with heart and circulatory disease who are […]
Posted: March 31, 2026, 11:01 pm
Dr Amanda Doyle, National Director for Primary Care and Community Services at NHS England, said: “GP teams are working harder than ever, delivering more than 1.5 million appointments for patients every working day over the last year – the highest number on record. “In part, this is due to practices now offering patients the choice […]
Posted: March 26, 2026, 11:56 am
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