Latest news with #waitinglists
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
MIDAS SHARE TIPS: Three stocks that could net healthy profits from the battle to slash NHS waiting lists
The NHS was once the envy of the world. No longer. Health Secretary Wes Streeting openly admits it is in crisis, with more than six million people on waiting lists and chaos predicted if hospital doctors walk out this week. However, plans are afoot to deliver change, with more choice for patients, better use of technology and investment in tip-top GP surgeries to offer everything from biopsies to help with depression. As the Government works on the small print, canny firms are already stepping in to offer solutions – and creating opportunities for investors to reap long-term rewards. Here are three that are giving the NHS a boost – and could do the same for your portfolio. One Health Group One Health Group was founded in 2004 by Derek Bickerstaff, an orthopaedic consultant who reckoned there must be a way to tackle waiting lists while continuing to provide patients with the free service offered by the NHS. His hunch was correct, and today One Health treats more than 17,000 people a year, providing consultations, operations and post-operative care for conditions ranging from dodgy hips to hernias. The company operates 40 community clinics across the Midlands and the North, and works with 130 NHS surgeons and anaesthetists. Patients wait two to four weeks for an initial consultation and undergo surgery, if needed, a few weeks later. Satisfaction levels are extremely high, and One Health is registered as a qualified alternative provider of care so the treatment is entirely free, just like the NHS. Bickerstaff's strategy is simple. He rents space in GP surgeries for his community clinics and space from private hospitals with spare capacity for operations. Agreements are also set up with surgeons and anaesthetists outside of their NHS obligations. Contracts are long-term and benefits are wide-ranging. GPs, hospitals and doctors receive extra income, patients are seen faster and NHS trusts can breathe easier. The business steers clear of affluent areas, where independent hospitals and NHS doctors can earn huge sums. Instead, it focuses on poorer parts of the country. Processes are smoother and more efficient because One Health does not deal with emergencies, is not involved in cancer or other complex conditions and has spent years developing its technology to the benefit of patients, doctors and suppliers. One Health joined the AQSE growth market in 2022 and moved up to Aim in March, raising cash along the way to fund its first surgical hub – a standalone site in Scunthorpe with an operating theatre and 12 beds. This should give a significant uplift to One Health profits. Today, the group gives about 70 per cent of gross revenues to hospitals in return for their space, facilities and nursing staff. The surgical hub will generate far higher profits at no cost to patients, and discussions are already under way for a second hub. NHS patients have a statutory right to choose their treatment provider, and increasing numbers are choosing One Health, which saw a 28 per cent increase in patients last year, generating a 23 per cent rise in revenues to £28.4 million with profits of £1.9 million and a dividend of 6.2p. One Health shares have had a strong run since joining Aim, and are now trading at £2.88. But brokers are optimistic about the business, suggesting shares could hit £3 or more over the next year or two. Buy and hold. Traded on: Aim Ticker: OHGR Contact: Optima Health The UK loses about £220 billion every year because people are taking days off sick or believe that they are too ill to work at all. Poor health is an epidemic, and the consequences spread far and wide. Hospitals are overstretched, depression is rife and economic growth is anaemic. Optima Health is the largest occupational health business in the country, working with some 2,000 employers, from NHS trusts, the police and HM Prisons to Bentley Motors, Ikea, investment banks and train operators. These organisations collectively employ five million people, almost 15 per cent of the nation's workforce, and Optima's job is to ensure they are fit and healthy so they can be fully productive. Police undergo fitness tests to check they are physically and mentally capable for the job. Factory workers are routinely assessed if they operate in noisy conditions or use vibrating tools. Even lollipop men and women have regular ear and eye tests to ensure they are capable of helping children cross the road. Under chief executive Jonathan Thomas, Optima also works with staff who are either on sick leave or think they may need to take time off. Aches and pains, such as back ache or dodgy knees, and mental health issues, such as stress or depression, are the biggest source of ill health. Optima employs more than 800 clinicians, including doctors, physiotherapists and mental health advisers, who identify ailments and help employees feel better and return to work. Thomas is expanding into new fields too, winning a seven-year, £210 million contract from the Armed Forces to conduct medical assessments on potential recruits for the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. Applicants will undergo rigorous checks to ensure they are physically and mentally fit to defend their country – from testing whether they can crawl through small spaces to seeing how they respond in high-stress situations. Optima has also spent ten years perfecting an online triage tool for bodily aches and pains, taking users through an eight-minute questionnaire to diagnose the next stage of treatment. Already in use by businesses across the country, the tool has now been taken up by the Mersey & West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, which runs hospitals and clinics across the North West. Discussions are under way with other NHS Trusts and further contracts are expected, as the tool can be used night and day, delivers more accurate results than face-to-face triage and cuts waiting lists dramatically, while ensuring people secure the right treatment. Results for the year to March included profits of £2.6 million. They are expected to more than double this year. Occupational health is a fragmented industry with thousands of small players. This presents plenty of opportunities for Optima. The workforce is changing too, growing older, larger and less healthy, which should bode well for Optima, making the shares a long-term buy at £1.94. Traded on: Aim Ticker: OPT Contact: Assura/PHP Crunch time is approaching for shareholders in GP-surgeries-to- private-hospital owner Assura. The company has been at the centre of a bidding war between UK-listed healthcare specialist PHP and US private equity giant, KKR, bidding through a company called Sana Bidco. Assura's board has recommended the PHP offer. Now shareholders must decide whether to follow their advice. They should, as the PHP deal is likely to deliver far greater long-term benefits. PHP owns about 500 healthcare centres offering everyday GP appointments as well as services from physiotherapy and weight management to biopsies and post-cancer care. A tie-up with Assura would create a group with more than 1,000 sites, easing the pressure on hospitals. A trading update from PHP showed it is forging ahead – a larger group would almost certainly do even better. PHP has a 29-year record of dividend growth, too, and boss Mark Davies has said the merged business should bolster shareholder payouts. Assura investors should back this offer.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Health
- Irish Times
Public opinion is now toxic, warns former minister for health
People in Northern Ireland must wait 11 times longer than people in the Republic for urgent operations, yet the HSE gets no credit, a former minister for health has said. Stephen Donnelly said waiting lists in the Republic have fallen by 60 per cent over the last three years, yet few in the public know anything about it, or want to know anything about it. 'It is improving rapidly. They're doing incredible work. It's not all the way there, but it's moving really quickly,' the former minister told the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal. 'It's hard to find another country in Europe that has achieved anything like that. Emergency department pressures are falling. Women's healthcare is being transformed. There's a lot of really good things happening now,' he said. READ MORE 'Don't get me wrong. Not for a moment am I suggesting that it's fixed, or that everything is right. It's not. I know it's not. But it's moving in the right direction so quickly that we are on track to have achieved universal healthcare within the next five years.' Despite the improvements, the public narrative about the Republic's health system is 'a black hole', said Mr Donnelly, who served as served as health minister from June 2020 to January 2025. 'Contrary to the national view on this, we have a public health service that is improving at an extraordinary rate,' he said. The negativity surrounding public attitudes towards the health service is typical of the attitudes towards nearly every other element of Irish public life, which is increasingly corrosive and destructive, said Mr Donnelly, who lost the seat he held for Fianna Fáil in Wicklow at the last general election. 'If we are to be serious about navigating what is an increasingly fractured and turbulent world, we're going to have to have a different conversation about who we are. We need to balance the conversation,' he told the summer school. [ Warning labels on alcohol an idea from 'different time', Minister warned Cabinet colleague Opens in new window ] 'It's not that we shouldn't shine a light on the challenges that exist. Of course we should, we do and we must always do that, but we've got to start bringing some balance.' Six months after he stepped down as minister for health, Mr Donnelly said: 'What strikes me is that the political debate has become harsher and harsher. You would be forgiven if you were watching a lot of TV for believing we live in a failed state. 'And we really, really don't. Social media has just gone completely off the reservation. Fourteen years ago when I was first in politics, it was fairly all right. People used it to put out their ideas and have chats. Now, it's just poison. 'There's lies and misinformation and hatred and racism and poison, and ... but it is being consumed all the time,' said Mr Donnelly, who was a Social Democrat TD before he joined Fianna Fáil. Social media would have us believe that Ireland is in 'a state of perpetual crisis', he said. 'That the doctors and the nurses are all leaving. The teachers are all leaving. The young people are all leaving, or the Government is uncaring, incompetent and corrupt.' [ Brother of Veronica Guerin criticises Catherine Connolly over nomination of Gemma O'Doherty for 2018 election Opens in new window ] Foreign friends who have visited Ireland say they have heard nothing but complaints when they have travelled around the country for a week, he said. 'You meet them, and they just say, 'What is wrong with you people?'' Ireland does face some 'immense, some deadly serious challenges', but so does every other country, he said. 'The level of negativity that we see here is not normal. It does feel like there is something particular going on in Ireland at the moment.' Ireland is 'incredibly well placed' to become a world leader in the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, he said. 'There's a wave of innovation coming. Some of it's already here.'
The Sun
5 days ago
- Health
- The Sun
Women being hit hardest by NHS delays as treatment backlogs grow across key services
WOMEN are being short-changed by the NHS and make up most of the waiting list, official figures show. New data from NHS England show that 57 per cent of patients waiting for treatment are female while 43 per cent are male. 2 Women are waiting for 3.9million treatments, a million more than the 2.9m listed for men, while the remainder are uncategorised. Female patients also wait longer than males as statistics show they are less likely to be treated within the 18-week target time and more likely to wait over a year. Gynaecology, which looks after women's reproductive health, has the longest waiting list of any single department for working age people. Professor Ranee Thakar, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: 'This data is a vital step in addressing the postcode lottery in gynaecology care. 'Delays can lead to a need for more complex treatment and significantly impact women's health, wellbeing, and daily lives. 'We know that our members are working tirelessly to deliver more appointments and so it is encouraging to see waiting lists begin to fall in recent months.' Overall, the NHS figures show patients living in working class areas, and those from black or Asian backgrounds, are more likely to face long waits. In a blow to the economy, 56 per cent of waiters are of working age – more than 3.5million people, with many unable to work while they wait. Ear, nose and throat clinics have the biggest backlogs, with 616,000 procedures due to be completed. Ophthalmology and gynaecology both account for over 500,000 each, while cardiology and dermatology both have waiting lists of more than 400,000. Wes Streeting brutally slams Kemi AND Farage and demands Tories say sorry for how they ran the NHS in blistering attack Sharon Brennan, of National Voices, said: 'Being honest with the public is an important step to winning back the trust of communities who often feel unheard and sometimes unwanted.' Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: 'Only by being upfront and shining a light on inequalities can we begin to tackle the problem.'
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Health
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on insourcing in the health service: not a longer-term solution
The Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, is reviewing the use by the health service of third-party insourcing to cut waiting lists. It follows a review of the practice by the chief executive of the Health Service Executive, Bernard Gloster, who has recommended that it be phased out by the end of the year. What appeared to be a novel solution to reducing waiting times in the wake of the Covid epidemic has come to be seen as a costly problem. Under the initiative, introduced by then health minister Stephen Donnelly, private companies were encouraged to use spare capacity – in terms of trained staff and equipment – at public hospitals to provide services to patients on public waiting lists. The underutilisation that the initiative capitalised on was due in part to working hours and rostering limitations at public hospitals. The services were provided on a commercial basis and followed the precedent set by the outsourcing by the HSE of the treatment of public patients to private hospitals. The initiative succeeded in its primary objective of reducing waiting times, but its cost has proved problematic. Over ¤100 million was paid out in the 27 months to March to third party outsourcing companies, many of which are run by or employ existing HSE staff. READ MORE Concerns were raised at the outset about the possibility of conflicts of interest and the creation of perverse incentives whereby doctors and staff involved with third-party insourcing businesses stood to benefit from long public waiting lists. Some of these concerns appear to have been borne out, with a number of controversies prompting the review by Gloster. The Minister's dilemma is that while there may be political pressure to wind down the third-party insourcing initiative, there is even greater pressure to address waiting lists which are being driven ever upwards by demographic trends. The insourcing initiative is generally accepted to have made a material difference to waiting times. The HSE has agreed to new rostering arrangements for staff and hospital consultants which should see equipment and facilities used more efficiently, particularly over weekends and in the evening. However, this is unlikely to be sufficient to plug the gap created by abandoning third party insourcing. The existing reliance on private hospitals will most likely be exacerbated. The decision facing the minister is not a simple accounting exercise in which costs and benefits can be traded off. The HSE has clearly lost confidence in the initiative, and it is increasingly becoming a political liability for the Government. It may well have run out of the road, though phasing it out without adding to waiting list pressures will not be easy.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Working age people make up majority of NHS waiting list while women are more likely to face long waits
Working age adults make up the majority of NHS waiting lists with their numbers rising in recent years, official new data reveals. Long waits among this age group are fuelling Britain's worklessness crisis and stifling the economy, with many signed off sick until they receive treatment, experts say. They described the figures as 'deeply worrying' for the Government's growth agenda and said it is 'now clear' more must be done to get these people 'back to work'. Data tables published for the first time by NHS England also show more women than men are waiting for hospital care and a greater proportion of them are waiting too long. It comes after charities claimed the NHS has a culture of 'medical misogyny', with women's health issues often dismissed or deprioritised. Some 56.1 per cent of patients on hospital waiting lists at the end of June this year were of working age, which is defined as 19 to 64 years. This is up from 55.8 per cent a year ago and 55.0 per cent in June 2022. At the same time, the proportion of people on the waiting list under the age of 19 fell to 10.8 per cent in June, down from 11.2 per cent a year earlier and 11.9 per cent in June 2022. The proportion who are over 65 has remained broadly unchanged at around 33.1 per cent. People of working age are also more likely to have to wait more than a year to start treatment than those over 65, with rates of 3.0 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively. However, the proportion is the same for working age adults as those under 19. The largest specialty for those on the waiting list aged 18 to 64 is gynaecology, while it is ophthalmology for older adults. Siva Anandaciva, director of policy at The King's Fund, a health think tank, said: 'While there is often a focus on the pressures an increasingly aging population can place on the NHS, patients over the age of 65 are the least likely to be waiting over a year to be seen. 'And it will be deeply worrying for the government's economic growth agenda that such a large share of people on hospital waiting lists, and those waiting over a year for care, are working-age adults.' Tim Mitchell, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: 'It is now clear that more needs to be done to get working-age people off NHS waiting lists and back to work. 'For the communities that have the longest waiting lists, we hope that this detailed breakdown improves local planning and goes some way towards tailoring services better to the local community, particularly around access to surgical treatment. Long waits for NHS care are fuelling Britain's worklessness crisis and stifling the economy 'We know that long waits for surgery can be devastating, particularly for patients from more deprived communities who may already face poorer health outcomes.' For data where sex is recorded, women make up a higher percentage of the overall waiting list than men - 57 per cent versus 43 per cent. Furthermore, women are more likely than men to be waiting more than the 18-week target to start treatment and more likely to be waiting more than a year. Meanwhile, people in the most deprived parts of England also face long waits for treatment when compared with those in the wealthiest areas. And patients in some ethnic groups are more likely to have to wait more than a year to start hospital treatment than in others. Janet Lindsay, chief executive of Wellbeing of Women, described the figures showing differences between men and women's waits as 'alarming and unacceptable'. She added: 'Waiting over a year for treatment is not just an inconvenience — it's a denial of timely, essential care that disproportionately affects women's lives.' Stella Vig, NHS national clinical director for elective care at NHS England, said: 'Understanding patient demographics is vital if we are to identify and tackle the way different groups are treated. 'As well as allowing patients and the public to see the makeup of local lists, NHS teams will be able to analyse the latest data, understand where there is unwarranted variation in waiting times, and work with their communities to take action to reduce it.' The latest aggregate monthly figures, published last week, show there were 6.2million patients waiting for 7.4million treatments as of the end of May. Dr Sean Phillips, head of health and social care at the Policy Exchange think tank, said: 'To get Britain back to health, the NHS will have to be creative, offering more appointments nearer to places of work and fitting around working lives. 'All patients nearing treatment should be on 'standby' lists so they can be called up at short notice.' The Government today announced that patients with long-term conditions will be automatically referred to specialist charities at the point of diagnosis from next year. Diagnosis Connect will ensure patients are referred directly to charities and support organisations in a move the Government says will 'complement, not replace', NHS care.
