Health and care sector latest developments

ICB exec pay under review after mergers

The government is considering steps to stop ICB executives receiving pay rises simply because their organisations merge and cover bigger populations.
 
NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care have said overhauls to ICB structures mean the current approach to very senior managers’ pay, which bases it on bands of population covered, ‘may no longer provide an appropriate basis.’
 
Joint evidence submitted to the Senior Salaries Review Body for the 2027-28 pay round said: “As ICBs are reconfigured, many are expected to move into higher population bands.
 
“This could result in pay increases that are driven by changes in population coverage rather than a proportionate increase in individual role scope, complexity, and accountability.
 
“The government is considering steps to mitigate this.”
 
The evidence said chief executive pay had already been ‘increased modestly’ at some ICBs which have clustered or merged over the past year, ‘as pay is based on the population size served by the ICB.’ Some ICBs are yet to declare their new exec pay in annual accounts.

Faster clinical trials bring cutting-edge treatments to patients

The government has hit its target to speed up clinical trials with delivery times reduced by 35 per cent.
 
The average set-up time for commercial trials in the UK dropped to 100 days in the three months to March this year, down from 153 in the same period last year. All of the 24 commercial trials during those months were set up within 150 days, exceeding the 95 per cent of commercial trials set up within 150-days goal set out in the Life Sciences Sector Plan last year.
 
Health Innovation Minister James Frith said: “For patients and their families, a clinical trial can offer hope of a treatment that once seemed unimaginable.

“That’s why meeting this target is so important. It means more patients will get the cutting-edge care they need sooner.”

Burnham backs mandatory suicide prevention training for social workers after parent-carer Matilda Davis’s death

The Prime Minister backed mandatory suicide prevention training for social workers after the ‘devastating’ death of Matilda Davis, a parent-carer who took her own life after meeting professionals.

Davis, a former art teacher, had told multiple professionals she was struggling to cope with the significant care for her seven-year-old son and ‘paralysed with anxiety’ about her looming divorce from her estranged husband.
 
Manuela Perteghella, the Liberal Democrat MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, where Davis lived, raised the issue, citing University of Birmingham research showing that 41 per cent of parent-carers have contemplated suicide. 

Woman told she had cancer by NHS worker who inappropriately accessed her records

A woman from Cornwall was told she had cancer by a hospital employee she ‘barely knew’ socially who had accessed her medical records days before she was due to receive test results from her consultant.
 
Pippa Boardman said she lost her dignity and privacy through the data breach at the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro.
 
She said: “I got a phone call at home from somebody I know through the sport that I play. This man said to me: ‘Pippa, I don’t want you to worry, but you’ve got cancer.’ I just couldn’t really believe it.”
 
Two days later, Boardman was told by her consultant she did have breast cancer.
 
The report comes following a letter, sent to all NHS trusts by NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey last month that ordered any staff found to be looking at patient records without a valid reason to be immediately suspended. NHS England also launched a national campaign to ‘remind staff of their responsibilities and the serious consequences of unlawful access’.

Britain’s top gynaecologist: ‘Women outlive men, but at a cost to their health’

Dame Lesley Regan, the government’s first Women’s Health Ambassador, has given an interview to The Daily Telegraph as she approaches the end of her tenure in spring 2027.
 
She cited previous NHS Confederation research in her interview, saying that there is an economic as well as social and moral imperative to improve women’s health, saying it would save the UK £36 billion every year.
 
The interview covers the rollout of the first Women’s Health Hubs, the socio-economic inequality in women’s health outcomes and the waiting list for gynaecological care.
 
Regan was also president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 2016 to 2019.