EXCLUSIVE Travel warning issued to people using fat jabs to slim down for their summer holidays: they could be in for a shock
Once aimed at diabetes patients, drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro are prescribed on the NHS for people with obesity — and interest among slim people about their potential weight-loss benefits has led to a surge in demand for them privately too.
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Telegraph
33 minutes ago
- Telegraph
NHS will have to pay more for British doctors, Streeting is warned
Wes Streeting's plan to prioritise British doctors for NHS jobs risks piling more pressure on the public finances by driving up wages, analysts have warned. Economists at the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR), a Left-leaning think tank, said proposals by the Health Secretary to ensure medics who train in Britain are first in the queue for NHS roles will embolden staff to ask for higher pay. The commitment to hire no more than one in 10 doctors from overseas is part of Labour's 10-year plan to revive the health service as waiting lists remain above 7m. However the long awaited proposals – published this week – also come as doctors threaten strike action over a 'derisory' 4pc pay rise and junior doctors demand much higher increase. Seb Rees, at the IPPR, said that while Mr Streeting was 'right to want to train more homegrown doctors and reduce the NHS's reliance on overseas recruitment', it risked pushing up staffing costs. He said: 'The wider impact on pay is unclear, but greater reliance on domestic graduates could put upward pressure on wages. Unlike overseas staff, UK-trained doctors may be more likely to push for higher settlements over time.' Mr Rees added that the Government's ambition to reduce reliance on new overseas recruits from a quarter to one in 10 would be met by the reality of an ageing population that would increase demand for NHS services. 'The UK taxpayer makes a major investment in medical training, and it's simply not acceptable that many British doctors finish their training only to find there's no job waiting for them,' he said. 'However, the Government must be realistic about the scale of the challenge. Today, around two thirds of newly registered doctors are international medical graduates. 'Rebalancing this will require sustained investment in our training pipeline. With an ageing population and rising demand, we will need a larger medical workforce overall – and international recruitment has often been the fastest and most cost-effective way to meet that need. NHS has become 'over-reliant' on foreign workers Writing on social media site X, Mr Streeting vowed to revamp the NHS workforce. He said: 'I'm proud that the NHS has always been open to international talent, but the truth is that we've become over-reliant – including on countries with severe shortages of healthcare staff. 'We'll going to do more to grow our own and retain on talent.' The NHS is one of the world's biggest employers, directly employing 1.7m people in England. Health spending is by far the largest in Whitehall, with a day-to-day budget of roughly £200bn, half of which is spent on staffing costs. Other analysts highlighted that Mr Streeting's plans largely mirrored that of the previous government's proposals, which expected 'around 9pc to 10.5pc of our workforce to be recruited from overseas'. Max Warner, at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think tank, said: 'The NHS workforce is almost certainly going to have to grow in the coming years and decades to meet growing demand. Provided there is sufficient domestic supply of healthcare staff, this announcement doesn't necessarily affect the total number of staff working in the NHS. 'If this domestic supply is insufficient, then this could either mean we rely more on international recruitment or grow the NHS workforce at a slower rate.'
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
Older adults are waiting even longer in emergency departments, study finds
Older Americans are spending more time in emergency rooms than they used to, according to researchers. Boston physicians announced this week that the average length of stay and boarding times for people over the age of 65 had significantly increased between 2017 and 2024. The trends, the doctors note, indicate systemic challenges in hospitals around the country. They also signal an increasingly frustrating and potentially dangerous experience for patients. "Worsening emergency department lengths of stay and boarding contribute to emergency department crowding, reflect systemic health care dysfunction, and, most importantly, harm individual patients," they explained. To reach these conclusions, the doctors used data from 1,633 hospitals and 295 million patients. They analyzed emergency department encounters that were recorded between January 2017 and December 2024. They focused on the proportion of older adults with a length of stay over eight hours and the proportion of admitted patients waiting more than three hours between when they requested a bed and their admission. In 2017, 12 percent of more than 4 million emergency department encounters involved a length of stay over eight hours. By last year, that percentage had surged to 20 percent of more than 12 million encounters. During the same period, encounters involving boarding times over three hours increased from 22 percent of 1.8 million encounters in 2017 to 36 percent of 4.3 million encounters in 2024. The largest increase was reported in academic hospitals, with boarding times over three hours rising from 31 percent in 2017 to 45 percent in 2024. Before Covid, there were small spikes observed in both metrics that were followed by sharper rises during the pandemic's peak. From 2022 to 2024, as more Americans were vaccinated against Covid, both trends slightly declined. The authors suggested that these increases may be driven by several factors, such as increased patient complexity, growing demand, and ongoing staffing and resource shortages. Health care workforce shortages are projected to rise across the U.S. in the coming years, with demand far outpacing supply in some specialties, according to a report from the non-profit National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. There could be a shortage of as many as 100,000 critical health care workers by 2028, the consulting firm Mercer warned. In recent years, many nurses and doctors have reported feeling burnt out — although burnout rates reportedly aren't as high as they were in the first years of Covid, a study out of Stanford Medicine found. But, emergency room overcrowding is nothing new. A 2022 survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 97 percent of emergency room doctors said they experienced patient boarding times of more than 24 hours, and more than a quarter said patients were forced to stay in the emergency room for more than two weeks before getting a hospital bed. Solutions to this issue aren't yet ironclad. To attempt to fix it, doctors have suggested only treating patients with emergencies, expanding hospital capacity, changing admitting patterns, and making sure patients don't end up in the ER in the first place through enhanced disease prevention. One program started in 2020 set up hospital beds at patients' homes. Without established solutions, the outcomes can be negative for older adults, who make up more than 20 percent of emergency department visits, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2022. "You really don't want an 85-year-old or older patient lingering and sort of stranded in the emergency department for hours and days on end," Dr. Ula Hwang, medical director of geriatric emergency medicine at NYU Langone Health in New York City, told the American Heart Association in May. "It's been shown that if you're an older adult and you board in the emergency department overnight, you are at greater risk for developing delirium, even potentially having an inpatient mortality." The researchers noted that a new measure effective this year limits stays to under eight hours and admissions to within three hours. "Addressing these trends is critical to safeguarding both the health of older adults and the health systems caring for them,' the authors concluded. The findings were announced in a research letter published on Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
AstraZeneca boss ‘wants to shift stock market listing to US'
AstraZeneca's chief executive Pascal Soriot has reportedly said that he would like to shift the company's stock market listing from the UK to the US. The boss of Britain's most valuable listed company has spoken privately about a preference to move the listing to New York, the Times reported. It added that he had also considered moving the company's domicile. The FTSE 100 company's share price rose by 2.8% on Tuesday, with most of the increase happening after the story was published. A shift in AstraZeneca's listing would deal a major blow to the London Stock Exchange, which has already had to deal with a series of departures by companies seeking higher valuations. Among those who have left the FTSE 100 in recent years are equipment rental company Ashtead, Paddy Power bookmaker owner Flutter Entertainment, building materials supplier CRH and packaging company Smurfit Westrock. A shift by AstraZeneca would almost certainly face opposition by the UK government, although it would not have the power to formally block a move. Labour made life sciences one of its key growth sectors in its industrial strategy published last month. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca declined to comment. AstraZeneca is thought to have expressed frustrations privately with the rejection of its breast cancer drug, Enhertu, by the NHS on cost grounds. Earlier this year, the company, headquartered in Cambridge, caused consternation in government by pulling out of a £450m project to produce vaccines in Speke, Liverpool, while saying that the business case did not make sense without more financial support from government. Soriot has overseen the market value of AstraZeneca more than tripling since he took over in October 2012. The company has overtaken oil company Shell – also seen as a contender for a move to the US – and HSBC, a bank, with a market value of £157bn. The US is the world's biggest pharmaceutical market, with by far the highest spending per person on medicines despite having a lower life expectancy than several other countries. UK executives have long complained that their companies are undervalued compared with American counterparts. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Soriot has emphasised the company's ambitions to grow in the US. In November, he told investors that 'we want to see even more growth in the US over the next few years as part of our 2030 ambition,' according to a transcript from data company Alphasense. The 'US is, of course, a very important market and that supports innovation, and we will continue to invest to grow fast in this part of the world,' Soriot said. The chief executive's pay has increased in line with AstraZeneca's market value. He has been the highest-paid chief executive on the FTSE 100 for two years running, receiving £16.85m for 2023, up from £15.3m in 2022.
