Media Monitoring: 4th – 10th February

NHS England and NHS Digital have today legally merged in the first step towards creating a new, single organisation to lead the NHS in England to deliver high-quality services for all
The move brings the NHS’ national data and technology expertise into one organisation, creating a closer link between the collection and analysis of data to help drive improvement to patient outcomes
The transformative power of data and digital has remained central to the NHS’ ability to respond to major events – with the online National Booking Service helping drive the world-leading NHS Covid vaccination programme to administer almost 145 million doses

Cancer Research UK estimate that over 500,000 people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer every year by 2040
Mortality rates are set to fall for many cancer types, but the absolute numbers of deaths are projected to increase by almost a quarter to 208,000

At home HIV tests are being offered by the Government from this week to tackle lower levels of diagnosis during the pandemic
It can yield a result in 15 mins from a single drop of blood – a reactive result means a further clinical check is required
It is estimated that there are 4,400 people living with undiagnosed HIV in the UK

The IFS estimates that waiting lists will flatline this year rather than reduce despite being one of Rishi Sunak’s key priorities
The backlog is unlikely to be tackled by any significant degree until at least mid-2024

In this 15 min podcast, Bernie Croal, consultant chemical pathologist and president of the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine, and health journalist and lecturer, Emma Wilkinson, discuss at home blood tests

The Monthly Diagnostics data for December 2022 can be found here.

The total number of patients waiting six weeks or more from referral for one of the 15 key diagnostic tests at the end of December 2022 was 481,900. This was 31.3% of the total number of patients waiting at the end of the month.
Nationally, the operational standard of less than 1% of patients waiting six weeks or more was not met this month.
Compared with December 2021, the total number of patients waiting six weeks or more increased by 62,700 while the proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more increased by 2.3 percentage points.
The proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more at the end of a month has varied between 24.0% (February 2022) and 31.3% (December 2022).
The estimated average time that a patient had been waiting for a diagnostic test was 3.9 weeks at the end of December 2022.
There were 1,540,500 patients waiting for a key diagnostic test at the end of December 2022. This is an increase of 95,500 from December 2021.
A total of 1,865,300 diagnostic tests were undertaken in December 2022. This is an increase of 56,800 from December 2021.