Henry Anderson
Reporter writing about health, social care and much more besides, with stories picked up by national publications.
Selected work can be read below.
Cashing in on care
Letter from Scotland: An uneasy relationship with private health
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your settings at any time.
Money to Milburn
Disability Tax
Iain Duncan Smith's business links to China
Inside Nigel Farage’s New Money-Spinning Project –
Henry Anderson delves into Farage’s financial newsletter, revealing its ties to an EU-based company and fake health news
Nigel Farage has stepped down from frontline politics – or so he claims. The former UKIP, Brexit Party and Reform leader says that he wants to spend more time on “new projects,” as well as continuing to advocate for his various political predilections on the media.
One of these new projects, launched in recent months, has been a sponsored, financial newsletter called ‘Fortun
Letter from Scotland: What can England learn from integration north of the border?
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your settings at any time.
Highland bullying victims question ‘healing process'
One of the first people to go through a system set up to help hundreds of former employees who were bullied at NHS Highland has described the system as “broken” and “failing” – and branded the payment he is entitled to at the end of the process “shocking”.
The ‘healing process’ was set up in the wake of a critical report that found hundreds of staff could have been affected by bullying and workplace harassment.
NHS Highland has called the approach ‘an innovative and unique solution to try and
Call centre firm brought in to bolster Test & Protect
The Scottish government is turning to private firms to provide contact tracers as pressure increases on Scotland’s Test and Protect system, healthandcare.scot can reveal.
Ministers initially pledged a target of up to 2,000 contact tracers but the Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said last week there were around 800 across the country.
When Nicola Sturgeon announced the test and trace system in May she pledged “all the work of identifying and tracing contacts will be done within Scotland’s NHS.”
NHS Scotland pays private firms £1m for covid advice
Consultancy firms have been awarded more than £1m in outsourcing work to help the NHS in Scotland recover from the first wave of coronavirus and plan for a second one.
PWC is receiving £250,000 for work to help ‘recover and redesign’ health and social care after the first peak of covid-19 cases.
Meanwhile KPMG has a £100,000 contract to ‘learn lessons’ from the experience of care homes in advance of any second wave that could come in winter, as well as £427,000 for advisory services for social
Jobs drive sees fewer than 50 former care staff return
A recruitment portal to get former care workers to return to the sector during covid-19 led to fewer than 50 people being employed.
This was despite nearly 800 potential staff being made available through the system and reports of services being cut back across the country as some areas had large numbers of workers shielding or self-isolating.
Scottish Care, which represents independent care providers, said part of the reason was the “high expectations” placed on frontline care workers for low
Millions spent sending NHS Scotland patients private
Private healthcare companies have received millions as the Scottish Government advised NHS boards to block-book all available space in private hospitals in an attempt to bring down waiting times, healthandcare.scot can reveal.
The £18m programme of paying to have NHS patients treated privately was paused due to the covid-19 outbreak.
Now senior doctors are questioning how the NHS will be able to deal with “the biggest waiting list for elective surgery for a generation” without relying heavily
Rise in non-covid deaths prompts call for NHS rethink
A rise of nearly 900 deaths in Scotland that are not linked to covid-19 has raised fears that people are staying away from hospital and missing out on life-saving treatment.
Linda Bauld, Professor of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, said delayed or cancelled treatments, and people not contacting their doctor, were likely to be behind the extra deaths.
Professor Bauld said social distancing appeared to be stopping the health system from being overwhelmed and now was the right time
GP uses bra as facemask due to rural PPE shortage
A Scottish GP has resorted to using home-made and donated protective coronavirus protective gear because of a shortage of appropriate kit for his team.
Dr Robert Coull, from the Strachur practice on the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll, says one doctor even had to use a bra as a facemask because they had had no masks.
“Some of the stuff they are sending us is rubbish,” he told healthandcare.scot.
“They say things like we are sending out millions of pieces of equipment, what they mean is they are sen
Loved one's fears after Glasgow care cuts
A Glasgow woman fears that her 85-year-old mother could be left “abandoned” because her daily visits by carers have been cut.
Janice Mills told healthandcare.scot she is picking up the slack herself after her mother’s social care package was removed. But Janice worries about what would happen if she got the virus, had to self-isolate and then could not look after her mother:
“All I want is an assurance that people who have to self-isolate will not find their relatives abandoned,” she said.
Gl
Music festival threatens nature reserve
The bid to stage a music festival on Leyton Marsh is just the latest threat faced by this part of the Lea Valley, writes Henry Anderson
Is a meadow next to a unique nature reserve the best place to host a festival boasting of “unparalleled volume and sound pressure”?
Bosses in charge of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) seem to think so, having supported an application for a 15,000-person festival submitted by a newly-formed company, Waterworks Events Ltd. The adjacent Waterworks
Care workers paid ‘by the minute' in savings push
Scottish councils are using new technology to monitor the exact time spent by care workers looking after vulnerable people.
Social care providers say their staff are bearing the brunt of a system that is about limiting spending, which is preventing carers from giving extra time to people for compassionate reasons and is pushing some social care providers out of business.
In one case reported to healthandcare.scot, a care worker who decided to wait with an older man whose wife had just died unt
Scotland's NHS private finance bill revealed
The NHS in Scotland faces a £7.5bn bill for Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects that only cost £1.2bn to build – an increase of more than six times the original price tag.
Under PFI private consortiums build and maintain hospitals in exchange for annual payments, with interest, over the length of the contract, typically 25 to 30 years.
The last PFI contract in Scotland was signed in 2009 but repayments to private investors will stretch to 2041.
The largest projects include Edinburgh’s R
Consultants handed £1m contracts by NHS boards
Contracts worth nearly £1m to advise two NHS boards in Scotland how to save money have been awarded to a small private management consultancy firm without a public tender process.
Bold Revolutions, based in Greater Manchester, has been contracted to deliver ‘financial turnaround’ programmes at Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Borders health boards.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said health boards can only use external consultants where they represent value for money and where the NHS cannot do
Load More Articles
