Seven days in medicine: 3-9 January 2018
BMJ 2018; 360 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k108 (Published 11 January 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;360:k108
NHS
Hunt expands role to include social care
England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was retained in his post and given a new job title as the prime minister, Theresa May, appointed him as the secretary of state for health and social care in her cabinet reshuffle. Hunt will continue in the post he has held since succeeding Andrew Lansley in September 2012. Posting on Twitter, Sarah Wollaston, chair of the Commons health select committee, wrote, “Really encouraging to see both health and care together . . . now we need the long term planning and sustainable funding for the scale of increased demand and costs.”
Regulator will rate GP online services
The Care Quality Commission will rate services that offer medical advice and prescriptions from GPs online in the way that it rates other healthcare services—as outstanding, good, requires improvement, or inadequate—the Department of Health confirmed. England has 30 such providers currently registered with the CQC. These have been inspected, and a report on the quality and safety of online and digital healthcare is due to be published early this year.
Royal commission would examine NHS structure and funding
A royal commission on the NHS’s future should have the power to coerce witnesses to testify under oath, the Centre of Policy Studies said.123 The centre’s report, by Maurice Saatchi and Dominic Nutt, said that a commission would examine …
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