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NLJ this week: Remembering the non-COVID patients

15 July 2020
Issue: 7895 / Categories: Legal News , Covid-19 , Personal injury
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The NHS's focus on COVID-19 is having a 'significant and worsening' impact on non-COVID patients, a QC has warned

Writing in this week's NLJ, Theo Huckle QC, Doughty Street, notes the reallocation of resources to cope with the global pandemic means people with serious illnesses may have gone undiagnosed and untreated. He has written, along with doctors and patient safety groups, to the Prime Minister and First Ministers of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, to highlight the issue. He reproduces the replies, but is still to hear from those in charge of Scotland and England.  

Huckle writes: 'The complaint, made to us by those with direct inside knowledge in the health service, was that there came a point when the fear of the NHS being “overwhelmed” subsided as it became apparent that the NHS was coping well.  

'We can argue about when that time was, but it is clear that it was many weeks ago now, and yet here we are with resources not having been successfully applied to fill the massive hole that was created in the services for seriously ill non-COVID patients.'

Read Theo Huckle's article here

@DoughtyStreet

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