Patients who do not want their medical records to be placed on a national electronic database are being coerced by NHS managers to give their consent, the British Medical Association said last night. During trials of the scheme in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, thousands of patients are being told they cannot opt out unless they make an appointment with "NHS advisers" to explain face to face why t...

The rule banning patients from paying for medicines while continuing to access other NHS services could be scrapped.

NHS gives go-ahead to experimental treatments for hundreds of patients who have failed to respond to conventional cures

Back in May, they came up with some Big Scary Numbers, claiming that 200,000 NHS admissions a year were alchol-related.Hmm. Not scary enough, obviously. So they've now revised that up to 800,000 admissions a year.But despite this, they admit that only "£2billion of NHS money is spent every year treating patients with alcohol-related diseases", which is no higher than the guesstimate in my previous...

Ministers are planning to force GPs to improve their performance by posting patients' comments about them on an NHS website, the Guardian can reveal. Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, wants to make it easy for patients in England to rate their family doctor's competence and bedside manner on bulletin boards on the NHS Choices website. Officials have been told to have the appropriate sof...

Patients are using private hospitals at the expense of the NHS. However, this is a good thing. Despite the claims by doctors this is “losing” public money to the private sector: This is money that is being lost from the NHS. That can compromise services and patients should be told that by going private in this way

More evidence: The lives of 300 heart attack patients have been saved every year since competition was introduced to NHS hospitals, according to a new study. In more detail: The updated paper, published in The Economic Journal, looks at the effects of a more liberal NHS on 30-day mortality rates for patients diagnosed with Acute

Hospital admissions linked to alcohol problems have reached a record high, prompting fresh concern about the harm being caused by binge drinking. Hospitals in England admitted 1,173,386 patients for treatment for alcohol-related problems in 2010-11, NHS statistics show, up 9% on the 1,056,962 in 2009-10, the first time the figure topped 1 million. In 2002-03,

Patients and GPs were promised a bigger role in health services as plans for the biggest NHS shake-up in decades were unveiled.

The government is today expected to make an announcement on whether patients will be able to "top up" their NHS care with private treatments. Patients in England are currently excluded from the NHS if they pay for treatment not available on the health service. However, some areas apply the rules more stringently than others – it emerged last month that about 1,000 patients a year are already...