Private providers attack NHS closures
©Getty National Health Service walk-in clinics, most of which are run by companies including Virgin Care and Care UK, are being closed at a rate that is putting pressure on…
Scientists need to prevent health scares
©Getty Metal-free microneedles could help tackle trypanophobia – the fear of needles – as well as make vaccination easier in tropical countries Swansea in Wales is experiencing a serious measles…
Smith & Nephew launches share buyback
Shareholders in Smith & Nephew are poised to receive a $300m windfall this year, after the FTSE 100 medical device maker launched a share buyback programme. The London-listed group –…
Second record day for Wall Street
US stocks closed at a record level for a second consecutive day, shaking off sluggishness from early trading after the pharmaceutical company Pfizer lowered its full-year profit outlook. The S&P…
Hopes gene therapy will treat heart failure
Britain’s first clinical trials of gene therapy to treat heart failure will get under way in the next few weeks. The treatment is designed to strengthen hearts that have been…
Spire Healthcare doubles sales to NHS
Spire Healthcare, one of the UK’s biggest private hospital providers, has doubled sales of services to the NHS in the past five years, as it seeks to compensate for a…
Call to regulate ‘cosmetic interventions’
©Dreamstime Some hazardous cosmetic procedures, such as injecting “dermal fillers” to remove wrinkles, are unregulated and urgently need a new legal framework, a hard-hitting government report urges. Sir Bruce Keogh,…
Philips: the big chill
Not quite what the doctor ordered. Philips’s healthcare business, which ranges from patient monitors to scanners, caught a chill in the first quarter. Sales at €2.1bn dipped 1 per cent…
Battle lines drawn in Bleasdale’s crusade
Kate Bleasdale, the nurse who founded Healthcare Locums, the medical staffing agency, just doesn’t give up. That is both good and bad in a serial entrepreneur. Having been dismissed as…
Healthcare Locums saga takes twist
Kate Bleasdale, the nurse and former executive vice-chairman of Healthcare Locums, which she founded a decade ago, has written to the board demanding that it buy her remaining shares at…
Some NHS fees would have conditional support
©Getty Improvements will come from reducing the amount of laborious paperwork that nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists have to do, the company claims Radical changes to NHS funding, including user…
Scapa expects strong second half
Shares in Scapa Group rose this week after the Aim-traded maker of tape and adhesives reiterated that it was on track to report a strong second half. The Manchester-based company,…
Serco grapples with watershed NHS contract
©Getty Improvements will come from reducing the amount of laborious paperwork that nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists have to do, the company claims When Serco won a groundbreaking deal to…
Obama nears Arkansas health deal
©AP The Obama administration is closing in on a deal that would pump billions of dollars into private insurance schemes for the poor in the state of Arkansas, a new…
H&R Block: taxing questions
For most companies, US healthcare reform is a decidedly mixed blessing but, for one, it is a source of undiluted glee. Shares in H&R Block, which prepares tax returns, have…