- A best-practice guide to establishing local formularies will aim to tackle the postcode lottery faced by patients trying to access NHS drugs.
- GPs must use the last minute of consultations with obese patients to discuss their weight to tackle the harm caused by comorbidities, a GP expert has urged.
- Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should create a single process for buying health and social care for older people, according to MPs.
- Middle-aged men who smoke will experience faster mental decline which accelerates the more they smoke, UK research suggests.
- England's CMO has warned elderly and chronically ill patients to take precautions after the Met Office issued a severe weather warning.
- GPs should alert patients at risk of vitamin D deficiency and inform them of how to get free supplements to prevent diseases such as rickets, CMOs of the four UK countries have said.
- A scheme to assess clinical commissioning on 120 new measures will perpetuate 'target culture' in the NHS and could harm patients, the GPC has warned.
- Millions of teenagers may be set to routinely receive a 'booster' dose of the meningitis C vaccine following recommendations from government advisers.
- The government has launched its bowel cancer awareness campaign on Monday, with practices told to expect an increase in patients presenting and to make more urgent referrals.
- A test of COPD symptom severity can identify patients at risk of serious exacerbations and help avoid hospital admissions, research shows.
- The goverment's public health reforms in England risk 'distorting' focus away from local priorities, an internal review has warned.
- Care services minister Paul Burstow has denied suggestions from a DH adviser that GPs are being pressured to reduce use of a cancer test.
- Antipsychotic prescribing for dementia should be reviewed as part of the QOF to slash inappropriate use, according to researchers.
- Gout flare-ups and pain could be reduced by a daily dose of enriched milk, research suggests.
- Local authorities' public health work will be judged on whether they improve the length of time people live in good health, ministers have announced.
- Plans for the health of unregistered patients to count towards practices' QOF scores are unworkable, the GPC has warned.
- Scotland and Wales look set to raise the age women are first invited by their GP for cervical cancer screening to 25, after an expert panel said testing younger women may cause more harm than good.
- GPs could be set to send more patients to rehabilitation programmes for conditions including CHD, COPD and heart failure if the latest proposals for QOF are approved.
- A novel kind of QOF indicator that allows GPs to earn points by meeting different criteria for different patients has been formally proposed by NICE.
- The DH will roll out telehealth and telecare services to three million people with long-term conditions by 2016, care services minister Paul Burstow has said.
