This report is a flexible summary, with the aim of sharing and highlighting a wide range of data and policy information relating to London general practice published in a given week. Where we view information to be of significant interest it is reproduced directly below the links to make the key points quicker to digest.
Please feel free to share any useful stats/links you think we could include in future reports.
Official bodies
NHS Digital
- All recent data releases can be seen here.
- Guidance: System guidance for the implementation of framework host management [7/4].
- Report: Workforce Race Equality Standard: 2025 data analysis report for NHS trusts [7/4].
- Report: Workforce Disability Equality Standard: 2025 data analysis report for NHS trusts [7/4].
- Guidance: Supporting young people to transition into adolescent and adult services [8/4].
- Guidance: Breast screening: acquisition and testing of ultrasound scanners [9/4].
- Guidance: Easy read resources for COVID-19 vaccinations [9/4].
- Guidance: Community health service urgent community response guidance [9/4].
UK Health Security Agency
- Guidance: Pre-release access list: quarterly HCAI statistical release [9/4].
- Guidance: Pre-release access lists: National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports [9/4].
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
- Notice: Medicines: terminated and cancelled manufacturing and wholesale dealer licences [7/4].
- Press release: MHRA expands AI Airlock programme with a £3.6 million funding boost over three years [8/4].
- Guidance: Get medicines to NHS patients earlier via the MHRA-NICE aligned pathway [9/4].
Policy, think tanks, charities, and representative bodies
The Health Foundation
- EPR promise risks fading without national action [10/4].
- This blog warns that the potential benefits of electronic patient records (EPRs) in the NHS risk being lost without stronger national leadership and investment in how the systems are used, not just in buying them. While most NHS staff report that EPRs have improved patient care, safety and efficiency, many also say they have increased workload, slowed tasks, and are poorly integrated into daily workflows. Survey results highlight major problems with interoperability between systems, limited training, and lack of real‑time support, leaving EPRs underused and frustrating for staff. The blog argues that without a clear national roadmap focused on interoperability, ongoing training and staff experience, EPRs will fail to deliver the productivity gains the NHS is relying on them to achieve.
- Health devolution: opportunity or distraction? [9/4].
- This blog argues that new moves to give mayors in areas such as Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire greater oversight of NHS integrated care boards could be a significant step in health devolution, but only if they lead to genuine shifts in power and priorities. While mayoral involvement may strengthen local accountability and support a stronger focus on prevention and health inequalities, the blog warns there is a risk that health becomes framed too narrowly around NHS performance rather than the wider social and economic determinants of health where mayors have greatest influence. Without practical changes such as pooled budgets, joint commissioning and stronger collaboration with local government and public health, the reforms could prove more symbolic than transformative, distracting from broader place‑based action needed to improve population health.
- A higher NHS drugs bill means difficult decisions lie ahead for the government [8/4].
- This blog warns that recent changes to how new medicines are priced and approved will significantly increase the NHS drugs bill, forcing difficult trade‑offs elsewhere in the health system. Following a UK‑US drug‑pricing deal, the government has raised NICE’s cost‑effectiveness threshold, capped repayments from pharmaceutical companies, and committed to increasing drug spending as a share of GDP—making it easier for branded medicines to be approved at higher prices while limiting mechanisms that previously helped offset costs. While ministers say front‑line services will be protected, the blog argues that higher spending on drugs is likely to divert funding from other NHS services that deliver greater health benefits per pound spent, potentially leaving overall population health worse off amid already intense financial pressures.
- What do Labour’s reforms mean for local systems in the NHS? [7/4].
- This blog argues that Labour’s proposed NHS reforms mark a shift away from system‑level collaboration towards a more traditional, organisation‑focused model, with significant implications for local integrated care systems (ICSs). While integrated care boards (ICBs) would be refocused as strategic commissioners, changes such as removing NHS providers and local authorities from boards, scrapping integrated care partnerships, and increasing autonomy and competition for individual NHS providers risk weakening cross‑sector collaboration. Based on interviews with local leaders, the blog warns that without clear mechanisms to support system leadership and partnership working, Labour’s reforms could undermine progress made since 2022 and lead to a more fragmented NHS, even as complex population health challenges continue to require coordinated local action.
London Trusts
Barts Health NHS Trust
- Article: A patient at Barts Health NHS Trust is the first in the NHS to have lung cancer surgery using the newest robotic surgical technology [7/4].
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust