The NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) has appointed Neil Churchill as its first Director of Patient Experience.

Mr Churchill joins from Asthma UK, where he has served as Chief Executive since 2007. He is also currently a Non-Executive Director in NHS South of England.

Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer, NHS CB, said the new recruit has a “fantastic amount of experience” and he will be a “great addition to the skilled and experienced staff we currently have.”

In his new role, Mr Churchill will be responsible for ensuring patient experience is at the heart of the system, to provide leadership for patient experience across the NHS and to take leadership responsibility for improvement of domain four of the NHS outcomes framework (patient experience).

“I am delighted to be joining the NHS Commissioning Board at this time of change, when there is real commitment and drive to put the patient at the centre of decision-making,” commented Mr Churchill. “We need to make sure that every patient receives safe, compassionate care but we also have the opportunity to forge a new partnership with patients which can improve productivity as well as health outcomes.”

Prior to joining Asthma UK, Churchill worked for a number of organisations in the voluntary sector, including Barnardo’s, Age Concern and Crisis.

The only solution to the NHS funding crisis is to reduce the amount of beds and hospital-based jobs, says NHS Confederation head Mike Farrar.

The NHS Confed Chief Executive said in an article with the Guardian that shifting healthcare services into the community and centralising surgery provision is the only way to avoid wholesale loss of NHS service provision.

Mr Farrar says that “radically re-orienting services to reduce hospital stays and offering new forms of care” will help the NHS improve and keep it financially stable.

He noted that the Government’s £20 billion efficiency savings target by 2015 was already increasing NHS waiting times and raising the threat of the health service cutting services to “salami slice its way out of financial trouble”.

Farrar also said that there was a danger of the NHS reducing access to “less effective treatments”, though in fact this is already taking place in most Trusts.

To avoid financial disaster on the one hand or disastrous loss of services on the other, he argued, the only way forward is to shift the focus of services into the community – and immediately utilise the benefits of service redesign by closing down much of the existing in-patient hospital provision.

Surgery can be relocated to major centres and out-patient services to primary and home-based care, he said, with hospitals ceasing to be the main providers of secondary care.

His stark message is that without this reconfiguration of services – which will only be possible if funding is made available for service redesign – healthcare in the UK “faces a bleak future”.

Record prescription drug shortages in the US will soon reach crisis point, say pharmacists and doctors, who spend hours each day searching for medication.

FDA recalls, production difficulties and corporate decisions to discontinue certain medications are cited as the main causes of the drug insufficiency.

Michelle Taymuree, Clinical Pharmacy Manager at Diablo Valley Oncology, California, said: “When we go to order, it's more common to see drugs in limited quantity, on back order or completely unavailable than it is to see drugs that are completely available”.

A growing number of patients in the US are reporting both delays and disruptions in their treatments. Some patients eventually receive their medications but others have had to switch regimens, and the health impact of these changes is unknown.

Medical professionals have no choice but to scramble for little supplies available or in some cases to delay potentially lifesaving treatments.

Maria Serpa, President of the California Society of Health-System Pharmacists, stated: “Pharmacists have worked diligently to keep this from impacting physicians and patients. Patients shouldn't have to be the ones to pay”.

Alternative treatments have blunted the impact in some cases, but it’s only a matter of time before those options will diminish too.

The number of drugs in short supply currently lies at 190, compared to 70 drugs in 2006, according to the University of Utah Drug Information Service.

More than 90% of US hospitals reported a drug shortage in the past six months, and nearly 45% claimed at least 21 shortages during that time, reported the American Hospital Association in June.

Most medications in short supply are those used in hospitals, including generic injectables, cancer drugs, anaesthesia, electrolytes, vitamins and minerals.

Click here to read other statistics relating to the drug shortages.