The Daily Mail and The Times report (13 May) that Harmoni, the private health-care provider with 100M contracts from the NHS, uses senior nurses to cover up to quarter of a million patients for their GP out-of-hours (OOH) services when they cannot recruit GPs to do the shifts.

This conference, held on 14 May 2013 and jointly organised by South Reading CCG and South Reading Patient Voice, hosted 140 delegates and was judged a real success. It received a mention on BBC South TV News. ... Speakers from South Reading CCG, Berkshire Healthcare NHS, the University of Reading, the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Surrey County Council, and South Reading Patient Voice aimed to inform, identify gaps in services, share best practice and provide a showcase for services.

The NHS England board meeting on 3 May 2013 endorsed proposals for an external review of the model used to roll out the NHS 111 service. The 111 service replaces both NHS Direct and the separate specific telephone numbers needed to call out-of-hours GP services. Official advice is that "you should use the NHS 111 service if you urgently need medical help but it's not a life-threatening situation." This, of course, begs the question of the caller's ability to decide reliably when an urgent situation is life threatening.

After the debate and vote in the House of Lords on 24th April 2013 and the ending of the session of Parliament the new NHS Procurement Regulations have passed into law. The regulations govern how public authorities like Clinical Commissioning Groups may lawfully arrange for services to be provided.

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