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A bad day for the NHS: heart attack death rates, IVF funding and waiting times data ‘riddled with errors’

‘More than 11,000 lives could have been saved if heart attack care in Britain matched that in Sweden’ is the headline in the Independent today.

A new study looking at patients and death rates 30 days after a heart attack shows that death rates are higher in the UK than in Sweden. The study suggests that this is due to Sweden’s ‘quicker uptake of lifesaving new interventions and more widespread prescribing of drugs after patients leave hospital’.

The Daily Mail reports that 73% of CCGs ‘won’t fund full IVF’ in a bid to save money. According to research carried out by a group of charities called the National Infertility Awareness Campaign, these CCGs are ignoring the NICE guidelines which state that women aged 23 to 42 who are unable to conceive naturally should be offered three courses of in-vitro fertilisation because, says the paper, it is ‘too expensive’.

And finally, the bad news continues in the Guardian, whose headline today is ‘data on NHS waiting times “riddled” with errors’. Many of the other papers today also cover the report by the National Audit Office which claims that hospitals are failing to report accurate waiting times for patients before they have planned treatment. According to the paper: ‘There are errors in recording the wait experienced by one in four patients, and underestimation of waiting times in almost as many cases.’

Spotted a story we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments and we’ll update the digest throughout the day…