A new political party has been launched by doctors to fight the changes to the NHS which they see as damaging to the healthcare system. National Health Action is set to challenge the privatisation of the NHS and the fragmentation of care accelerated by the Health and Social Care Act.

The launch was reported by the BMA, which said the new party "...will fight to repeal the act, and campaign to ensure that clinical commissioning groups have the freedom to choose local NHS services."

According to the BMA, the party intends to fight in up to 50 Parliamentary constituencies, including those of the PM, former health secretary Andrew Lansley, current health secretary Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor George Osborne and schools minister David Laws. It will also take part in local elections.

The chair of the BMA council, Mark Porter, told a conference on whistleblowing on 3 October that some of the risks faced by patients in hospitals were caused by the working environment and culture within the NHS rather than the fact that providing healthcare is itself 'inherently risky'.

He said that there would continue to be poor care and avoidable patient-safety incidents "...as long as the culture of quality and safety is not fully embedded into our service from the top to the bottom and, as importantly, back again from the bottom to the top.

"We are engaged in a business that needs urgently to reform itself and to move from the victimisation of those with a conscience, to their celebration."

Nearly one third of cancers in the over 70s are diagnosed following emergency admission to hospital, according to new research by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) and published on 21 September in the British Journal of Cancer.

The research found that 31% of cancers in that age group – around 38,300 a year in England – are diagnosed through an emergency presentation, compared to 24%, or around 58,400 cases a year, in all age groups. This new study examined the journey of 739,667 cancer patients between 2006 and 2008 in England, working backwards to see how they were diagnosed with cancer and the sequence of events that took them there.

Doctors are facing unprecedented increases in claims for compensation for clinical negligence, according to the Medical Defence Union, the mutual organisation that indemnifies doctors and dentists against claims for negligence and malpractice.

In its Annual Report for 2011, published on 10 August, the MDU said the medico-legal challenges faced by doctors are "unmatched in the company's 126-year history".

In a statement, the MDU said that, during 2011, it opened 17% more medical claims files, saw an 18% rise in requests for assistance with GMC investigations and a 56% increase in disciplinary cases against GP and hospital doctor members, compared to the previous year.