NHS England raids waiting list and capital funds  As chancellor Jeremy Hunt prepares to deliver his Autumn Statement on 22 November, it has emerged that the Treasury has ignored pleas from the NHS to cover the £1 billion cost of strike action this summer. Instead, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have announced that £800 million will be diverted to the frontline from winter pressures money, waiting list initiatives, and capital funds. In a letter to integrated care systems, NHS England says systems will now have two weeks to replan their priorities for the rest of the financial year.   Before the intervention, every integrated care system in England was reporting a deficit. Despite this, the NHS has been struggling to deliver waiting list recovery targets. The NHS England letter sets new targets that are likely to see long-waits continue and overall lists rise. Hospitals have also been going to OPEL 4 or ‘black alert’ in recent weeks. The NHS England letter says ICSs should try to “project patient safety”, but the diversion of winter pressures money will not help the situation. Meanwhile, the raid on capital funds is likely to impact technology programmes that have already stalled because of the ongoing re-organisation of arms length bodies.

Palantir deal still on  Readers of the Health Service Journal commented that if NHS England wanted to find an easy £500 million for its financial intervention (above) it could scrap its plan for a Federated Data Platform. However, digitalhealth.net reported this week that the deal has been signed off my ministers, and US analytics and AI firm Palantir has won it, working with Accenture. Legal campaigners Foxglove are running a last-ditch petition to urge health and social care secretary Steven Barclay not to allow the “spy firm” to continue its role with the NHS. More than 36,000 signatures have been collected.

NHS news: Smoking ban is on; NHS England announces single early warning score system for children The King’s Speech also took place this week, but was silent on measures to support public services. It did confirm that the government will push ahead with plans announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak at his party conference to phase out smoking and make vaping less attractive to young people. NHS England has announced that it is going to roll-out a new early warning score system for children, to help clinicians spot signs of deterioration. Although many hospitals already use scores, the new system will create a single, national, standardised process to detect and escalate issues.

Northern Ireland’s South Eastern trust goes live with EPR Northern Ireland’s South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust has gone live with its new electronic patient record, as part of the Encompass programme to create a digital health and social care record for every person in the country. Encompass is built around Epic. The Health Tech Newspaper reported that the Department of Health described the go-live as the culmination of seven-years of work and the trust described it as a historic moment. The next trust to go live will be Belfast in around 18-24 months. The other trusts in the country will go live in due course.

Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare pick System C The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust has become the latest to announce its choice of electronic patient record provider. The trust and its neighbour, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, have signed a ten-year contract with System C. The Health Tech Newspaper reported that the roll-out will be conducted in two-phases, with the first phase focused on replacing the trust’s legacy patient administration, theatre, and emergency department systems, and the second phase focused on planning, flow, and personal health records. Other trusts in the Black Country are also using the system, integrated with the local shared care record, One Health and Care.