News in brief
‘Boffins’ brought in to analyse nursing data to help decide staffing levels: Mathematicians are teaming up with nurses for a “big data” research project designed to make good use of the vast quantities of information nursing teams collect every day, reported Nursing Times (subscription required). The project will involve using advanced “predictive modelling” techniques, which have the potential to dramatically improve patient outcomes and ensure optimum staffing levels, say researchers. The study is funded by NHS England under its national nursing strategy Compassion in Practice. It will focus on routine data gathered by nurses at University Hospital Coventry over several years. It will involve University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire Trust, Birmingham City University and London South Bank University, working with computer software company Wolfram Research. “Nurses collect a lot of data every day which we never really do anything with. It just sits there,” said project lead Dr Alison Leary, chair of healthcare and workforce modelling at London South Bank. “We wanted to look at some of that data in a really big hospital and look at patterns particularly in relation to staffing.” She said this kind of work could help “hone down” the amount of data nurses collect to ensure the focus was on useful information that really could help improve patient care.
NHS to switch ESR to IBM in June: The Department of Health has confirmed that the transition to a new electronic staff record system (ESR) for the NHS in England and Wales will begin in June this year as part of a phased rollout to conclude in November, reported eHealth Insider. IBM was named as the preferred supplier in December last year and last month the company confirmed it had signed a five-year contract. It will now work with the NHS ESR Central Team to develop and implement a new ESR service for the 1.4 million members of staff in the NHS in England and Wales. IBM replaces McKesson UK, which has handled the system for payroll and other human resources activities since 2001, when it was one of the first, big, national IT projects to be launched by the NHS.
Patients could be charged for GP appointments, BMA chair warns: GP appointments could incur a charge within the next five years because of the poor state of NHS finances, according to the chair of the British Medical Association (BMA). Dr Mark Porter said it was “inescapable” that the next government would consider introducing fees for GP appointments and other health services when the NHS budget is under pressure, reported Pulse. He added that such a move would “destroy the whole ethos of the NHS”. NHS England has forecast that a £30bn budget gap will open by 2020 unless savings are made and investment raised. Dr Porter said that he thinks parties will look to charging to fill this gap and that ministers might feel able to extend fees as they already exist in some areas of healthcare, such as for prescriptions, dental work and social care, with around 1% of the NHS’s income in England coming from charges.
Practices to have QOF payments adjusted by as much as 2% due to IT errors: All GP practices in England will have their Quality of Framework (QOF) payments recalculated following ‘incorrect data returns’ from an IT supplier, reported Pulse. An update from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) said all practices may face a change to end-of-year payments of around 2% because the EMIS Web system failed to report updated QOF data for the last day of the financial year. A more precise sum was not available at time of publication, nor indications about whether practices will be receiving more or less than their estimates. EMIS has apologised for the error, and said “everything [was] being done to minimise inconvenience to practices”. The HSCIC, who manage the Calculating Quality Reporting System (CQRS) which extracts QOF data, has said a new collection will take place for EMIS systems next week.
GP workload harming care, BMA poll suggests: Better funding and more time with patients are needed to improve services, according to a survey of GPs. The British Medical Association poll of more than 15,500 UK GPs found nine in 10 believed a heavy workload had a negative impact on the quality of care, reported the BBC. Only one in 10 felt standard 10-minute consultation slots were adequate. NHS England responded that its five-year plan for GP services recognised that GPs were under pressure and there was a need for more investment. The survey, which comes as the state of services has become a key election theme, also cast doubt on the drive in England for seven-days-a-week opening. This week the Labour Party launched an election poster depicting a huge queue outside a waiting room with the wording “The doctor can’t see you now”. Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said GP services had “gone backwards”. The Tories rejected the criticisms and responded by pointing out that the coalition had launched a “challenge fund” to help GPs look at new ways to improve access to services by extending opening and making use of new technologies such as Skype.
NHS could prevent deadly acute kidney injury after UK company wins government funds: The NHS is moving one step closer to preventing thousands of avoidable deaths after new government funding was awarded to Patientrack that is working with hospitals to prevent acute kidney injury (AKI), a devastating condition believed to be linked with as many as 100,000 deaths in UK hospitals every year, reported ehealthNews.eu. Patientrack, which provides the NHS with technology that automatically detects patients at risk of deterioration and then alerts nurses and doctors to intervene, has been working alongside Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to develop a system to automatically detect and help prevent AKI. The condition is estimated to cost the health service between £434m and £620m every year. With additional funding being awarded through the Small Business Research Initiative competition, the Patientrack AKI warning system could be scaled across the NHS offering hospitals a way to fulfil CQUIN targets for 2015/16. Professor Lui Forni, a consultant in intensive care and renal medicine, adviser to the project and chair of the AKI section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) said: “Patientrack gives clinicians the ability to flag up which patients are at risk of acute kidney injury almost from the moment they walk through the door, so that they can see which patients are at risk from the first set of observations.”
Nine in 10 GPs say no to seven day opening: Almost all GPs do not want their own practice to open seven days a week, a poll of 15,000 doctors has found. Plans for seven day access to GPs are the key Conservative manifesto health pledge, along with improved hospital services at weekends, reported the Telegraph. But the British Medical Association (BMA) survey found that 94% of family doctors do not want their own surgery to offer seven day opening. The reluctance came despite the fact half of those polled thought practices should offer more extended hours to their patients. Under the Tory pledge, all patients would be able to access a GP seven days a week for routine appointments by 2020. Under the plan, groups of GP surgeries will be encouraged to band together in order to share the workload at evenings and weekends, so that not every practice has to open. However, the flat rejection of the idea of their own surgery opening seven days suggests major battles ahead.
London off NPfIT Cerner contract: London’s trusts running the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record (EPR) have all signed new deals to replace their nationally funded contracts, with Cerner retaining its hold in the capital. However, the chief information officer leading the work says the “acid test” for trusts will come in the next six months, as they seek to move their data out of the BT data centre before an October deadline. A consortium of six London trusts (formerly nine) received Cerner Millennium delivered by BT under the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). Ahead of the expiration of their national contracts in October 2015, the trusts launched a tender in 2012 for a patient administration system and EPR, a clinical portal and hosting services. John-Jo Campbell, the CIO at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and chairman of a CIO forum for the London Cerner trusts, told eHealth Insider that all trusts involved in the consortium have now signed new contracts to replace their NPfIT arrangements.
NHS Foundation Trust goes mobile with BT: BT announced it has been awarded a contract by Humber NHS Foundation Trust for a new mobile solution, designed to transform patient care and the working lives of clinicians, while at the same time saving the trust money. The solution uses innovative software from TotalMobile, to give healthcare professionals on the move access to real-time information where and when they need it. Staff at the trust will now be able to access patient records, view schedules and appointments and update notes while on their rounds, using a mobile device of their choice, such as tablets or smartphones, reported Integrated Care Today. It’s planned that the solution will be rolled out to 500 healthcare professionals, in multiple care settings, in the first phase from June to September. TotalMobile have also won a contract with Vodafone at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust to implement a mobile solution for its staff, reported Computer Business Review. The 400 community nursing staff in the county will be able to visit more patients using Vodafone’s enterprise mobility platform, which integrates with the trust’s patient record system RiO. Vodafone has partnered with TotalMobile to deliver the new system, which is funded by a grant from the Nursing Technology Fund, launched in 2012.
Kwo back in London to lead EPR at UCLH: Health IT industry veteran David Kwo will lead work on a replacement for University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s electronic patient record system. Kwo’s appointment as director of electronic health record (EHR) systems and informatics is one of a number of changes to the trust’s health informatics department that have been confirmed to eHealth Insider. A University College London Hospitals spokesperson said: “Improved use of technology and information is fundamental to our long term success, and we recognise that our current systems are not best placed to improve our day to day working lives and that we need to modernise at pace.” More recently, Kwo has managed the implementation of the Epic EPR at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as part of its £200m eHospital programme. His appointment could be seen as an indication that University College London Hospitals is likely to favour a big, American firm as its new EPR provider, and that it might well look at Epic.
Cerner Announces Apple Watch App: Cerner has announced it will bring its patient app, HealtheLife, to Apple Watch, reported Market Watch. The newly-released iOS 8 HealtheLife app is designed to make it easier for patients to manage their health from their Apple Watch, with push notification reminders to track health data and a display dashboard for tracked metrics. “Apple Watch is the next evolution connecting consumers and their health team to the clinical community, regardless of physical location,” said Brian Carter, senior director and general manager, personal health, Cerner. “This is just the first step in the evolution of sharing personal health data – to provide physicians with access to actionable data anytime, anywhere, not just what’s collected at the doctor’s office.”
NHS tops the list for serious data breaches last year: Whistleblowers alerted the UK’s data watchdog to 20 NHS trusts, 13 local government authorities, five courts and five central government departments with reports of serious data breaches in 2014, reported ComputerWorld UK. An extra 498 data breaches were self-reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by NHS departments. A further 148 local government departments also admitted to losing personal information a Freedom of Information request has revealed. The breaches ranged from losing hardware like a USB key or printed copies of patient information for example, to uploading sensitive information to websites, to technical failures and hacking. The findings come as polling company YouGov published the results of a survey that found that 72% of British adults are concerned about hacking and unauthorised access to their personal information online. The broad list and volume of data breaches investigated last year alone reveal how easy it seems to be for private and public firms to lose clients or customers’ personal information.
Opinion:
Diagnosing cancers: a GP’s perspective
Dr Richard Roope, a practising GP and clinical lead for cancer at Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of General Practice, shares his thoughts on challenges and opportunities in diagnosing cancer earlier.
“As GPs, we know that too many of our patients worry about wasting our time – a point underlined by a recent Cancer Research UK-funded study.
“We also know that patients in this country are more likely to worry about seeing us when they have symptoms, and perhaps put off seeing us for longer, than elsewhere. And this is felt to be one of the many factors that contribute to the UK’s relatively poor cancer outcomes, compared against similar health systems both in Europe and further afield.
“The challenge facing both GPs, and our patients, is identifying when someone needs to seek advice regards their symptoms. GPs are seeing many patients that have concerns about their symptoms – particularly during the winter months – and yet there are still patients with potentially serious symptoms who we are not seeing.
“We need to think of novel ways to address this. In the current era of easy access to all manner of information via the Internet, social media, surgery websites etc, there is plenty of opportunity to empower people to seek advice, and raise awareness of key cancer symptoms. And although we need to be mindful of widening the gap between rich and poor, the uptake of smartphones across social divides is encouraging.”
Good progress? The coalition’s track record on inequalities in health
There has been no over-riding strategy behind some useful “piecemeal changes” in an attempt to achieve the government’s ambition to improve the health of the poorest, fastest, David Buck, senior fellow in public health and inequalities at The King’s Fund, writes in a blog this week.
“Inequalities in health are cross-cutting complex issues that require coherent cross-system action and leadership. The fragmentation wrought by the health reforms has made any coherence of leadership on inequalities of health all the harder,” he says.
“Despite early rhetoric and welcome legislation, the outcome has been a clutch of disconnected, under-powered sub-strategies and initiatives.
“Reducing health inequalities is one of the hardest challenges that any government has to tackle, and the recent record of all governments of whatever colour has been patchy at best. The coalition’s own brief assessment of its record is buried in the Department of Health’s annual accounts, stating ‘good progress’ has been made to ‘embed action on inequalities across the system’. There is some truth in this, including legislative change and the Workforce Race Equality Standard. But across the term, the lack of a coherent strategy and translating that into accountability means the initial rhetoric has not been lived up to.”
Technology could prevent mental health waiting times
The NHS has to provide face-to-face therapy to 95% of patients within 18 weeks, but we can do better than this says, Sarah Bateup, clinical lead, Ieso Digital Health.
“Everyone working in mental health will welcome the new NHS waiting times for talking therapies. They will require the NHS to provide face-to-face therapy to 75% of patients within six weeks and 95% of patients within 18 weeks. I embrace these targets because they make an important statement about mental health and its equal status with physical health.
“Not only should we treat people earlier – we can. Things have changed in the world of therapy. Human connection, the basis of psychological healing, is in much more abundant supply in the era of the internet. Accredited psychotherapists deliver internet-enabled Cognitive Behavioural Therapy via computer, smartphone or tablet using online, text-based conversations.
“This approach is proven to work as well, if not better, than face-to-face therapy – 52% of our patients achieve recovery compared to the average across Iapt therapies of 46%. We think this is partly explained by the disinhibiting factor of communicating through writing, rather than having to speak to a therapist face-to-face, which can be offputting for many people.
“Access to treatment is fast. Once you leave your GP, you can go home and log on straight away. A therapist is then assigned – usually immediately but always within 48 hours – and you can arrange a first session at your earliest convenience.
“Technology enables us to radically improve access in a way traditional delivery methods do not. We can do it, so let’s get on with it. Let’s stop wasting resources by keeping people waiting and leaving them to suffer because we tell ourselves it is too difficult to expand access – it isn’t. It’s within reach to make waiting times for mental health redundant.”
Blog
In this week’s blog, Chris Marsom says there are five lessons that healthcare PR can learn from the UK’s current election campaigns.
