News in brief
NHS being ‘atomised’ by expansion of private sector’s role, say doctors: More than 100 private firms will be paid by the NHS to treat patients as a result of the coalition’s first major expansion of the private sector’s role in the health service, reported The Guardian. Department of Health (DH) figures show that 105 healthcare firms have been granted ‘any qualified provider’ (AQP) status, which allows them to provide basic NHS services including physiotherapy, dermatology, hearing aids, MRI scanning and psychological therapy. Doctors fear that the expansion of care services to firms with AQP status will confuse both patients and GPs.
Leicester picks IBM as IT partner: University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust has picked IBM to provide it with IM&T services and to procure and implement a new electronic patient record, reported eHealth Insider. The trust’s chair, Martin Hindle, signed an agreement with the company in the run-up to Christmas, and trust IT staff and services will be transferred over to it over the next 18 months. University Hospitals of Leicester issued a tender process billed as being worth up to £600m over 15 years, in November 2011, saying that it was looking for a partner to improve its IT services, implement an EPR and form a commercial arrangement to deliver services to other organisations.
Barts and the London NHS Trust in £1m overpay error: The BBC has reported that Barts and the London NHS Trust has overpaid its staff by a total of nearly £1m a year since 2010. In one case, a doctor was paid £4,000 a month for nearly four years for on-call duties he or she was not doing. An audit report released by the trust said a debt-collecting agency had to be employed to reclaim the money. Most overpayments were made to those in areas involving emergency care, acute medicine and ambulatory services.
Thousands of Summary Care Records created without consent in NHS IT blunder: An investigation by the DH has revealed that ‘human error’ was to blame for an NHS IT blunder, which saw Summary Care Records created for thousands of patients without them being given an opportunity to opt out, reported Pulse. Some 4,201 patients had records created without their knowledge after a GP practice was incorrectly identified for a summary care record upload. The DH has so far declined to identify the practice or patients involved, or say whether the patients have been informed of the mistake.
Providers ‘nervous’ about NHS Commissioning Board role in contract disputes: NHS providers have called for clarification about who will arbitrate in contract disputes with commissioners once strategic health authorities are abolished, reported HSJ (subscription required). They fear the NHS Commissioning Board (CB), which many perceive is likely to be biased towards commissioners, will make critical decisions on funding. Planning guidance published last month by the NHS CB says that its 27 local area teams ‘will be responsible for tracking progress on the negotiation of contracts for CCG-commissioned services and [its] regional offices will have oversight of contracts for the NHS CB’s directly commissioned services.’
Hunt examines plan to break up NHS trust: A debt-laden group of hospitals faces being broken-up, with the taxpayer stumping up around £25m a year to service their PFI contracts, under plans presented to the health secretary, reported the Financial Times. South London Healthcare NHS Trust became the first group of NHS hospitals to be put into administration last summer, when Andrew Lansley, the then health secretary, ruled that the debts of its three constituent hospitals – growing at around £1.3m a week – were no longer sustainable. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, will now decide whether to accept the recommendations of Matthew Kershaw a government-appointed administrator. These would see Princess Royal University Hospital in Orpington taken over by King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The two other hospitals – the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich and Queen Mary’s in Sidcup – would combine with other local NHS trusts.
Providers to roll out integrated care across Kent: As part of an ambitious county-wide plan to better coordinate services for patients with long-term conditions, integrated health and social care teams are expected to be put into place throughout Kent. HSJ (subscription required) understands it is set to be rolled out across the whole of Kent this year, with integrated community health and social care teams covering each of the county’s eight clinical commissioning group areas by April. Kent County Council and Kent Community Health Trust are working on the joint programme, which has been piloted in the southern part of the county since April 2012.
£120 million investment for research to improve NHS services: The DH has announced funding of £120 million for an open competition to research ways of improving NHS services. Each research project will involve collaborative partnerships between a university and surrounding NHS organisations and will be overseen by the National Institute of Health Research. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “Britain is one of the best research centres in the world and it is important that we harness the skills and creativity in this sector to really improve the lives of those who use the NHS. If we can have better tests, better technology and make better use of the skills of NHS staff, we will be in a better position to tackle the changing needs of our population and ensure patients get the care they deserve.”
NHS trusts doing little to highlight research opportunities to patients: An investigation by a ‘mystery shopper’ commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network (NIHR CRN) has revealed that far too few NHS trusts are providing easy access to information on clinical-research opportunities, reported Pharma Times. The number of patients involved in NHS research has more than doubled since 2007, with a record 595,000 patients taking part in studies last year, however the report showed that patients who show an active interest in research participation are often hitting a ‘brick wall’ when they want to find out more. To sharpen awareness and engagement, NIHR CRN plans to launch a resource pack for NHS trusts, with materials that will help them promote research opportunities to patients.
MPs urge clarity on role of CQC in damning report: The Health Select Committee has questioned whether the Care Quality Commission (CQC) should have responsibility for patient safety, following a series of appalling neglect cases, reported National Health Executive. Its new report says: “The Committee remains concerned that the role and duties of the CQC are not sufficiently clear. Responsibility for patient safety lies at the root of high quality patient care, but is in danger of being obscured by other competing priorities.” The report recommends that “the Secretary of State should reconsider whether prime responsibility for patient safety should reside with the CQC.” The CQC’s new chief executive David Behan, says it is already making changes to the way it works to address MPs’ concerns that the CQC failed to communicate the results of its inspections to patients, residents and their families.
London PHR event looks for ‘pull’ effect: London Connect, a project of the shadow London Health Improvement Board is holding an event on the 19th January to encourage the public to get involved with new health technology, including personal health records, reported eHealth Insider. Jonny Mallinson, the project’s co-coordinator and researcher, said: “We believe that a lack of patient pull is really holding back the development of personal health records. We believe that unless patients are included in the conversation at this stage we risk creating a system that doesn’t match their actual needs, and that will instead reflect the objectives of policy-makers and developers.” The coalition government has announced a number of open data initiatives, and promised that NHS patients will have greater access to their records.
End-of-life care: ‘Shortfall in NHS services’: The BBC has reported a shortage of specialist end-of-life care in England, causing unnecessary suffering. A report, produced by end-of-life doctors and nurses said: ‘People dying with the most complex conditions, such as cancer, dementia, heart and liver failure often need support from a range of professionals and many were going without the help they needed.’ Specialist end-of-life care requires teams of professionals, including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and pharmacists to work together to help manage pain and disability in the final year of life and ensure patients are treated with dignity and compassion. The DH said that a new system for funding palliative care is expected to be in place by 2015.
Opinion
UK’s opportunity to take a lead
This week OnMedica features an article written by Kurt Long, founder and CEO FairWarning Inc. In this piece he gives his view as to why he believes the NHS has an opportunity to become a global leader on patient privacy whilst transforming patient services through the innovative application of healthcare technologies.
“There is no doubt that The Power of Information provides an essential blueprint for the future of the NHS. But to deliver it, UK policymakers must ensure its vision, that provides patients with greater access to their healthcare records, aligns with a privacy culture that protects individuals from having their personal data breached. As privacy is a globally recognised patient need and right, the widespread adoption of healthcare IT will only be realised if patient privacy expectations are comprehensively met and this is where the UK has an opportunity to take a lead. The IT strategy’s guiding principle of “no decision about me, without me” must therefore be applied to patient privacy. UK citizens have a fundamental, democratic right to know when their records have been inappropriately accessed and their privacy compromised.
“The opportunity is now – the UK can seize it, and lead the way in safeguarding patients’ right to privacy. It can achieve this by making healthcare providers fully accountable for breach disclosure to patients and breach notification, mandating trusts to build patient privacy into NHS IT systems by enforcing the mandatory use of audit trails across all healthcare applications and by reinforcing a culture of privacy and transparency through education and awareness and embracing the concept of the ‘patients’ right to know who is assessing their records’.”
A guide to the NHS Commissioning Board’s Everyone Counts
The NHS Commissioning Board issued its planning guidance Everyone Counts, a nice stocking filler for clinical commissioning groups just in time for Christmas. Director of policy at The King’s Fund, Anna Dixon, blogs about the mixed signals the guidance delivers.
“While many of the ambitions in the guidance are laudable – for example to improve the data that commissioners have available to them – my concern is that it fails to give CCG leaders the clarity they will need.
First, it is not clear who the document is addressed to – David Nicholson addresses his foreword to all NHS staff…Second, it sends mixed messages about the level of support/challenge CCGs can expect.”
Dixon continues by arguing that despite not setting ‘improvement requirements’, that in fact targets are a permanent fixture, as ‘additional safeguards’ are set adding to the contradictions. Dixon adds another point of uncertainty, pointing to lack of cohesion with national priorities:
“Finally, Everyone Counts does little to inspire change and improvement in the areas set out as priorities in the NHS mandate. In a bid to maximise local discretion the document fails to be clear about national priorities, such as dementia, long-term conditions, and mental health.”
Enter the CCG
In the first in a series of columns for eHealth Insider, Dr John Lockley, clinical lead for informatics at Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, considers how new NHS bodies can communicate effectively with their members; and how easy it is to get it wrong.
In his column he says that he will not be starting his new role by implementing an upgraded version of Windows nor establishing a community of interest network. He will instead start with ‘the people’.
“The NHS is remarkably bad at considering the needs of its workforce. ‘Managers’ don’t run the NHS, nor do ‘doctors’ or ‘nurses’. It’s people who do the jobs; some as clinicians, others as managers and support staff.
“Yet the NHS ignores these individuals almost completely. Instead, it creates systems – protocols, pathways and IT – which it imposes on its staff. Sadly, the only people the NHS routinely thinks about are its patients.
“I want to take a different approach and consider the needs of all the individuals involved – clinicians, managers, staff and patients alike – and design the CCG’s informatics to meet their needs.
“In doing this, I think we’ll achieve a first. We might even trigger a revolution in healthcare management.”
Highland Marketing Blog
In this week’s blog industry advisor Jeremy Nettle asks if the NHS has gone apps-olutely crazy?
