News in brief
- Hunt backs ‘simple and short’ NHS mandate: The new health secretary, Jeremy Hunt wants to publish a “simple and short” mandate for the NHS, in order to “unleash local innovation”, he said during the Conservative Party conference this week, reported HSJ (subscription required). When asked about the mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board the health secretary said: “I want to be as unprescriptive as possible in the mandate because I think the whole spirit of the reforms is to unleash local innovation – to set outcomes we are aiming for and allow local solutions”. The content of the mandate is likely to reflect what Mr Hunt this week identified as his four “priorities” for the coming two years. The BBC has also provided an analysis of ‘what the NHS can expect from Jeremy Hunt’.
- IT refresh for Cancer Research UK: Cancer Research UK has refreshed its IT infrastructure through a partnership with EMC, which has seen a number of new technologies deployed, reported Healthcare Today. The organisation has implemented a private cloud and VMware for over 1,200 virtual desktops, which it hopes will provide its 3,500 staff with faster and more reliable access to supporter data, donor databases and critical applications that are accessed on a daily basis by the fundraising and marketing teams. Michael Briggs, head of infrastructure at Cancer Research UK, said that the organisation had been facing “significant performance issues” since it had moved premises.
- Fresh concerns over NHS data protection: Information watchdog, the Information Commisioner’s Office, has raised fresh concerns about the NHS’ ability to protect sensitive personal data, warning trusts of further fines and adverse publicity if they fall short of their duties, reported HSJ (subscription required). The warning comes as the NHS looks to increase the amount of data it shares with other organisations – a move the ICO said could increase the risk of data breaches.
- Seven southern trusts target EPMA: Seven southern trusts are hoping to introduce electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EMPA) with central funding through the Southern Acute Programme, reported EHI. The trusts collaborating to get EPMA are Salisbury, Poole Hospital, Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals, Southern Health, Portsmouth Hospitals, Royal Surrey County Hospital and University Hospitals Bristol. It is one of six collaborations involving 21 Southern acute trusts, which got nothing from the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
- Kelsey wants paperless NHS by 2015: Tim Kelsey, the NHS Commissioning Board’s first national director of patients and information has said he is pushing for a commitment to make the NHS paperless by the end of 2015, reported Guardian Government Computing. Speaking at the Healthcare Efficiency Through Technology Expo in London, he said: “That means no more referral letters, no more lost records because we won’t have paper any longer in the health service.” Kelsey, whose role combines chief technology and information officer with responsibility for patient and public participation, said that most people would prefer seamless digital records to paper.
- New health minister Dr Dan Poulter to give keynote speech at EHI Live 2012: eHealth News has reported EHI’s announcement that new health minister Dr Dan Poulter is to be one of the keynote speakers at EHI Live 2012. Appointed Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Department of Health (DH) in September 2012, Dr Poulter has assumed responsibility for a portfolio that includes the NHS IT and information strategy, the DH’s relationship with the NHS Information Centre and NHS procurement. Dr Poulter will use his EHI Live 2012 keynote speech to lay out his perspective on implementing the new NHS information strategy for England to empower patients and professionals. He will also reflect on other IT strategies across the rest of the UK.
- Jeremy Hunt dashes hopes of early reform of social care funding system: Jeremy Hunt has dashed hopes of any early reform of the social care funding system by declaring the costs unaffordable, reported the Guardian. Although he told the Conservative party conference that the government would introduce a cap on individual care costs “as soon as we are able”, the minister said later that the £1.7bn bill for the scheme proposed by the Dilnot Commission could not be met. Ministers say they accept the principle of a cap, which would account for most of the £1.7bn costs in the first full year of such a scheme, but the Treasury is said to be blocking the go-ahead.
- Cameron announces £100m nurse tech fund: Prime Minister David Cameron announced he will give £100m in funding for nurses and midwives to spend on new mobile technology like digital pens, reported EHI. The money will be made available in the form of loans, how much they have to pay back will depend on the feedback from patients’ friends and family on whether the technology has improved services. The new technology could include digital pens and other handheld mobile devices that allow staff to know the latest information about a patient’s treatment whenever, wherever they are and provide safer, quicker care. The funding will be available by April 2013.
- Welsh health board goes for paperless records: Aneurin Bevan is the first Welsh health board to implement electronic document and records management, reported Guardian Government Computing. The new system will be supplied by CCube Solutions. Steven Harding, assistant director of informatics at the board, said: “We are looking to create ready electronic access to patient records. This will reduce the costs and risks currently associated with securely managing and storing our paper health records.” The system will interface with the Myrddin PAS and the national Master Patient Index, a system intended to make it easier to ensure patients are correctly identified and minimise the number of duplicate health records.
- BT bets on ‘cloud’ for future health: EHI has reported that BT Health has pinned its future NHS strategy on developing a portfolio of secure health cloud-based services based on a new health cloud built over the past nine months. The first to be launched is a pay-as-you-go medical transcription service able to handle patient identifiable data (PID), already said to have three early NHS customers. The medical transcription service is being delivered in conjunction with 3M Healthcare. BT says its move into the cloud is the logical extension of its national programme experience and meets the needs of a cash strapped health service.
Opinion
Making integration happen
This week in his opinion piece, Alastair McLellan, editor of HSJ, says that integration in the context of health and social care could finally have the opportunity to become more than just a buzzword.
Following Jeremy Hunt’s first major speech as health secretary, where he claimed ‘integration is going to be just as important as competition,’ McLellan says that change is in the air.
“Poor integration between NHS services and with social care is perhaps the biggest cause of patient complaint. Mr Hunt says he wants quality of care to be as important as quality of treatment.
“There is another complementary plan doing the rounds in government circles. This involves a “whole city” pilot of full integration, with pooled budgets and all health and social care players expected to get involved. The lessons from this pilot would be used to guide the next round of service reform.
“It will also be necessary to find an area where commissioners believe the pilot to be a good idea and to ensure the NHS Commissioning Board is bought into making it a success.”
Should clinical commissioning groups invest in telehealth?
Telehealth is increasingly being advocated as a way to monitor patients remotely and better manage long-term health conditions. The Nuffield Trust was part of the largest randomised controlled trial in this area, “the Whole System Demonstrator” (WSD) – the initial results of which were published earlier in the summer. But the new clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and providers still have a difficult task in making evidence-based decisions about telehealth, comments senior research analyst, Adam Steventon of the Nuffield Trust in his blog.
“The WSD trial concluded that telehealth was associated with fewer emergency hospital admissions and deaths, but it was inconclusive about impacts on hospital costs. Telehealth could have different impacts in other settings, for example, if services are designed differently.
“Decisions about investment should reflect patient outcomes as well as costs. However WSD results on quality of life and other patient-reported outcomes have not yet been published by the peer-review journals (watch this space). The danger is that decision making is being overly driven by impacts on emergency admissions as a result.
“One new piece of evidence is available – a study about the reasons given by patients for not wanting to participate in the WSD trial has been published. This showed that telehealth was thought to pose problems for some patients – for example, it might not fit with existing ideas about self-care or daily schedules.”
The results of the trial were unable to draw definitive conclusions, often raising more questions but one conclusion is clear, in that for CCGs and providers, there are no easy answers regarding telehealth as it is about a change in services rather than technology.
Why I fell out with Andrew Lansley over the NHS
In the Guardian this week David Kerr writes about what led him to resign as an advisor to the Conservatives. He explains why he thinks “better-value healthcare is the way forward for the NHS – and exactly what Tory reforms are not delivering.” He also believes that the government is grappling with unnecessary structural change rather than implementing simpler reforms that would save money.
“Both government and opposition agree that reform is needed if the NHS is to have a sustainable future. But we already have a number of tools that we can apply immediately to get better-value care: use mobile phones to monitor and manage patients’ side-effects from chemotherapy and prevent emergency admissions; shift the balance of care from hospitals to the community; introduce programme budgeting, to make clinical staff aware that they are living within a cancer or diabetes budget rather than just the “black box” of general hospital expenditure; develop clinical guidelines that are easily accessible, regularly updated and embrace value. In the NHS we are not short of good examples or good ideas, but we are hampered by a lack of leadership from a fragmented hierarchy.
“Rather than the short-term salami-slicing currently going on, we need to make a more fundamental effort to reform and improve the efficiency of the NHS. If its culture can be engineered to embrace value, then this might give Jeremy Hunt the intellectual impetus needed to get reform properly back on track.”
Highland Marketing blog
In this week’s blog, Sarah Bruce writes from HETT EXPO about a new kid on the block in the world of healthcare IT and why exhibitors need to know exactly who their audience is during the conference season.
