News in brief
South London Healthcare NHS Trust to be dissolved by 1 October 2013: Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that the most financially challenged NHS trust in England is to be dissolved by October 2013 to address the risk it carries for ongoing patient care and the pressure it is placing on other parts of the NHS, reported the Department of Health (DH). Previous attempts to solve the financial problems at the trust have failed. Currently, the trust is losing more than £1 million every week and by the end of this year, is expected to have an accumulated debt of more than £200 million. It was on the advice of NHS medical director Professor Bruce Keogh that Mr Hunt also announced that he has decided that it is in the best interests of patients that Lewisham Hospital should retain its A&E.
NHS bodies to produce common vision for integrated care: National organisations including the DH, NHS Commissioning Board (CB) and sector regulators are drawing up a joint statement of purpose to set how they will make integrated care a reality, revealed HSJ (subscription required). The “common purpose framework” is currently being drafted and is planned to be published by May this year. The document will set out a common vision which will show how they will work together to support and promote integrated care, explain why integration is necessary, what the potential barriers are and what support is needed to help local services join up. Other signatories are expected to include the Care Quality Commission, Monitor, the Local Government Association and the National Trust Development Authority.
Healthcare UK launched to sell NHS expertise abroad: The gateway to international customers for the NHS has been launched, with Healthcare UK, reported National Health Executive. Working together, the DH, NHS CB and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), will boost the value of UK’s trade in healthcare products and services. Healthcare UK will draw on the in-depth knowledge of the UK’s healthcare products and services whilst utilising UKTI’s network of professional advisers in nearly 100 countries. It will provide a single gateway to the UK’s healthcare capabilities, both private and public. The organisation will run campaigns to boost the UK’s profile in healthcare, identify the biggest international opportunities and facilitate formation of consortia of UK organisations to provide complete solutions to major healthcare challenges.
NHS set to employ one in eight people by 2060: The NHS could be employing one person in eight by 2060 and spending almost a fifth of the UK’s wealth on healthcare, according to a report by The King’s Fund, reported GP Online. The think tank’s projection follows the trajectory of NHS spending over the past 50 years, which has resulted in the service currently employing one in 18 of the population. Author Professor John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund, said public spending on the NHS was now 2.5 times greater than it was in the 1960s – amounting to 8.2% of GDP and equivalent to seven times more in real terms. But he said it was up to future governments, and public debate, to decide whether NHS spending continued to rise at the same levels over the next 50 years.
IMS MAXIMS appoints Angela White as first ever medical director: IMS MAXIMS has appointed Angela White as the company’s first ever medical director, reported Building Better Healthcare. The creation of the new post reflects the firm’s commitment to ensuring its solutions are developed in a way that supports clinicians and healthcare professionals’ needs and requirements. Shane Tickell, IMS MAXIMS chief executive, said: “Angela has an excellent track record and a well-deserved reputation having undertaken a number of clinical management and strategic roles at both NHS trust level and within the wider health economy.”
Hospital patients’ records dumped in corridor: A bag full of confidential patients’ records were dumped in a corridor for days at Wales’ biggest hospital, reported the BBC. The bag was left on top of a shredding bin for four days on a spinal ward at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff. A hospital worker contacted the BBC to complain over the hospital’s records disposal policy. The worker who found the records said: “I think it’s appalling that confidential patient records are left lying around. It’s a breach of patients’ confidence and trust. The paperwork includes confidential patient records, including details of medical history and treatment plans.” Dr Graham Shortland, medical director for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, said: “We have already taken action to secure the information and are investigating exactly why this has happened.”
Hospitals face new army of inspectors in wake of Mid Staffordshire scandal: A landmark report into hundreds of unnecessary deaths at a Mid Staffordshire hospital will recommend that hospitals should face tough new scrutiny of their care by beefed-up teams of inspectors including doctors and nurses, reported The Guardian. The public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire scandal will propose the change as part of a series of measures to overhaul the array of regulatory bodies that, despite numerous warnings, did not detect serious failings in patient care for over four years or intervene soon enough to stop them. According to sources close to the inquiry, the long-awaited report, published next Wednesday by its chairman, Robert Francis QC, will say sweeping reforms of how hospitals are policed are needed to stop a repeat of events at Stafford hospital, where an estimated 200-400 patients died between 2005 and 2009 as a result of “appalling” care and neglect.
E-mental health – technology transforming mental healthcare: A national framework for e-mental health is essential if technology is to play a truly transformative role in mental healthcare, says a new report from the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network and its partners. Smartphone apps to track changes in mood, online platforms for peer support, and computerised monitoring of symptoms could help more people with mental health problems receive the support they need when and how they want it, according to the report – E-mental health: what’s all the fuss about?. The report warns that national action – including the development of a national framework for e-mental health – is essential if technology is to play a truly transformative role in mental healthcare and service users are to have better access to high quality applications and programmes which are clinically effective and safe.
Trust creates GP app: GPs in the North East of England can find details about hospital clinics and specialists via a new app produced by the local foundation trust, reported eHealth Insider. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has launched an iPhone and iPad app called Clinical Information Xchange, or CiiX, which gives GPs up-to-date details about services in the area. It includes information on consultants, their area of specialty and contact details, referral information and forms, service changes and descriptions of clinics.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS seeking members: Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has set out to recruit 10,000 people as members over the next 18 months in a drive to achieve foundation status by 2014, reported the BBC. Patients’ watchdog Kent Link said it supported the move because patients’ groups would have more involvement. John Ashelford, Kent Link chairman said: “Foundation status would allow the trust to make more decisions, plan services over a longer period, and ensure it was efficient and financially robust.” Foundation trusts have to be accountable to local people and members can vote for and stand as governors.
Opinion
Has Wales found the winning formula for healthcare?
With so much talk about the integration of health and social care, in the Guardian this week David Brindle took a look at Wales and asked if they have got it right.
“Those seeking the recipe for success are looking with growing interest across the Severn bridges to Wales. All indicators show that the country’s approach to the integration of health and social care services is working.
“Some key indicators for the Welsh NHS are already moving strikingly in the right direction as a result of improved joint working across primary, community and acute healthcare and social services. Emergency hospital admissions of people with chronic conditions fell sharply in 2011-12, down by almost 15% for diabetes and 17% for lung diseases such as bronchitis, while readmissions dropped even more steeply, by almost 30% and 25%, respectively.”
He quotes David Sissling, chief executive of NHS Wales and director general of health and social services: “We’re not saying we have got it all right, I’m sure there are things we can learn [from England] on a reciprocal basis, but I do think that what we are doing seems to be delivering quite promising results in terms of improving patients’ clinical experience and making sure we use resources wisely.”
The impatient optimist
This week saw Microsoft boss, Bill Gates give the BBC Richard Dimbleby a Lecture on the work he is doing to eradicate polio.
Gates, who has donated almost £20billion for global health projects, said: “At Microsoft, I always believed in the power of innovation to solve problems and make the world a better place. What excited me about being involved in software is that we were part of an industry where we were constantly inventing new things and improving them.
“That same kind of innovation is under way today in our efforts to improve the human condition. Polio was first recognised at least 4,000 years ago, but it was just 200 years ago that we figured out it is contagious and just 100 years ago that we learned it is a virus.
“Fifty years ago, we developed the vaccine to prevent it. Twenty-five years ago, we resolved to eradicate it. In 1988, there were more than 350,000 polio cases. Last year, there were fewer than 250. Getting rid of the last few cases is the hardest part.”
Gates goes on to say that there are now just three countries that have not eliminated polio — Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He adds that he still looks to technology to help solve problems every step of the way and that one huge problem the polio programme found in Nigeria was that many villages were missing from vaccinators’ hand-drawn maps. As a result, children were not getting vaccinated. But this has since been fixed, by polio workers walking through all the areas at the highest risk of the disease and by using technology such as high-resolution satellite images and GPS so that every child gets vaccinated.
NHS Paperless
In this week’s opinion for Highland Marketing, healthcare IT consultant Martin Bell offers his opinion on the newly released NHS Paperless video unveiled at the Cambridge Health Network.
He writes: “The video is a fun and creative way to describe the problem faced by the NHS and illustrates some of the problems NHS organisations face inline with the ‘Paperless Challenge,’ set out by Tim Kelsey and Jeremy Hunt. It also illustrates the frustrations that patients experience, and why they should continue to push their healthcare services to provide them with more information.
“What is required to make this vision a reality however, are national and local strategies, policies and incentives to deliver that modernisation. Key amongst these is the use of the commissioning contracts locally and regulatory frameworks nationally to drive change -national vision, local delivery.
“Nationally the NHS needs to put in place a framework to drive the kind of changes required – for example, putting specific electronic health records clauses into any model contracts CCGs and providers may use, but leaving local commissioners free to progress at their own pace, within reason, and set their own priorities for what comes further. If providers are incentivised to adopt technology and change current ways of working, it is more likely to happen than simply urging people to do it because it seems to be the right thing. Previous failures in NHS IT mean that NHS staff will naturally be sceptical that such change will bring benefits. Where some of this has already happened, those who have done it well are seeing benefits, and this sharing of positive experiences and expertise needs to be facilitated by the central NHS, without setting rigid rules and structure.
“Incentivising hospitals to put in medicines management or order communications or e-records over a timeline, agreed with their local commissioners, could provide a meaningful way to deliver a UK version of the US Meaningful Use e-records programme.
“Regulation can be used, by incorporating technological levels or standards of achievement into the monitoring and certification of provider organisations. If in five years time an organisation is still weighed down with paper, realistically, will it be providing the safest, highest quality, most cost effective care? By setting standards nationally, local organisations – those that commission and those that delivery – can both choose what the local priorities are, based not just on their own views, but those of their patients and public in that area.”
How CCGs can commission to support those in poor housing
David Isaacson of public services law firm Bevan Brittan tells the Guardian Healthcare Network that “the statutory duty of CCGs to consider integration of health related services may impact the provision of housing.”
Isaacson predicts that registered providers will be guided by local authorities and partner CCG’s joint working as the reforms under the Health and Social Care Act are implemented.
“The upshot of all this is that health and wellbeing boards may identify poor housing as a local priority in addressing the poor health of the local population. This could then in turn filter into the joint health and wellbeing strategy for that area.”
With more demand focused on certain types of care and specialised housing, Isaacson suggests the following: “Practical steps for registered providers in this new commissioning environment would be to approach local CCGs, health and wellbeing boards and local authorities so that housing is kept very much at the forefront of their minds when setting strategies for better health outcomes.”
Highland Marketing Blog
This week Mark Venables looks at the issue of business location and its increasing lack of relevance in our technology driven world.
