Healthcare Roundup

Seven days in the NHS and health IT

Ockenden review finds ‘patterns of repeated poor care’ at the maternity services run by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust

A bad week for the NHS started with the publication of the final report of Donna Ockenden’s review of maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. Like similar reports before it, the review found that poor leadership, failure to follow national guidelines, and poor culture led to “patterns of repeated poor care” that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 babies and nine mothers between 2000 and 2019 (BBC News blog). A footnote to the report was poor record keeping, and the report endorses the digital strand of NHS England’s maternity transformation programme, which has been trying to set standards and roll-out personal health records.

The review makes a total of 84 recommendations, including the need for safe staffing, better training, good whistleblowing procedures, better incident review, and a willingness to listen to women. Two more contentious issues are the degree to which a “culture of natural birth” contributed to the scandal and the effectiveness of the “continuity of carer” model. NHS England argues that “dedicated support” from the same midwifery team throughout pregnancy and birth improves services, but Ockenden suggested it may stretch scarce staff and harm safety overall (Health Service Journal). Meanwhile, detectives are looking at 600 cases in which there may have been criminal behaviour (ITV.com).

Staff survey records big drop in morale

The NHS has published its annual staff survey, which was completed by more than 648,000 people between September and December last year. More than 87% said they felt their role makes a difference and 75% said their organisations make patients and service users their ‘top priority’. But just 59% said they would recommend their organisation as a place to work, down 7% on the previous survey, and just 68% said they were happy with the care their organisation provides, down 6%. Staff shortages and time pressures appear to be reasons for this; only 27% of respondents said staffing was adequate, down 11%.

Public satisfaction in the NHS plunges; but faith in underlying principles remains

The third report with bad news for the NHS was the NatCen Social Research British Social Attitudes survey. Since 1983, it has asked people in Great Britain for their views on health and care services, and the latest survey, carried out in October last year, recorded the biggest ever drop in satisfaction. Overall satisfaction with the NHS fell 17 percentage points from 2020, to just 36%. The King’s Fund think-tank said “the public recognise the challenges that Covid-19 have placed on the NHS” but there is “growing frustration” with the difficulty of getting a GP appointment, waiting times, and staffing.

The King’s Fund added that the detail of the survey suggests that people don’t want a different funding model or another radical overhaul of the NHS, “rather a health service that is appropriately funded and staffed to deliver the quality of care they need.” The Nuffield Trust said addressing GP services and waits should restore confidence, over time. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that given its funding decisions, government should “avoid inflating public expectations” as “demanding ever more from the service while denying it the tools it needs to do the job will only lead to further public disillusionment.”

Health IT news: EPMA and patient record plans for RNOH, Black Country and West Birmingham, and Fife HSCP

The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust is piloting an open electronic prescribing and medicines administration system that it has developed with Interneuron, an open source health and care software development company, digitalhealth.net has reported. Black Country and West Birmingham integrated care system is to introduce a shared care record, working with Graphnet Health, the Health Tech Newspaper has reported. The record will cover 1.5 million residents and, eventually, link-up with the neighbouring One Health and Care record programme. Fife Health and Social Care Partnership has deployed a community and mental health system working with the Morse solution from Cambric, Health Tech World has reported.

Company news: For Lyniate and NextGate, CMR Surgical, and Aire Logic

Lyniate and NextGate have agreed a merger, digitalhealth.net has reported. Lyniate is an interoperability specialist that bought the Rhapsody integration engine and NextGate is a well-known provider of enterprise master patient index products. The deal will help both companies to meet demand for high quality, data sharing. NHS Wales has signed a multi-year contract with CMR Surgical for its Versius surgical robotic systems, as part of a national robotic assisted surgery programme, digitalhealth.net has reported. Aire Logic has secured a deal with The Christie NHS Foundation Trust to support the development of an in-house electronic patient record, using the Better platform, The Health Tech Newspaper has reported.

Trusts to HIMSS5 by December 2023: will they make it this time?

Analysis

Health and social care secretary Sajid Javid has announced a new target to complete the digitisation of the acute sector. The Highland Marketing advisory board discussed the approach being developed by NHS England’s transformation directorate, and the challenges to making it work.