Consultants bring NHS ‘to a virtual standstill’ This week’s consultant strike brought the NHS to “a virtual standstill”, according to Sir Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England. The health service’s most senior doctors walked out for 48 hours from 7am on Thursday (iNews). NHS Providers calculated that more than 754,000 acute, mental health and community appointments have been lost since industrial action by different staff groups started in December. The latest action means “tens of thousands” more will have to be rescheduled. The government has accepted the recommendations of the nominally independent public sector pay review bodies for the coming year.   However, the British Medical Association has rejected the offer because it fails to address what it describes as “a decade of sub-inflation pay deals” (The Guardian). The government is adamant that it won’t talk further with junior doctors or consultants. In a news release, health and social care secretary Steve Barclay said: “We’ve made it clear that this pay award is not up for negotiation.” But Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers, said “more strikes can and must be avoided” and it is time for the government and the unions to “enter serious talks about pay.”

NAO raises concerns about New Hospital Programme The National Audit Office has raised serious concerns about the New Hospital Programme. In a report on whether the NHP is likely to deliver value for money, it says hospital construction is “badly needed after years of underinvestment” and the programme’s plans to standardise hospital construction “could deliver efficiencies”. However, it also notes the target of 40 ‘new’ hospitals was arbitrary and announced before funding was in place, which has led to frequent changes of scope and timelines. Overall, the NAO says the Department of Health and Social care has spent £1.1 billion on the NHP to date and “has not achieved good value for money so far.”   Looking ahead, it concludes that “by the definition it used in 2020, the government will not deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.” And it argues that if the programme eventually delivers anything, it could be inadequate or overly expensive facilities. Even the troubled NHP addresses only some of the issues that the NHS faces because of under-investment in facilities. The NAO says that in 2021-22, some 43% of the entire NHS estate dated from before 1985, and backlog maintenance had reached £10.2 billion. This makes it difficult to deliver modern healthcare, or re-organise workflows, for example to take advantage of new IT.

NHS Providers calls for investment to achieve productivity improvements   NHS Providers has issued a report looking at the NHS’ productivity challenge. It says the NHS is making good progress on tackling very long-waits, but it will be difficult to achieve the government’s waiting list reduction target while protecting quality of care and “delivering unprecedented efficiencies.” Obstacles include: ever-rising demand, plummeting staff morale (above), the lack of capital for facilities and technology (above), and the crisis in social care, which impacts on hospital discharges. NHS Providers calls for capital investment, enough management to deliver operational efficiencies, and “a sustainable solution to social care capacity” to address the issues raised.

First ICS digital maturity ratings revealed The Health Service Journal has unveiled the first digital maturity ratings to be given to integrated care systems. Consultancy firm McKinsey was given a contract to judge ICSs against the ‘What Good Looks Like’ framework earlier this year. Providers were asked to rate themselves between 1 and 5 on a series of questions relating to the framework, and their ICSs were given an average score based on their responses. Just three scored 3 or more out of 5, with the NHS overall scoring 2.4. Rural areas, the south and south west scored low, and only Frimley ICS scored well on the ‘empower patients’ metric.

Princess Alexandra launches EPR programme  The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust has launched its electronic patient record programme. The trust tweeted pictures of a project team briefing with dedicated branding (The Health Tech Newspaper). The trust announced in April that it had awarded a £28 million, ten-year contract to Oracle Cerner to replace legacy digital and paper-based systems (Oracle Cerner news release). The trust used McKesson Totalcare until McKesson withdrew from the market, and then tried to implement a Swedish system in a “first of type” UK roll-out a decade ago. The hope is that the latest EPR programme will lead to a successful go-live in October 2024.

NHS Fife works on pre-op with Buddy Healthcare NHS Fife is working with Buddy Healthcare on a digital pre-op pathway. The project means that orthopaedic patients will be able to complete assessments on an app and clinicians will be able to review their data on a dashboard, to cut face-to-face appointments, phone-calls, and last-minute cancellations. The Scottish health board is the second to adopt the platform, which it calls ELSIE (the electronic pre-operative assessment app). Neighbouring NHS Lanarkshire is already using it. Unlike similar systems, the Buddy Healthcare platform can be used across the perioperative pathway and for a range of conditions (Health Tech World).

Health IT news: about a Better Meds pilot and an X-on Health Surgery Connect implementation  Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust has implemented the Better Meds electronic prescribing and medicines administration system on a pilot ward. Health Tech World has published a report on the implementation, which took place in just ten weeks. An NHS GP practice with four surgeries in Blackburn with Darwin has implemented X-on Health’s cloud telephony system to make it easier for staff to handle high call volumes, and for patients to access the service they need, in line with government policy. Health Tech World has published a case study on the Cornerstone Practice and HealthCare’s implementation of Surgery Connect.