Labour vows to repeal NHS reforms
The BBC has reported and filmed the opposition-led debate in the House of Commons on the NHS on 16 July 2012. Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham renewed his attacks on the Health and Social Care Act, which became law earlier this year having endured a tumultuous passage through Parliament.
Opening the debate, Mr Burnham said: “We will repeal the bill, it is a defective, sub-optimal piece of legislation that is saddling the NHS with a complicated mess. The gap between ministers’ complacent statements and people’s real experience of the NHS gets wider every week. They are in denial about the effects of their reorganisation in the real world, it is dangerous complacency and it can’t be allowed to continue.”
HSJ (subscription required) reports Burnham as saying: “We will repeal the bill, but no, there won’t be a top down reorganisation of the kind we have seen inflicted on the NHS.” In reply health minister Simon Burns intervened and said: “Can you clear up a confusion because your leader, Ed Miliband, said he would keep clinical commissioning and you’ve just said you would repeal the whole order in total, which would include clinical commissioning?
“The changes to the NHS had benefited patients” Burns added, as he accused Labour of misrepresenting and talking down the service.
Cerner signs deal with Royal Berks whilst sparking crisis at North Bristol
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has signed two contracts with Cerner worth £16.5m for the remote hosting of its Millennium electronic patient record, a helpdesk and support for the system. According to EHI both contracts were awarded without a procurement process because they could only be supplied by Cerner and due to “extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable.”
The trust has previously signed a hosting contract and an outsourcing deal with CSC. CSC reportedly told eHealth Insider that its hosting contract with Royal Berkshire has not been cancelled.
Whilst announcing this contract Cerner was also implicated in a multi-million pound crisis at North Bristol NHS Trust which went live with Cerner Millennium before the outpatient or theatre builds were complete. This sparked a “crisis” that took five months and £4.6m to resolve, a report reveals.
Going live with Millennium in December last year, triggered a series of issues, including patients being booked into non-existent appointment slots and appointment letters not being sent, reports EHI. North Bristol was the last of the three ‘greenfield’ sites in the South of England to go-live with Millennium as part of a contract with BT to support trusts that had implemented the Cerner system with ex-local service provider Fujitsu and extend its use. The trust’s IM&T director, Martin Bell, is leaving next month.
CQC reprimands private company providing GP out of hours services in Cornwall
NHS watchdog – the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – has severely reprimanded Serco – a private company providing out of hours GP services in Cornwall. Its failings include lack of staff, inadequate training provision, long patient waits and having manipulated its results.
This is the first time the CQC has carried out a responsive review of an out-of-hours service since regulation of the sector began on 1 April this year.
Paul Forden, managing director of Serco’s clinical services, told HSJ (subscription required) many of the issues raised, such as recruitment of GPs, were common to most out-of-hours providers and being a private sector provider in the NHS made Serco an “easier target” for criticism.
He said the nature of the computer system meant it was “highly unlikely” achieved calls were being misreported and it would be inefficient to employ enough staff to check reports for all calls. Serco accepted the CQC’s other concerns. We now employ 12 GPs and have improved safeguarding training.”
Serco, who is poised to win new contracts from the NHS under the changes introduced by the Health and Social Care Act, made some doctors work double 13 hour shifts overnight and other staff work 11 hour daytime shifts reports The Independent. The company has been given 14 days to explain how it will correct the failings exposed in the report by the CQC.
Eleven trusts to implement HSS radiology systems
Eleven trusts across the Cheshire and Merseyside Consortium are to implement radiology information systems from HSS, after completing the first part of a collaborative procurement according to EHI.
The contract follows an issue of a tender last November from Informatics Merseyside for a replacement picture archiving and communications system, RIS and vendor neutral archive. This came after the consortium PACs team was tasked to procure new systems as CSC’s local service provider contract is due to end on 30 June next year.
The estimated value of the RIS contract provided in the tender ranged from £500,000 – £2m. The first phase of the project will go-live in January 2013.
Some of the trusts in the consortium include: Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
News in brief
- More NHS contract wins for System C: Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has become the latest trust to award its patient administration system contract to System C, a McKesson company. EHI reports the trust as saying that the contract, which will be signed over the summer, will be the start of a 10-15 year relationship with the company. The trust is one of more than 20 still running McKesson legacy systems paid for by the Department of Health because of delays to the National Programme for IT in the NHS. The deal will see a new PAS deployed across the organisation.
- UK hospital boosts patient privacy efforts: Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has announced the deployment of the FairWarning privacy breach detection solution across all of its clinical systems. One of England’s most proactive trusts, Aintree has moved to electronic records for 90 percent of its health records, and officials say the breach detection solution will help secure the trust’s EHRs. Ward Priestman, director of informatics and senior information risk officer at Aintree told Healthcare IT News “There is a sea-change in the depth of data that is now being recorded electronically. Previously, most confidential information was on paper, locked in secure storage and well managed. But now that we’re starting to record an increasing amount of clinical and confidential data on electronic systems, the thinking has got to mature.”
- Sheffield Children’s PAS tender resumed: Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has restarted the tender for a patient administration system to replace its legacy McKesson patient administration system, reports EHI. The trust originally cancelled the tender to do further work on its strategy. While the initial tender wanted the “installation and commissioning of an electronic patient record”, the latest notice only requires a replacement patient administration system with “options for electronic patient record functionality.” Interested suppliers are required to have the parts described already available and must be capable of implementing the PAS and A&E component by October 2013.
- GSK buys Human Genome for £1.9bn: The UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline is to buy Human Genome Sciences for £1.9bn, ending a three-month pursuit of the US biotechnology firm. The acquisition follows the trend of major drugs companies scouring the market for acquisitions as a wave of patents are about to expire, reports the BBC. The purchase gives GSK rights to several recently launched medicines. GSK will gain control of Benlysta, which treats the immune system disorder lupus, as well as experimental medicines for diabetes and heart disease.
- Population rise in England and Wales: The population of England and Wales has reached 56.1 million, up by 3.7 million (7 percent in a decade) the 2011 Census shows. The BBC reports this is the largest growth shown by any census since they began in 1801. Data shows that from March 2001 to March 2011, there were 6.6 million births and five million deaths in England and Wales, leading to an increase in the population of 1.6 million. The Office for National Statistics said this accounted for around 44 percent of the total increase in population size, with the remainder being due to migration.
- NHS commissioning to shed 20,000 jobs: EHI has reported on the NHS Commissioning Board’s plans to complete its employment of 4,000 staff by January 2013. The vast majority will be transferred from primary care trusts, strategic health authorities and arms’ length bodies. A further 7,000 NHS staff are expected to be employed by 23 commissioning support services, which are due to be authorised by the end of the year. And it has been suggested a similar number will transfer to local authorities to undertake public health tasks. That leaves 20,000 staff in “sending organisations” likely to be left without a job.
- UK-based Hospedia acquires Extramed: Hospedia has acquired Extramed – a patient flow and bed management provider, for an undisclosed amount. The UK based firm claims that healthcare providers could save millions of dollars from the acquisition. Extramed’s patient flow management system will be offered at 150 UK hospitals and new hospitals worldwide.
- NHS Lothian’s waiting list crisis: The Evening News has revealed the full human cost of the devastating NHS Lothian’s waiting list crisis. National guidelines state that inpatients and day case patients should be treated within just nine weeks of being put on a waiting list, however figures show that 550 patients have suffered for more than a year without the surgery they require. Two hundred of those patients – all inpatients or day cases – have been waiting at least 18 months and more than 300 have been stuck on the waiting lists for 15 months or longer.
- Shake-up may close two hospitals: Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has revealed controversial plans to close two community hospitals and minor injury accident departments may also be closed at others under a major health service shake-up in north Wales. The proposals, which have been discussed this week, are the first of seven in Wales to outline plans for balancing the books.
- BMA lift industrial action threat: After lifting the threat of industrial action doctors’ leaders are now preparing to re-enter talks with the government over their pension dispute. The British Medical Association, which staged a day of industrial action on June 21, will now join other health unions in debating some of the changes made to the NHS pension scheme, which under government plans will mean higher earners such as doctors having to work for longer and contribute more. NHS Employers, which represents health managers, said the NHS will “breathe a sigh of relief that there will be no more industrial action for the moment.”
Opinion
NHS VistA: The enlightened choice?
Dr Carl Reynolds, national clinical fellow at the Department of Health and the National Patient Safety Agency has contributed guest blog to The Nuffield Trust where he reflects on the potential value to the NHS of learning from the international experience of open-source, electronic medical record (EMR) system, VistA, as identified in the January 2002 NHS Information Authority White Paper: Open Source Software and the NHS.
“Ten years on, and several billion pounds of investment later, the NHS is still without a satisfactory comprehensive electronic medical record system.
“Open-source software has gone from strength to strength and is now standard for much of the technology industry and is increasingly used by the government.
“The open-source Veterans Health Administration’s VistA system continues to receive international investment and to deliver on usability, usefulness, flexibility and cost-effectiveness where other systems have failed.”
CCGs and PCTs-not so different after all?
In this week’s blog, Chris Naylor, fellow, health policy at The King’s Fund takes a look at what the real differences are between PCTs and CCGs and if there are really any at all.
He writes: “There will be important differences between CCGs and PCTs – it could hardly be otherwise, given the radically different context in which CCGs will be operating. But in terms of the population size they cover – a hugely significant issue for any commissioning body – CCGs and PCTs look increasingly similar.”
Chris goes onto illustrate the important similarities and differences between the different types of organisation.
He adds: “Many have assumed that while the average size of CCGs may not be so different, one thing that will be different is the degree of variation.” Click here to see the analysis.
Why the BMA should be leading the change
The Guardian’s Patient from Hell offers a few words of advice to Dr Mark Porter, the new chair of the BMA. He says:
“Congratulations on your election as chair of the BMA. It is presumptuous of me to offer you advice. I am just an octogenarian patient with no medical qualifications but quite a lot of medical conditions. I suppose I may be one of the most frequent flyers on the NHS, and therefore one of your best customers. Perhaps my views should command some respect.
“Having been a BMA-watcher for some years, I believe your main problem will be your membership. Or to be more precise, the vocal part of your membership. The ones who turn up at your conferences, sit on your councils and vote undying resistance to anything the Department of Health – under any government, Labour or coalition – proposes. They also seem to oppose any technological or administrative change that will enhance the safety and convenience of me, the patient, but may change their age-old working practices. In plain English, your members just do not want to know about change.
“I believe they should be leading the change. If they don’t they will endanger my care. It is up to you to bring about this culture shift. I worry that if you follow my advice, you will make yourself very unpopular with the nostalgics.”
Highland Marketing blog
This week Laura Steward asks the question “Is it time for robots to take over care in the NHS?” This comes in response to the inquest that found that the tragic death of a 22 year-old man who died in hospital in 2009 was caused by dehydration.
