News in brief
- Choose and Book chaos as trusts cancel appointments: An investigation by Pulse has revealed that overzealous hospital managers are routinely delaying or blocking Choose and Book referrals for administrative reasons, leaving GPs to deal with angry patients whose appointments have been cancelled. Some practices are reporting up to 15 cancellations a day as hospital trusts increasingly insist that all referrals made through the controversial system are confirmed within three days.
- 100 applications for ITK fund: The new £2.2m Information Sharing Challenge Fund attracted nearly 100 applications and is 100% oversubscribed, reported eHealth Insider. The fund which supports information sharing projects that can be replicated across the NHS through the interoperability toolkit was launched in August by the Department of Health (DH). The total fund is worth £2.2m with individual awards of up to £99,000. Applications closed on 5 October. Organisations can expect to hear whether they have successfully secured funding to develop new digital services by the end of this month.
- DH proposes ‘quality improvement schemes’ for online services: The DH has proposed new contract measures for GP practices – calling for reduced financial payments for organisational tasks and instead rewarding practices for other services such as access to online services, reported Public Service. The proposals put forward by the DH to the British Medical Association (BMA) will see reduced reward systems for all organisational tasks, such as good book-keeping. These tasks should already be a crucial part of a “good” health organisation, the DH has claimed. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said putting patients first was the department’s priority and that he made “no apology for this”.
- DH tracker shows cluster confidence: Reports obtained by HSJ (subscription required) reveal primary care trust leaders are overwhelmingly confident about the progress being made towards setting up the new NHS structure, despite many areas experiencing difficulties establishing the local operations of the NHS Commissioning Board. The DH’s NHS transition tracker shows that most clusters are advancing well towards setting up clinical commissioning groups and commissioning support units. The tracker is made up of submissions from all 50 PCT clusters, and rates progress on seven key “domains” relating to the structural reforms. Clusters are given a red, amber or green rating for each domain.
- BT wins landmark £120m communications contract in Surrey and Berkshire: In a unique deal, BT has won a contract to provide a fully-managed and integrated voice and data communications solution for public services, including the NHS, in Surrey and Berkshire, reported Building Better Healthcare. With a potential value of up to £120m, the deal requires BT to act as a systems integrator and provide a managed wide-area network, local area networks, IP voice services, and other managed IP services. The programme is known as the Unified Communities over Regional Network (UNICORN) and, once implemented, will be available to a wide range of public sector bodies and voluntary sector organisations within Surrey, Berkshire and the immediate proximity, such as ambulance services, medical facilities, local authorities and charities.
- Basildon puts hard figures on EMR: Through the use of an electronic medical record system Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is on track to save £1.6m a year reported eHealth Insider. The trust launched its EMR project one year ago, which provides clinicians with access to a patients’ historic records and displays real-time information from the patient administration system and a number of others including pathology and radiology. The trust’s director of strategic development, Mark Magrath, told EHI the implementation costs over ten years are £6.9m – most of which is spent in the first three years.
- GPs end Virgin partnership over conflict of interest: More than 300 GPs have ended their partnership with Richard Branson’s Virgin Care to provide healthcare services after criticism that the arrangements might see doctors personally profit from sending patients to clinics they part-own under the coalition’s health reforms, reported the Guardian. Virgin, under its former name Assura, had set up two dozen local “provider companies” – known as GPCos – which sought to make money by being paid by the NHS to offer community services such as dermatology, physiotherapy and rheumatology to patients. All were run as partnerships with local GPs.
- First mental health trust expands Lorenzo patient record system: Less than five months after becoming the first mental health organisation to use the system, Humber NHS Foundation Trust is extending the functionality of its Lorenzo electronic patient record, reported Building Better Healtcare. The trust, which went live with CSC’s Lorenzo solution in May, has been working to optimise the system and is now planning and testing additional functionality including daycare and care plans, which will continue to provide enhanced access to patient information for more than 600 staff across 55 different sites. Lee Rickles, head of innovation at the trust, said of the implementation: “We hit scope, we hit timescales and we hit budget. There are very, very few projects in the NHS that can say that they have achieved that, so now we are looking to move things forward.”
- Experts urge MPs for “honest discussion” on NHS costs: Pharma Times has reported that people in England value the NHS but they have no idea how much it costs, MPs have been told. The NHS in England costs around £120 billion a year – three times as much as the nation spends on education, experts told a roundtable discussion at Westminster this week, held by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Primary Care and Public Health, and they emphasised the need for an honest, nationwide discussion about healthcare costs. “If you don’t appreciate the costs of something, you can’t really appreciate its value,” agreed APPG co-chair Nick de Bois, the Conservative MP for Enfield North.
- Hinchingbrooke losses double Circle Health estimate: The first NHS hospital to be run by a private company has revealed losses in the firm’s first six months in charge were almost double those forecast, reported the BBC. The hospital’s board has revealed it was expected to make losses of £2.2m in the firm’s first six months, but it actually lost £4.1m. Circle Health took over management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire in February. The private company said a contributing factor was that it had brought in 10 new consultants as staff, but the pace of their arrival was slower than expected. Circle said it would have to pay any deficit at the financial year’s end.
Opinion
In this week’s opinion in EHI, Carl Reynolds, a junior doctor and health IT enthusiast talks about the procurement issues within the NHS and says that the NHS needs to demand more from its suppliers.
“The poor users have little or no influence over what gets bought (and forced upon them). Yet it is a near impossibility for people who lack a nuts and bolts technical understanding of tech”
He compares buying a second hand car to buying an IT system and makes a series of recommendations that he believes might help the NHS get a better deal.
“So what to do? A smart move for the NHS would be to make sure that those in positions of procurement influence have a solid technical grounding.
“Greater transparency around appointments, procurements, source code, and conflicts of interest might also help. It’s well known that marketing works and because enjoying corporate hospitality leads to irrational procurement decisions it ought not to be culturally acceptable.”
The Foundation Trust movement at eight years old
Paul Corrigan, former special advisor to Alan Milburn and senior health policy advisor to Tony Blair, blogs from the first ever Foundation Trust Network Annual Conference, eight years after foundation trusts came in to being and offers some interesting commentary as to how they have (perceived) to evolve!
“From 2004 the difference was always clear for provider trusts. Non FTs are owned by the Secretary of State while FTs are owned by the FT Board. The transition from non-FT to FT is much more than a simple change of title. For the FT Board it is a radical change in the level of responsibility. That’s why most of the “testing” that trusts wanting to become FTs have to go through is to test the capability of their board to take the responsibility of not being owned by the Secretary of State. Until now that responsibility of ownership by the Secretary of State has, for non-FTs, been carried out on their behalf by the Strategic Health Authorities.
From April 1st next year that responsibility will fall to the NHS Trust Development Agency. Both of these organisations – old and new – have taken their role as owners of non FTs seriously.
“Over the last few years I have spent time with CEOs, chairs and board members of FTs and amongst some of them there has been a lack of trust that their status is really permanent. They believe that the NHS hierarchy has only temporarily taken its hands off of them and that at some date in the near future, they will be taken back and retribution for any overly independent behaviour will take place.
“This is an important example of how strong the dominant NHS culture really is. There was a law which challenged the ownership of FTs and it was passed. For eight years they have had experience of being a different legal entity. But the belief that the old hierarchy will have its way and punish any autonomous behaviour is still strong.”
These are areas that were a key focus on the panels that Paul was speaking on at the conference, exploring further where the limits to their independence and controls really lie: How do FTs develop their own drive for quality and safety if the CQC see this as their job? How do FTs develop their own approach to risk if Monitor sees that as their job?
Although Paul is confident that both regulators will see activities of quality and risk lying firmly with the FTs and their boards, despite boards clearly not seeing it that way! Paul will be reporting on how these discussions unfolded.
Three weeks in the life of a hospital CEO
Want to get an insight into what an NHS CEO does everyday? Then this blog by Mark Newbold chief executive of Heart of England NHS FT is definitely worth a read. In this piece Mark writes a narrative on his daily activity over a three-week period. It is certainly varied, hectic but very interesting.
Highland Marketing News
Highland Marketing has been appointed by EHI to deliver a range of PR and social media activities in support of the EHI Live 2012 event, which takes place from 6-7 November 2012 at the NEC Birmingham. We will also be exhibiting at EHI Live on stand C74 as well as celebrating our 10 year anniversary. Come and join us!
