Healthcare Roundup

Seven days in the NHS and health IT

New PM, new cabinet

Rishi Sunak became the latest prime minister of the UK on Monday. As he arrived at 10 Downing Street on Tuesday, Sunak said the UK “is facing a profound economic crisis” and there will be “difficult decisions” to be made to deal with it. Unlike his predecessor Liz Truss, he talked about making them “with compassion” and said he wanted “a stronger NHS” and public services (Sky News). In his cabinet reshuffle, Sunak left Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, but swapped Therese Coffey, who was doing his old health and social care secretary job, for Steve Barclay, who held the post briefly in the summer (Health Service Journal).

NHS faces two years of real-terms cuts as BMA calls for workforce plan in autumn statement

The NHS is facing a multiyear funding squeeze as inflation bites. Figures presented to NHS England, and reported in the Health Service Journal, suggest the NHS will be looking at two years of real-terms cuts in 2023-24 and 2024-25. The NHS received a funding increase of around £30 billion in last year’s Budget and think-tanks have estimated that around half of this has been eroded by inflation. However, most of the money was front-loaded into this financial year so the small increases planned for the last two years of this Parliament could now become decreases.

Public services are bracing for cuts in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s ‘autumn statement’, which has been moved from Monday to 17 November (The Guardian). But NHS and medical organisations have warned that the NHS cannot take more austerity. Instead, the British Medical Association has urged Hunt to “solve the NHS workforce crisis” by committing to publish the kind of “long-term, comprehensive workforce plan” that he demanded as chair of the Commons health and social care committee. Unions also want low pay to be addressed (The Guardian). Hospitals in Leicester have opened food banks to help staff who cannot make ends meet (BBC News).

The Highland Marketing advisory board has been discussing the current state of funding for the NHS and its technology. Read how the ‘digital funding hokey-cokey’ is impacting IT departments and companies alike.

Public health experts raise health impacts of the climate crisis

Professor Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, has warned the climate crisis poses a “significant and growing threat” to health in the UK, which saw more than 2,800 excess deaths in this summer’s heatwaves. Launching a Centre for Climate and Health Security, Harries said this figure could triple by 2050, without action to curb and adapt to global heating (The Guardian). Meanwhile, international experts contributing to the Lancet Countdown report have warned that “extreme weather events, heat stress, declining air…water… and food quality” and insect-borne diseases “threaten all of us” and “immediate action” is needed “to save millions of lives” (The Lancet).

NHS England and NHS Digital merger accelerated

In what turned out to be one of her last actions as health and social care secretary (above), Therese Coffey told NHS England and NHS Digital to complete their merger by “early January” rather than “the end of March.” In a media statement, the Department of Health and Social Care said this would improve data sharing processes to streamline patient pathways and promote “choice.” The merger of NHS England, NHSX, and NHS Digital was recommended in the Wade-Gery review last November; but at this year’s HETT show, digital lead Simon Bolton admitted job losses are consuming the agencies’ attention (Highland Marketing analysis).

Health IT news: from the Royal College of Radiologists, Propel@YH, FibriCheck, Orion Health and X-on

The Royal College of Radiologists has formed a partnership with Irish company xWave with a view to making its clinical decision support platform available to clinicians across the UK. The platform enables clinicians to input information about a patient and get ‘next step’ advice (digitalhealth.net). The Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network has added another seven solutions to its accelerator programme, Propel@YH (Health Tech Newspaper). The Loomer Medical Group in Staffordshire has introduced the FibriCheck digital stethoscope app to enable patients to check their own heartbeat at home and share recordings with medics (Health Tech Newspaper).

Brad Porter has become chief executive at Orion Health after 30 years with Ian McCrae at the helm. Porter said Orion Health is committed to its UK partners and customers and is looking forward to helping them to evolve their shared care records for the coming era of population health management (Health Tech World). Paul Bensley, the managing director of X-on, has welcomed the commitment to roll-out cloud telephony to general practice in ‘Our Plan for Patients’; but urged NHS England to make sure this is done at scale to deliver the promised benefits for GPs and patients (Health Tech World).

Highland Marketing advisory board: “The NHS digital funding hokey cokey”

Analysis

At its autumn meeting, our panel of NHS IT and industry experts discussed health and care funding against a backdrop of huge political uncertainty. In these circumstances, money for IT programmes is often put into the system only to be clawed back again; and the board considered how this impacts on NHS IT departments and health tech companies alike.