Party conference season turns up old NHS chestnuts As the party conference season got underway, prime minister Rishi Sunak re-floated the idea of fining patients who miss GP or hospital appointments – a hardy political chestnut he also raised and binned last October (BBC News). Other senior Conservatives have suggested charging patients for GP and A&E appointments. But this week the Institute for Government published a report noting there is little public appetite for this, that it would be complicated and expensive to implement, and that widespread exemptions would mean that it would raise very little money, while stopping some patients from seeking help (The Guardian).

‘Worrying’ drop-out rate from medical and nursing degrees The Nuffield Trust has published a report on the “worryingly high” drop-out rate from medical, nursing, and associated courses. The think-tank found that one in eight nursing students don’t complete their degrees and one in 14 don’t start a career as a nurse. Most medical students finish their foundation training, but a third don’t move on to train as GPs or consultants. The report puts forward ten recommendations to improve the situation, including action to improve the perception of healthcare training, a student loan forgiveness scheme, apprenticeships and better monitoring of data.

EPR latest: Guy’s and St Thomas’ prepares for go-live; Newcastle investigates lost letters Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust will go-live with its electronic patient record system next Thursday, 5 October, the Health Tech Newspaper has reported. The trust will launch its Epic system and introduce MyChart to enable patients to access their health records. Meanwhile, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is reviewing 24,000 documents after admitting that “several thousand” documents, including discharge summaries and clinic letters, have not been sent to GPs due to an issue with its electronic patient record. The issue was uncovered by a Care Quality Commission inspection (Health Tech Newspaper).

FDP focus of attention at HETT  Health and health tech journalists were at the Healthcare Efficiency Through Technology show at ExCeL London, where NHS England’s plans to procure a Federated Data Platform were the focus of interest. The Health Service Journal reported comments from national director for transformation Vin Diwakar that the FDP is “critical” for the future of the NHS. Digitalhealth.net reported that NHS England’s chief data and analytics officer, Ming Tang, said it will be important to keep the public on board. The FDP is controversial because of £480,000 cost and because US firm Palantir is expected to win the contract to deliver it. Privacy campaigners are not on board.   Highland Marketing was also at HETT: read our thoughts about what the keynote presentations had to say about the state of health tech below.

Company news: Clanwilliam launches UK Division, Orion Health opens up annual conference to debate the future of shared care records  Clanwilliam has launched a UK Division, backed by a new leadership team, and significant investment in R&D. The new division brings together Bluespier, Dictate IT, Maxwell Stanley, Medisec Software and Informatica Systems, under the leadership of Stuart van Rooyen (Health Tech World). Orion Health is holding its annual UK and Ireland customer conference in October to explore the future of shared care records. Mark Hindle, vice president, UK and Ireland, said he was particularly interested in helping customers to make better use of the data in shared care records and to put it into the hands of patients (Health Tech World) (conference sign-up).