Healthcare Roundup

Seven days in the NHS and health IT

‘NHS in England facing tougher challenges now than in Covid’ – Pritchard

The NHS in England is facing tougher challenges now than when Covid-19 arrived, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard told the King’s Fund annual conference (The Guardian). In widely reported comments, Pritchard said the pandemic gave the service “a single unifying mission” but it now faces “months and years” of “complexity and uncertainty”. Some of the many challenges include the elective care backlog, demand on emergency services, public dissatisfaction with primary care and the deteriorating funding situation. Pritchard said the NHS is facing £5.6 billion of unfunded costs this year and “that is something we’re in conversation with the government about” ahead of the autumn statement.

NHS news: ICBs told to rationalise costs and roles; waiting list shortens (sort of)

In her King’s Fund speech (above) Amanda Pritchard triggered speculation that a round of integrated care system consolidation could be on the way, by urging their integrated care boards to think about “rationalising roles and processes [and] using economies of scale.” The Health Service Journal reported that she also put new impetus behind the idea of provider collaboratives, by saying NHS England will identify one per region to “show the way for others.” In other news, NHS England has estimated that there may be 5.5 million people, rather than 7 million, on waiting lists, because some people are multiple RTT pathways (HSJ).

Steve Brine elected chair of the Commons health and social care committee

Steve Brine, the Conservative MP for Winchester and Chandler’s Ford, has been elected chair of the Commons health and social care committee. The post was vacated by former health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt when he agreed to become chancellor. Brine is a close associate of Hunt and briefly served as a junior minister (for public health and primary care) when he was secretary of state. In a statement, Brine said he wanted to know why “despite spending vast sums on health we fail to reap the rewards in better outcomes” and that he would be pressing government to “deliver better value for money.”

Doubt hangs over Citizen’s Access to GP records project

A flagship NHS IT project looks to be descending into chaos. Pulse reported on Wednesday that Citizen’s Access – a project to enable patients to automatically view new entries in their GP record via the NHS App – had been stopped at the last minute. But an NHS England update suggested that practices have to ask EMIS and TPP to pause the development and can anyway disable it locally (Health Tech Newspaper). Successive governments have promised patients real-time access to their healthcare records. But medical bodies have been arguing that GP notes are written for GPs not patients, and blanket access will cause anxiety and safeguarding issues.

Health IT news: King’s Fund puts out report on interoperability; UKCloud is put into liquidation; DigitalHealth.London opens latest Launchpad programme; HTN Awards 2023 looks for judges; BSL 999 app launched

The King’s Fund has published a report on interoperability, digitalhealth.net has reported. The report, based on a literature review and interviews, has concluded that interoperability has three aspects that must align for success: good working relationships, technology that supports them, and an enabling environment “in which funding, capacity, skills, education and governance are aligned.” UKCloud has been put into liquidation after a winding up order was made against it and its parent company, Virtual Infrastructure Group, digitalhealth.net has reported. UKCloud had three trading brands, one of which was UKCloud Health, which attempted to support NHS digitisation strategies.

DigitalHealth.London is open for applications to its latest Launchpad programme for London-based, early-stage companies with ideas for transforming health and care, Health Tech Newspaper has reported. HTN itself is looking for judges for the HTN Now Awards 2023. An app has been launched to help people with hearing or speech impairments who use British Sign Language to make 999 calls, digitalhealth.net has reported. People who want to use the BSL 999 service need to launch a website or app that connects them to a BSL interpreter by video call. The interpreter then calls the emergency services and relays the conversation.

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.