News in brief
Kelsey: government weight behind NHS IT: The government has “put its weight” behind investment in NHS technology with the recent spending review, according to Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s director of patients and information. Kelsey told the audience at the Roadmap for Sustainable Health event at The King’s Fund that he welcomed the recent news that the government intends to invest £1bn in NHS IT over the next five years, reported DigitalHealth.net. “What the spending review means is that we now have, within our grasp, by far the biggest injection of investment in the rebuilding and redesign of our digital infrastructure locally,” said Kelsey. “The government has put its weight firmly behind this overarching imperative to get the basics right so that we can deliver a platform for the digital revolution.” He added that the programme of the National Information Board, which is shaping the direction of NHS IT with its Personalised Health and Care 2020 framework, is going to receive “very specific considerable funding”. “We know from lots of examples of other industries and in America that it does matter that you put some capital on the table for technology services. What you will see when that is finally confirmed is genuinely a specific commitment and recognition that this information revolution that has eluded us is fundamental, he said.”
NHS England blasted for withholding weekly performance data over winter: NHS England has been blasted for its decision to suspend weekly data publication showing how hospitals are performing given the looming winter crisis around the corner. Nuffield Trust’s chief executive, Nigel Edwards, said the body’s decision could obscure important areas where the NHS is under excessive pressure over the coming months, reported National Health Executive. He said: “All the indicators from the most recent set of performance statistics in September were that the health service is heading for a tough winter, with the figures showing that the four-hour waiting time in A&E was not met again, and that delayed transfers of care days had increased by almost 10,000 in a year. It’s important for individual trusts to be able to check quickly whether their performance is out of step with that of others, and for areas of the system where excessive pressure is being felt to become clear quickly. I am worried that only publishing figures monthly on indicators like waits in A&E and cancelled operations won’t provide this clarity quickly enough.” And according to the Daily Mail, Dr Clifford Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said without weekly figures on areas such as A&E targets, bed closures and delayed discharges, trusts would suffer from a lack of good and useful data.
“Major challenges” to Scottish health and care integration: Plans to integrate health and social care provision in Scotland face significant risks that must be addressed if the reform is to improve how services are delivered, a report has found. Examining plans to create partnerships known as integration authorities, which are set to bring together over £8bn of health and care spending by April 2016, the Accounts Commission and auditor general for Scotland said challenges include budgeting, governance arrangements and workforce planning. The report called on the authorities to set clear timescales for integration to be delivered, as there is evidence to suggest they would not be able to make a major impact until after their first year of operation, reported Public Finance. Around two million people in Scotland have at least one long-term condition, and almost two-thirds of the population will have developed a long-term condition by the age of 75. As a result, the Scottish government estimates the need for health and social care services will rise by between 18% and 29% between 2010 and 2030. Accounts Commission chair Douglas Sinclair said integration has the potential to be a powerful instrument to address these pressures, and the Scottish government, NHS boards and councils have done well to get management arrangements in place. “However, there’s a real and pressing need for integration authorities to take the lead now and begin strategically shifting resources towards a different, more community-based approach to healthcare,” Sinclair added.
Patients set to book 10 million GP appointments online this year: Patients arranging GP online appointments are on track to exceed 10 million this financial year, NHS England digital lead Beverly Bryant has announced, reported GPOnline. The numbers, projections for the full 2015/16 financial year, are based on activity figures from the first six months of the year collected by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). Patients have also been accessing information on their medical records online, viewing GP test results 270,000 times and letters about their care 260,000 times since April, the period when all practices were required to make Summary Care Records available to patients. GP Dr Masood Nazir, clinical lead for NHS England’s Patient Online programme, said: “As the workload of GP practices grows, online services not only reduce the administrative burden for practices who are embracing them but the sharing of information is also shown to increase patient satisfaction, while delivering real benefits and convenience to patients.” Bryant called on practices to use new guidance for Patient Online to offer more services to more patients “as soon as possible”. She added: “We need to go further and faster – more patients, accessing more services and being able to view more information about their health and care.”
Summary Care Records: GPs add info: Almost all of England’s GPs are now able to write additional information into a patient’s Summary Care Record (SCR) from within their clinical system, with more than 80% of SystmOne practices having added codes already. The SCR was launched in 2010 as a shared record with essential patient details that could be accessed by clinicians across the NHS. Its core details include a person’s demographic details, as well as any allergies, medications and adverse reactions. There are now nearly 55 million people with an SCR, accounting for around 96% of the population of England. The SCR has since been expanded to include additional information, such as the reason for medication; significant medical history; anticipatory care information; communication preferences; end of life care information; and immunisations. A spokesperson for Emis said: “This additional information is especially useful for clinicians caring for patients with chronic and long term conditions, as well as vulnerable patients such as the elderly or medically impaired.” Dr Pauline Love, an end of life GP at North Derbyshire CCG told DigitalHealth.net that she had “little need” to read the additional information but had “great benefit adding to it”. These benefits include patients not having to go through all of their history when seeing other healthcare professionals, such as A&E or out-of-hours services.
Rise in cancelled operations due to bed shortages: Hundreds of planned operations were cancelled in Scottish hospitals during October due to a lack of capacity as winter pressures begin to bite, reported The Scotsman. Bed shortages were among the reasons for delays to patient treatment, with 549 planned procedures shelved due to lack of capacity compared to 488 the month before. The figures from the Information Services Division Scotland reveal that 9.7% of the total 31,491 planned operations were cancelled by the hospital or the patient, compared to just 9% in September and 8.9% in June. This is equal to an average of 98 operations cancelled per day. Jim Hume MSP said: “There are any number of good reasons why an operation might need to be postponed, but the increase in operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons is clearly a concern. The number of patients missing operations through no fault of their own has increased every month since June. We all want to see patients get the care they need as quickly as possible but at present, NHS staff are unable to accommodate nearly 550 patients a month who require surgery. Doctors and nurses are working flat out. With winter upon us, pressure on NHS services will only increase.” Health secretary Shona Robison said only a small number of operations were cancelled for non-clinical reasons.
RC Psych backs cSUS: The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the first to back the Clinical Software Usability Survey (Csus), launched by DigitalHealth.net and the Chief Clinical Information Officer’s Leaders Network. Health IT companies Emis Health and IMS MAXIMS have also come out in support of the survey, along with healthcare apps organisation HANDI. The survey is intended to provide a better understanding of how easy a piece of clinical software is to use; according to the doctors, nurses and staff who use it on a regular basis. The ultimate aim is to create a site similar to travel review site “TripAdvisor” so that clinicians and NHS managers can see reviews of medical software and discuss professional experiences of different systems. Dr Jonathan Richardson, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists informatics committee, told DigitalHealth.net the usability survey is a key component to digitally enable clinicians to provide the best possible care to patients. “Usability information will allow organisations to make informed decisions when deciding on an electronic patient record (EPR) that will be fit for purpose: to enable digitally enabled patients, professionals and providers to allow local populations to make informed decisions about their health and care services,” he said. Shane Tickell, chief executive of IMS MAXIMS, welcomed the initiative to help improve usability of EPRs. “As a system supplier we are committed to learning how to build and deliver ever better systems. Input from clinicians has been part of our company ethos and development over 29 years and I ask our customers to help push the standards and quality of clinical software ever higher.”
Worcestershire trust targets expansion of digital document plans: Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is looking to build on its existing technology agreements to expand use of systems that will allow staff to collect clinical information using e-forms rather than hand written documents as part of a wider shift towards mobile working and paperless operations, reported Government Computing. Since February this year, the trust has said all its clinicians have been using scanned case notes for recording specialities and all attendance details. Historical paper notes are therefore no longer being provided by the trust as part of a digitisation strategy in line with wider NHS aims to be paperless by 2020. Having entered into an agreement with Xerox back in 2009 to manage its paper case note service, the Worcestershire trust has since worked with the company to digitise records management as part of a process that has seen an estimated 81 million pages being scanned to allow for mobile-friendly access to information. “Whilst our vision of electronic case notes being available for clinical staff to view 24/7 from any of our hospital locations is fully implemented, the aim is to expand how we use the existing technology so that clinical staff can capture clinical information using e-forms rather than using hand written forms,” said a spokesperson for the trust. “The trust will also move to mobile working for all consultants, through the use of iPads.”
NHS set to save millions on essential prescribing software through new framework: The NHS will have the opportunity to save millions of pounds on important but traditionally costly IT prescribing systems that help healthcare professionals to choose the correct and most cost effective medicines for patients, following the launch of a new procurement framework from NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS). The new Medicines Management Prescribing Decision Support Systems Framework (MMDSS) is injecting healthy new competition into the market for the widely-used technology, reported eHealthNews.eu. The prescribing systems help doctors, nurses and other clinical staff select the most affordable and appropriate treatments for specific patients. NHS organisations can now choose to purchase either OptimiseRx or ScriptSwitch, without the need to engage in complex and costly individual procurement exercises. The technology, which is particularly important for patient safety, is now being made available at more competitive rates and with improved contract terms through the shared services framework. Thomas Slater, strategic procurement team, NHS Shared Business Services, said: “This is a great example of a real NHS collaboration that will help the wider NHS make significant savings on an important technology needed across the country.”
Care plans shared with InterSystems: London’s care plan sharing scheme Coordinate My Care (CMC) has gone live with InterSystems’ HealthShare, reported DigitalHealth.net. CMC provides opt-in urgent care plans for more than 25,000 patients in London and Surrey Downs. The programme is using HealthShare to electronically share these plans with all staff involved in a patient’s care including urgent care settings such as ambulance, NHS 111 and A&E staff. They are also available in real time to GPs, community nurses, hospices, social workers, care homes and community palliative care teams. The programme’s leaders hope the new IT system will make creating personalised urgent care plans easier and more accessible and drive further uptake of the scheme. Future plans include increasing interoperability to ultimately allow users to seamlessly use the CMC service from within their host IT systems where appropriate. A link with Emis Health will go live this month allowing users to access CMC from within Emis Web without a separate login. The team is talking to TPP, Vision, and Adastra to establish similar ‘in context linking’ in 2016. Patients will also be able to access a read only version of their care plan from the New Year and there are plans to develop a fully integrated and interactive patient portal by the summer of 2016.
MedeAnalytics appoints new head of analytics: Paul Molyneux is the new head of analytics at MedeAnalytics’ UK branch, reported Digital Age. Molyneux has been appointed to help NHS healthcare planners and frontline staff understand which patients across their local population are at risk of specific adverse events and what interventions will work for individual patients as a means of prevention. Once part of the Healthcare Commission team that uncovered statistical outliers related to the Mid Staffordshire scandal, Molyneux will now work closely with clinical and epidemiological colleagues at MedeAnalytics and across health and care. Molyneux said: “MedeAnalytics has become the first to solve major governance obstacles to enable the safe sharing and use of information between authorised users across different care settings. I look forward to working with customers throughout the UK to help them unleash the power of that information by predicting where and when across their health economy they can have the maximum impact for patients.” Wayne Parslow, UK general manager at MedeAnalytics, said: “Having the right people in place with the right tools to respond to real NHS and healthcare challenges is crucial. Combining the right technology with those on the frontline will allow the NHS and social care to not only understand which patients are at risk but where, when and how they can successfully intervene.”
Hospitals told to appoint discharge coordinators to avoid delays: Hospitals should appoint a single health or social care practitioner responsible for discharging patients to avoid delays in discharge, according to new NICE guidance. The health watchdog has recommended that the discharge coordinator role, which could be specially created or the responsibility handed to a member of the multi-disciplinary team looking after a particular person, should be the “central point of contact” for health and social care practitioners, the person and their family during discharge planning, reported National Health Executive. The guidance added that the coordinator should work with the hospital and community based teams to agree a discharge plan, which should take into account the person’s social and emotional wellbeing, as well as the practicalities of daily life. Additionally, they should ensure that any specialist equipment and support is in place before the person is discharged from hospital, if it is required. The latest social care guideline aims to ensure people with social care needs who need hospital treatment get the support they need to leave hospital in a co-ordinated and timely way.
NHS informatics clinician joins IMMJ Systems: Clinical informatics specialist and retired surgeon, Ian Linehan, has joined the board of digital patient medical records supplier IMMJ Systems as a non-executive director. IMMJ Systems develops scalable, intelligent information solutions for healthcare that deliver real value, reported Building Better Healthcare. Its launch product, MediViewer, takes an optimised approach to digitising patient medical records and presents them rapidly in a way that makes the most sense to clinicians. “Many digital patient medical records systems have, until now, been a source of frustration for the clinical community,” said Linehan. “IMMJ Systems has developed fast, easy-to-use technology that helps clinicians do their jobs, rather than act as a barrier. MediViewer shows that good digital health technology can cost less and be delivered quickly without having to sacrifice quality.” “Ian’s pioneering work in the field of clinical informatics, and his considerable experience of electronic patient medical records implementations, gives us access to unrivalled expertise relevant to the needs of our clients,” said Michael van de Weg, director of IMMJ Systems.
UKtech50 2015 – The most influential people in UK IT: Computer Weekly has announced its sixth annual UKtech50, which aims to identify the most influential leaders in UK IT. An expert judging panel representing every aspect of the IT profession helped decide the results – along with a reader vote – to determine who holds the most influence over the future of the UK technology sector in the next 12 months. Beverley Bryant, director of strategic systems and technology, NHS England featured number 14 on the list. Julian David, CEO, TechUK also featured on the list.
Opinion
Better solutions needed to support older people leaving hospital care
David McCullough, chief executive, Royal Voluntary Service explains why a way must be found to support vulnerable older people in their homes following discharge from hospital.
“In last week’s autumn statement, George Osborne announced that councils across Britain will be allowed to increase council tax by up to 2% to fund adult social care, as well as a top up of £1.5bn to the Better Care Fund. This funding for the struggling care sector is, of course, very welcome.
“However, the obvious fact remains that vast numbers of older people with non-critical needs won’t qualify for formal care but will still need support after a hospital stay. The situation we face is there simply isn’t sufficient provision of care to go around when older people leave hospital.
“Now that formal care is in shorter supply, hospital teams overseeing discharge need to make a realistic assessment of the strength of an individual’s available network for the weeks ahead, not just the next few days. Although most families felt staff had a good understanding of their relatives’ personal circumstances at home, close to a third reported that staff hadn’t talked to them directly about this or the impact on needs post-discharge.
“As part of our ongoing Let’s end going home alone campaign we’re calling on communities, local authorities and NHS trusts to work in partnership to provide more volunteers in hospitals and support vulnerable older people in their homes following discharge from hospital.
“It’s time for more imaginative solutions.”
Beware false dawns: this will be the NHS’s toughest decade
Through this decade of austerity, health will have been protected relative to other government departments. But huge challenges remain for the NHS, says director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, Anita Charlesworth.
“The widely welcomed announcement that NHS England was to receive a significant element of ‘frontloaded’ funding in 2016-17 suggested that the depth of the financial crisis facing the NHS was understood. But the chancellor’s spending review statement confirmed the reality is that this is the toughest decade the NHS has ever faced.
“The increased funding will not be evenly spread. At the beginning of the decade health spending grew modestly, but from 2013-14 it has grown much faster in response to the mounting financial problems in the NHS. Since 2012-13 deficits have grown and spread across the system, driven by mounting agency staff costs and delayed transfers of care. By the end of September more than three quarters of NHS providers were in the red – the projected deficit for the end of the year is a staggering £2.2bn.
“While frontloading NHS England’s budget may have averted an immediate crisis, the medium term outlook is grim. 2018-19 and 2019-20 involve close to flat real terms funding. At the beginning of the decade the NHS managed for a couple of years with very low growth, but the circumstances were fundamentally different. Organisations were in good financial shape with some fairly straightforward opportunities for quick efficiencies. Administrative budgets could be cut and health service workers were prepared to share in the tough times with real terms pay cuts.
“Finances are now fragile and the ‘easy’ efficiency savings have been exhausted. More fundamentally, the pay and workforce outlook is very different. The service is struggling to recruit and retain enough staff, the agency problem is not going away quickly, morale is very low and private sector earnings are now picking up. This is leaving healthcare workers feeling left behind.
“This really is a decade of austerity, the most austere the NHS has ever faced. Getting through to 2020 without impacting on quality or access now looks like a truly herculean task.”
Allied health professionals are critical to new models of care
Allied health professionals (AHPs) make up 6% of the NHS workforce – the third largest professional group, but their vital contribution is marginalised, writes David Oliver, visiting fellow at The King’s Fund, in a blog this week.
“AHPs make up 6% of the NHS workforce – and still more work in social care, housing, local government, and the voluntary and private sectors. They are highly trained and professionally autonomous practitioners, yet too often their vital contribution is marginalised in a public discourse that tends to refer only to ‘doctors and nurses’. This needs to change.
“Twelve diverse professions are listed under the AHP umbrella. I want to name them all: podiatrists; occupational therapists; physiotherapists; speech and language therapists; orthoptists; dieticians; paramedics; diagnostic and therapeutic radiographers; prosthetists and orthotists; drama therapists; music therapists; and art therapists. Pharmacists also play a key role in the NHS but are not historically grouped with AHPs.
“Each has its own professional body. There is also an Allied Health Professions Federation, which – it is fair to say – does not have as strong a public voice as similar bodies for doctors and nurses.
“Yet at a policy-making level, this large workforce has just one chief professional officer, supported by a small team, to advocate for all the allied health professions in England. Compare this to the plethora of doctors and nurses who work within the Department of Health and NHS England.
“The AHP workforce will be expected to play a critical role in meeting the challenges facing our health and social care systems.”
Highland Marketing blog
In this week’s blog Gregor MacKenzie reveals 10 signs that you need to invest in visual branding support.
