News in brief
GP IT faces anxious start to 2013: Primary care IT leaders have expressed concern about the late decisions that are being made on who will be responsible for GP IT in the future, reported eHealth Insider. When asked to reflect on 2012 and to look ahead to 2013, Chaand Nagpaul, negotiator for the BMA’s General Practitioner Committee, said: “The key event in primary care IT was the decision by the NHS Commissioning Board (CB) to delegate responsibility for the operational management of GP IT and associated funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) at a late stage.” The NHS CB announced at the start of December that CCGs would be expected to start commissioning GP IT services from commissioning support units or other providers by the end of the month.
Government backs businesses with £5 million funding boost: The Department of Health has announced £5 million of funding for businesses to come up with new products or services that will help improve the experience of people with mental health illnesses and people at the end of their life. This funding is part of the government’s commitment to help improve care for patients with long-term conditions and ensure high quality care and support is offered to dying people. Health Minister, Lord Howe said: “Small businesses play a crucial role in providing creative and innovative solutions to existing problems. That’s why we are supporting them through our £5 million funding to tackle these challenges and make a difference to patient’s lives.”
Department of Health digital strategy to embrace collegiate role: Digital leader Rachel Neaman has outlined plans to develop a community of digital specialists in the health and care system, reported Government Computing. The Department of Health’s (DH) digital strategy – delivered as a website, sets out how the DH will give its staff the knowledge, skills, tools and confidence to embrace digital opportunities to deliver better health, better care and better value for all. This strategy also sets the direction for that programme of change, and demonstrates how the DH can lead the way as a digital department of state, and provide policy leadership for a digitally enabled and technologically ambitious health and care system.
MPs to probe policy of health budget under spending: The chair of the health select committee has warned that there could be a “significant danger of perverse incentives” if the health service remains unable to carry over unspent funds from one financial year to the next. Stephen Dorrell spoke after the committee received written evidence from the DH confirming HSJ’s (subscription required) report that the department had returned nearly £3bn of unspent funds to the Treasury over the past two years. He added that the committee would now want to “reflect on” whether the DH’s practice of consistently under-spending its budget remained appropriate at a time when health funding was so constrained. The committee is set to publish a report on public expenditure later this month.
One in three have online medical record, many without knowledge: More than one in three people have had their medical details uploaded onto a central database accessible by healthcare professionals across the country, many without their knowledge, reported The Telegraph. The controversial system designed to ensure that doctors have fast access to brief details of a patient’s allergies and medication in an emergency has accumulated the records of 22m people including children. Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt is keen to boost the use of IT in the NHS and wants the emergency services to have access to a patient’s medical records when they arrive to treat them in an emergency. Campaigners warned that the majority of those patients whose records have been uploaded will not be aware and said there are dangers the information could be hacked, bought by private companies or matched to other publicly available details on individuals.
Medical technology sector beating the recession with £16billion turnover: Newly-released government data from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has revealed that despite ongoing economic pressure, the medical technology sector is experiencing continued growth, with a turnover of £16billion in 2011 – an increase of £1billion on the previous year, reported Building Better Healthcare. The statistics show the sector is now the biggest employer in the life science industry, directly supporting 71,000 people in the UK alone.
Alexandra Hospital neglect: Jeremy Hunt ‘disgusted’: Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he is “disgusted and appalled” at accounts of patient neglect at Worcestershire Acute NHS Hospital Trust reported the BBC. The trust will apologise to the families of 38 people and many will receive a payment of, on average, about £10,000. The incidents happened between 2002 and 2011, with 35 cases brought against the Alexandra Hospital and three against the Worcestershire Royal Hospital. It was claimed in one case an 84 year old man starved to death at Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital in 2009. Health bosses at the trust agreed in November to write to each of the families apologising for lapses in care, but have not admitted legal liability.
Obesity: NHS approach ‘extremely patchy’: The BBC has reported that obesity services across the UK are “extremely patchy” and valuable opportunities to help obese patients are often lost. A report by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said hospitals in particular had “poorly developed” systems in place. It said the problems meant services were often just dealing with the symptoms, such as heart disease or diabetes, rather than the cause. The UK is now among the most obese nations in the world with one in four adults obese. This figure is predicted to more than double by 2050. Prof John Wass, from the RCP, said: “Britain is getting bigger and whilst we try to prevent the increase in obesity, we must also prepare the NHS for the influx of patients presenting with severe complex obesity.”
Child protection database plans revived: A fresh £8.6m initiative to co-ordinate NHS and social services data to improve child protection has been announced by the government, reported eHealth Insider. The system due to be adopted in 2015, records whether the young patient is the subject of any kind of protection plan drawn up by a social services department and will ensure that accident and emergency staff can access information about a child’s recent visits to hospitals around the country. It is hoped that the system will support doctors’ and nurses’ existing efforts to detect non-accidental injury by alerting them to children brought to hospital for numerous emergency visits. The system should also help to foil abusing parents who take injured children to different A&E departments to avoid detection.
Targets and jargon ‘prevent generation of nurses stopping abuse’: The Telegraph has reported that a fixation with business jargon and targets rather than basic morality has created a generation of nurses, social workers and careers almost incapable of stopping abuse. Prof Keith Brown, director of the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work in Bournemouth has redesigned training for members of caring professions. He said people should be taught “resilience” to stick to their principles and “moral sense” even in stressful environments. He said that the abuse scandal at the Winterbourne View private hospital in Bristol had shown what can happen when even those not perpetrating abuse found it easier to “turn a blind eye”.
Government telehealth plans ‘over ambitious’ claim industry experts: Industry experts, who predict the adoption of assistive technologies will be slower than expected, have dubbed the government’s plans to roll out telehealth services to millions of people across England over the next five years as ‘over ambitious’, reported Building Better Healthcare. In a report titled ‘Telehealth: The Next Big Thing?’, analyst Tola Sargeant of TechMarketView claims barriers to adoption are preventing the widespread rollout of telehealth devices. She writes, while there is a stronger sense of central leadership from the government, this is not backed up by significant funding. “In January of this year, the DH established an enabling framework to promote collaboration between healthcare provider and technology suppliers,” she explains. “However, with no funding to back it up, it’s difficult to see the move as much more than an expression of government aspirations. It does, however, lend credibility and some momentum to telehealth initiatives.”
Greater Manchester NHS trusts splash out on electronic Apple products: NHS trusts across Greater Manchester that have splashed out on Apple products have ended up with more than they know what to do with. Since 2010, eight of the 10 NHS trusts spent more than £25,000 in total on 60 iPads, seven of which have yet to be allocated for use, reported Manchester Evening News. Meanwhile an Apple Mac computer bought by NHS Manchester was not issued to any member of staff due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. A spokesperson for NHS Greater Manchester, which oversees the running of the region’s 10 primary care trusts, said: “There are a number of reasons as to why equipment may not be allocated to a member of staff at any moment in time, including changes to staff roles, staff leaving and waiting for new members of staff.”
Opinion
2012 changes to be felt in 2013
As we start 2013, EHI rounds up the views’ of IT directors and influencers on what they expect from the year to come. While many recognise that implementing IT will have to match the wider pace of organisational change during the massive restructuring we will continue to see in 2013, others said that they were grateful that 2012 had brought an agreement between the DH and CSC over NPfIT, which has provided them with some clarity on how best to proceed with their IT strategies.
Christine Walters, IT director at Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said that there is “some really exciting technology available” but that users’ expectations have grown over the NPfIT years and suppliers will need to meet them. Meanwhile Bill Aylward, EPR project director at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust argued that clinical engagement in IT still has some way to go. He said:
“There is a groundswell of demand from frustrated clinicians, desperate to see the quality of IT at work catch up with what they are used to using at home and in other consumer environments.
“Predicting the future, especially in IT, is a dangerous game, but I’m certain that 2013 will not be dull.”
Transforming primary care: let’s start with the basics
In this week’s ‘Think Differently’ blog for The King’s Fund, Hugh Reeves, GP and clinical chair for Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group, calls for key changes in a “primary care service model that hasn’t really changed in the past 40 years.”
“It seems as if the world has woken up to the fact that we must transform primary care, and that unless this happens the NHS will struggle to deliver the patient-centered, joined-up services and the financial efficiencies that our patients – and the public purse – demand.”
With increasing demand on primary care due to the UK’s aging population, Reeves argues that more emphasis should be placed on supporting system change for practices. Reeves continues by explaining the approach being applied in Cumbria, to “develop a common platform across the county on which to build.”
“The first element is an integrated clinical information system that allows the patient record to be shared across primary care (in and out-of-hours), between health and social care and between primary and specialist care.
“The second element is supporting redevelopment of the primary care workforce: GPs, nurses, health care assistants and administrative staff. This needs to be done in a structured way across the whole system, ensuring consistency of standards between practices.
“A third element is helping practices change the way they work – reducing waste and inefficiency, and moving from reactive to far more anticipatory care. This is fundamental stuff, and at the moment there seems to be an expectation nationally that practices will somehow achieve this while getting on with the day job.”
The biggest stories of 2012 and the hopes and fears for GPs in 2013
As a new year dawns Pulse has taken the opportunity to review the biggest stories that came out of 2012. There were a few as it was a truly momentous year for general practice.
The pensions ‘day of action’, the failure of the battle to prevent the health act becoming law or the acrimonious breakdown of talks over the GP contract – all were events that have had a wide-ranging and powerful impact on GPs. Many cited the contract imposition as the event likely to shape the year, but it is likely that the pressure on all aspects of the NHS is going to increase – leading some to say that 2013 will bring a ‘perfect storm’ for the health service.
As a consequence, the reverberations of 2012 are certainly likely to continue for many years to come, and some leading GPs provided their views on what GPs should expect for 2013. Some of the themes included: a huge ramp up of the Quality and Outcomes Framework workload, practices battling with online records and new IT systems, increased screening for signs of dementia and GPs taking on commissioning.
Pulse also asked GP leaders what their hopes and fears were for the coming year. Peter Swinyard, chairman of the Family Doctors Association said: “My hope for 2013 is for the government to come back to the table and really to talk to us and engage with us and my fear is that they won’t.” Dr Charles Alessi, NAPC chair said: “I look to 2013 as the time we discover quite how valuable primary care is. I feel many have overlooked the fact we have one of the most skilled work forces in the world and one which manages clinical uncertainty better than most. Clinical commissioning groups are autonomous organisations and need to reflect the aspirations of their constituents which are practices and the needs of their populations. So my fear is the behaviors of old around top down direction will persist.”
Highland Marketing Blog
In this week’s blog, Highland Marketing’s design lead, Alex Leyton, looks at one trust that has improved patient experience through ‘visual communication’ and asks what the impact of this approach could be in 2013?
