News in brief
- Andy Burnham vows to scrap NHS market: Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has vowed to reverse the “rapid” privatisation of NHS hospitals in England if Labour wins power. Burnham warned that under the new freedoms some NHS hospitals are planning to double the number of private patients they treat, reported the BBC. In a speech at the Labour conference, he said the coalition risked destroying the character of the NHS that David Cameron had promised to protect. Labour has not ruled out all competition to provide NHS services.
- Shake-up of EU medical device regulations shocks industry: Industry leaders have hit out at the European Commission’s plans to overhaul the regulatory system for medical devices, claiming the proposals will ‘fundamentally change the way that products are brought to market without having a positive impact on patient safety’. The comments come just days after the EU published the details of its intention to revise the current regulatory frameworks for medical devices, which were last altered in the 1990s. Mike Kreuzer, executive director of technical and regulatory affairs for the trade body, the Association for British Healthcare Industries (ABHI), told Building Better Healthcare: “The medical device industry has long called for the overhaul of the medical device directives.”
- Leicestershire takes RiO: Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust has awarded a contract to CSE Healthcare for its electronic patient record system, RiO, reported eHealth Insider. The trust awarded CSE the £1.4m five-year contract following a tender process which began in December 2011 involving two other companies. The original notice stated that the trust wanted an integrated electronic patient record system, which was “scalable and extensible” in order to meet Leicestershire’s future needs. RiO will replace the Maracis system currently in use at the trust.
- Healthwatch England launched: Healthwatch England, the new national, statutory consumer champion for health and social care in England has been launched this month, this is a key milestone in achieving the government’s vision set out in the White Paper ‘Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS’ Healthwatch England, which exists to ensure the public’s voice is heard at the national level, reported the Department of Health. Health Minister, Norman Lamb said: “I’m pleased to welcome the launch of Healthwatch England today-England’s new national consumer champion for health and care services.”
- NHS Bournemouth and Poole patients’ privacy breached: The BBC has revealed that thousands of patients have had their privacy breached after NHS Bournemouth and Poole gave their personal information to a private company. The details of 3,700 people were passed on to Enhanced Care Service, which called and asked them to attend a health check. A trust spokeswoman said they would be writing to the affected patients to apologise. The Information Commissioner’s Office has said the trust breached the Data Protection Act.
- Outdated IT systems mean many NHS hospitals cannot track individual patient costs: Results from the Nuffield Trust programme studying efficiency in the NHS have found that clinicians and managers in many NHS hospitals cannot spot the often considerable variations in costs generated by patients, medical specialties and consultant teams because of outdated IT systems, reported the British Journal of Healthcare Computing. The Nuffield Trust report: ‘Patient-level costing: can it yield efficiency savings?’ studies the extent of the use of ′patient-level information and costing systems′ (PLICS) in the NHS and their potential to increase efficiency. It reviews the history of cost monitoring in British hospitals (going back to 1893) and the current use of patient-level costing, then examines in depth the data of one NHS trust to show some of the analyses that are possible using a PLICS.
- Scottish board on road to ‘paper-lite’: NHS Dumfries and Galloway are deploying a new electronic document management system, starting with its mental health service next month, reported eHealth Insider. The Scottish health board is using dartEDM software from Nottinghamshire company, Plumtree Group. The software will allow clinicians to quickly view and update patient records on computers across the health board area, which covers a population of more than 148,000 in south-west Scotland. The new system will go-live next month in mental health services with two years’ worth of records available on 4,000-5,000 patients.
- DH asks NICE to develop standards for integrated health and social care: The DH has asked NICE to develop further standards for integrated health and social care, reported Pulse. NICE is currently developing two pilot health and social care quality standards – on the care of people with dementia and the health and wellbeing of looked-after children, which will be published in April 2013. The new standards will be based on accredited guidance, including NICE clinical guidelines and public health guidance. The DH has also tasked NICE with developing a number of standards where no health or social care guidance on a topic exists. NICE will have to first develop new guidance recommendations before producing the relevant quality standard. Topic areas include the transition from child to adult services, the transition between health and social care services and child maltreatment.
- NHS gives up rights over patient software: The DH has given up rights over software delivered under the National Programme for IT, reported Computer Weekly. It secured ownership of the NHS programme’s intellectual property in 2003 as contractual insurance against the project going wrong. Now the project has gone wrong, it no longer has the insurance. The Department admitted it no longer had rights over software delivered by Computer Sciences Corporation after it agreed earlier this month an interim resolution to a protracted contract disagreement over the suppliers’ failure to deliver NHS software. The Conservative-led coalition government had made public ownership of software IP the central plank of IT reforms it promised when running for election, when the now chancellor George Osborne said: “The NHS programme’s failure demonstrated the need for government to build systems using open source software.”
- NHS Wales’ ICT strategy to overcome ‘lock-in’: NHS Wales Informatics Service says failure to overcome technology lock-in will prevent service integration, reported Government Computing. To overcome the legacy of technology ‘lock-in’ NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS) will consolidate its modular ICT services on a new platform. In a draft information services strategy the NWIS says that existing components of the Welsh NHS national ICT architecture will be reused to support new elements of the strategy. The components include the Myddin patient administration system, laboratory information system, national NHS directory and email system, and picture archiving and communication system.
Opinion
More patient and public involvement in how services are run
With conference season upon us, NHS Confederation chief executive, Mike Farrar, has taken the opportunity to express his views. Firstly by giving his reaction to the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham’s speech last week, and secondly by writing an article for The Guardian in which he presents the case for involving the public more in how NHS services are run and the need for transparency, honesty and openness.
In response to the shadow health secretary’s speech, Farrar says:
“Mr Burnham is absolutely right to highlight the long-term pressures facing the NHS and the need for radical change to address them. A cocktail of financial pressure and demographic change means that the NHS needs to adapt to meet the needs of today’s patients.
“We urgently need an all-party debate about these issues, with radical solutions very much allowed. The NHS will judge the plans of all politicians on how they help the service tackle these massive problems.”
In his article for The Guardian Mr Farrar discusses the importance of involving patients and the public in how services are run, identifying three key areas in which the NHS can do so: involving the public more in key decisions about their health services, involving patients more in managing their care and encouraging greater involvement from the public in how they improve their health and wellbeing.
“There is a huge need for more transparency, honesty and openness about why we need to modernise health services. There is an even bigger need for revealing to the public information about the economics, finances, and costs of health and social care.
“Armed with better information about demand for and costs of healthcare, it should create the right platform for encouraging us to change to healthier lifestyle choices. There is the potential to move the public from ‘marching in opposition’ to changes to local services, to ‘walking in support’ of them. We could look forward to public board meetings, not fear them.”
The King’s Fund responds to the shadow secretary of state for health’s speech at the Labour Party Conference
Further Labour Party Conference comment and analysis has been provided by Chris Ham, chief executive of The King’s Fund responding to the shadow secretary of state for health’s speech.
“Andy Burnham has outlined a vision for the future of health and social care which accentuates the differences between the Labour Party and the government on the NHS. He is right to stress the need for fundamental change in health and social care services. Our own work has made the case for radical changes to ensure the NHS is fit to meet the challenges of the future as the population ages and health needs change.
“This includes moving care closer to people’s homes and re-thinking the role of hospitals which must change to improve the quality of specialist services and better meet the needs of older patients. We also welcome his emphasis on delivering integrated care – the challenge now is to move integrated care from the policy arena and make it happen across the country at scale and pace.
“However, while the long term vision is ambitious, the details of Labour’s plans are sketchy. A number of questions will need to be answered in the policy review announced today. For example, it is not clear how local authorities could take on the role of commissioning health care without further structural upheaval. And despite the Shadow Chancellor’s pledge earlier in the week, it is not clear how Labour would ensure adequate funding for social care.”
Chris Ham also blogged, assessing the challenges of integrated care further and asked the question: ‘How can we deal with financial pressures in health and social care?’
Geeky Burnham promises ‘sensible’ reform
Guardian political columnist Michael White (subscription required) reflects on the shadow health secretary’s speech at last week’s Labour party conference. Closely following the Twittersphere, which was full of chatter about a future Ed Miliband government, he spotted a Tweet by Andy Burnham which stated “I’ll repeal the bill”. Whites’ thoughts on this included:
“Oh, no you won’t,” I murmured. There’s not a lot of subtlety in a tweet. So when I asked the party leader’s staff about Miliband’s remarks and caught up with Burnham at the now-familiar “health hotel” the tone was more nuanced.
“Actually the 2012 conference speech which I will remember was a “What money can’t buy” seminar against market societies (as distinct from efficient market economies given by a thoughtful Harvard political philosopher called Michael Sandel). As I listened I felt reproached for my own acceptance of greater private and voluntary presence inside the NHS, although Sandel is nuanced too.
“But first Ed and Andy. What Miliband said at a Q&A session was that it would “not be sensible” simply to reverse the Lansley legislation at great cost with top-down reforms of his own. Instead he promised to “put the right principle back at the heart of the NHS” and explained that Lansley explicitly saw (“I’m sufficiently geeky that I read” the small print) an NHS like competing privatised utilities – gas or water. Putting it on a better legal footing – cooperation, not competition, enshrined in law – is what he and Burnham hope to do.
“But it isn’t simple. Did his Labour audience oppose super-casinos which create jobs? Overwhelmingly. Cheap supermarket milk that ruins farmers and bankrupts small shops? Er, yes. Paying poor people (“health bribes”) to take pills they should be taking anyway, as so many don’t? That was trickier. Using money is inviting people to “do the right thing for the wrong reason,” he explained. It’s corrosive.”
Tim Kelsey: A man on a mission
This week, EHI talks to the NHS Commissioning Board’s first national director of patients and information, Tim Kelsey.
In his first interview, where he says his new role is “part chief technology officer, part chief information officer and part marketing director,” the Dr Foster co-founder says that he wants the NHS to be a “relevant social movement.”
“We need to refashion our view of vision of what technology in health is all about, and we need to fix it firmly on the consumer interest. Our first question needs to be: ‘to what extent does a technology investment prioritise the needs of the patients?’”
He adds that he believes there will be “a multi-channel service that enables people to do things for themselves, like order a prescription, book an appointment, find out about results, make a compliant or provide feedback on their doctor or nurse.”
Kelsey, who is a strong advocate of open source says that one of his key priorities will be “getting to deployments at scale” of proven technologies and “making the NHS a very positive environment for entrepreneurs of all types, whether they are for profit, non-for-profit or just people with good ideas.”
Highland Marketing blog
In this week’s blog our guest blogger Chris Marsom talks about the importance of practicing what you preach when it comes to PR and marketing.
