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The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) awarded Patients for Patient Safety US (PFPS US) a $100,000 Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award for a new project called “Patients Involved in deVeloping Outcomes Together” or “Project PIVOT.” Project PIVOT is a novel patient-led initiative to advance the integration of patient-centred patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and patient-reported experiences (PREs) into Patient-Centered Outcome Research (PCOR), Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research (CER) and quality assessment measurement tools to improve patient safety, diagnostic quality, and equity. “This award will allow us to identify opportunities to capture—directly from patients and families—their care experiences and challenges, filling key gaps in the traditional data sources used to evaluate healthcare quality and safety,” stated Sue Sheridan, co-founder of PFPS US. In contrast to traditional tools, such as clinical outcome measures and hospital readmission rates, Project PIVOT’s long-term goal is to make healthcare safer and more equitable by capturing and learning from patients’ experiences related to patient safety, diagnostic quality and bias. Project PIVOT will have a special focus on historically underserved communities to help define which questions and outcomes are most important to capture. Priority areas of focus include maternal/newborn health in communities of colour, the physical, intellectual and developmental disability communities and older adults. Read full story Source: Newswire, 13 May 2024

The changes will allow pharmacists to spend more time with patients, levelling the playing field between smaller pharmacies and larger chains. The government has confirmed plans to make ‘hub and spoke’ dispensing models available to all local pharmacies. The change aims to make local pharmacies more efficient and free up time for more complex elements of dispensing and clinical care. The move is part of government’s drive to make patient access to medicines and treatment more efficient across the NHS. Patients stand to benefit thanks to an efficiency drive that will allow all local pharmacies to dispense medicines more efficiently. Currently, larger pharmacy chains can take advantage of the efficiencies and cost-savings that come with centralising the dispensing of medicines at a larger ‘hub’. But smaller independent pharmacies are unable to operate the same model due to legal restrictions on dispensing for pharmacies under different ownership, meaning they can face additional costs and workload. Under the changes announced today, the government will progress in making the ‘hub and spoke’ model universally available, allowing pharmacies belonging to different legal entities to use hubs belonging to other companies. This will level the playing field between smaller pharmacies and larger chains. The changes will enable pharmacists to dispense medicines more efficiently and spend more time dealing face to face with patients. Primary Care Minister, Andrea Leadsom said, “We’re continuing our drive to make access to medicines and care faster, simpler and fairer for all patients, including at local pharmacies. These proposals will level the playing field and enable our hard-working community pharmacies to benefit from centralised dispensing. It will also free up highly skilled pharmacists from back-office duties to deliver patient-facing services, including Pharmacy First and contraception consultations, supply medicines and provide advice.” Read full story Source: WiredGov, 13 May 2024

NHS England will begin monitoring and benchmarking systems on the extent to which patients are given the option to be treated by a private provider. The move follows the government today endorsing the recommendations of a review by the chair of the newly created Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel, which has highlighted how some local areas are restricting patient choice. It highlighted significant variation in choice between some systems, which it said was driven by factors including messaging from commissioners to GPs that discourages choice and/or encourages referrals to local NHS trusts, financial incentives for referrals to particular providers and difficulties in securing accreditation from commissioners. It cited one example where the operator of an independent sector hospital that is co-located with an NHS hospital was contractually prevented by the NHS trust from accepting certain referrals. Health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins said: “Empowering patients to take control of their own healthcare decisions is a key part of my missions to make the NHS faster, simpler and fairer for everyone that uses it.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 May 2024

A recent analysis found poor survival rates after bone fractures in older adults, with fewer than a third of men and half of women surviving five years after a fracture. Published in JBMR Plus, the study looked at a cohort of 98,474 Ontario residents age 66 and older who suffered fractures to parts of the body associated with osteoporosis between January 2011 and March 2015. The patients were grouped into sets based on the fracture site and matched to patients with a similar demographic profile but no bone breaks during the study period. The fracture cohort was mostly female (73 percent), and the median age at fracture was 80. In the year before the fracture, up to 45 percent of the women and 14 percent of the men had been treated for osteoporosis. The analysis revealed that those within a year of a hip, vertebral or proximal non-hip, non-vertebral fracture were at the highest risk of death. The survival probability was lower for the oldest patients. “Survival most dramatically declined within one month after most types of fracture, with a five-year survival being similar to or worse than some common cancers,” the paper’s lead author, Laval University department of medicine professor Jacques Brown, said Read full story (paywalled) Source: Washington Post, 12 May 2024

More and more UK hospitals are leaving patients in corridors due to a lack of bed space. NHS bosses say so-called corridor care is freeing up ambulances and saving lives, but BBC Newsnight has spoken to patients who say the growing practice is humiliating and degrading. Gregory Knowles counted 13 other patients alongside him on a corridor at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) in March. Complications after an operation put him back in hospital and on to a ward but at 04:00 one morning he was moved. The 68-year-old was wheeled in his bed to reception. "I was waking up with people around me. It was horrendous," he told the BBC. "I had no screens and no facilities for water or for really getting changed. My possessions were on the bottom of the bed. My daughter and partner were as horrified as I was," he said. His partner Alicia Goulty described how staff had been too rushed to attend to him. "One day when we got there his catheter had leaked in the bed when he was on the corridor. He was wet with no covers or any screens and I had to take him to the bathroom to get him cleaned". Ms Goulty said her partner's medication had been missed. "We had to ask for water for him. We had to ask sometimes for his meals because he got forgotten." Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 May 2024 You can read a nurse's first-hand account of a corridor care shift in this blog on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift

An NHS trust has lost an employment tribunal case against a nurse who had his shifts cancelled after whistleblowing when a patient was put in seclusion because of staff shortages. A judgment published last week found that Mark Temperton, a mental health nurse, was “subjected to detriment” after having made a “protected disclosure” during his agency shift at Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust’s (GMMH) Atherleigh Park Hospital. Mr Temperton, who is also employed by the Priory Group as a regulatory inspector as well as doing ad-hoc work for the Care Quality Commission, worked as an agency mental health nurse for Blackstone Recruitment and was booked to work a night shift in a psychiatric intensive care unit (Priestners Unit) at Atherleigh Park on 14 October 2022. He raised concerns after a patient, brought in by the police, was put “immediately” into seclusion because of staff shortages. Mr Temperton subsequently raised it with the nurse in charge and with a locum consultant psychiatrist but the patient was kept in seclusion. According to the Mental Health Act’s Code of Practice, seclusion “should not be used as a punishment or a threat, or because of a shortage of staff”. Serious concerns were also raised about the trust’s Edenfield Centre in September 2022 by BBC Panorama, one of them being use of inappropriate seclusion. Paul Lewis-Grundy, associate director of corporate governance at GMMH, said: “It is absolutely vital that staff feel confident and safe to speak up, with no detrimental impact to themselves or their career and prospects. Over the past two years, we have invested significantly, and taken a number of steps, to support this across GMMH.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 May 2024

A weight loss injection could reduce the risk of heart attacks and benefit the cardiovascular health of millions of adults across the UK, in what could be the largest medical breakthrough since statins, according to a study. It found that participants taking the medication semaglutide, the active ingredient in brands including Wegovy and Ozempic, had a 20% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or death due to cardiovascular disease. Read full story Source: Guardian, 14 May 2024

The government is spending £5.5bn less on health in England than it suggested it would be at this stage, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says. Plans set out in the 2019 election campaign indicated the budget would increase by 3.3% a year above inflation during this Parliament, the IFS said. But despite extra being put in to cover the high inflation seen, spending had risen by only 2.7% a year on average. Read full story Source. BBC News, 14 May 2024

An NHS England review has found the proportion of ‘low acuity’ patients attending emergency departments is far smaller than expected. During a trial of new acuity measures at 17 accident and emergency sites, NHSE found the proportion of patients with low acuity was just 4 per cent, when it had expected the figure to be between 20 and 40 per cent. Low acuity cases are those which could often be seen by less specialist services, such as urgent treatment centres. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 May 2024