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Showing results for tags 'Organisation / service factors'.
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Content ArticleHow one Devon ICS has worked with local trusts to cut deliver extra capacity at a former Nightingale hospital, now converted into an elective centre.
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- Long waiting list
- Innovation
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Content ArticleIn this BMJ article, Ryan Essex and colleagues consider whether patients have more to gain than to lose from healthcare worker strikes in poorly functioning health systems Available research on the relationship between strikes and patient harm is limited and offers mixed results, most of which are not widely generalisable across different care settings, researchers said. Overall, the researchers in the study observed a substantial decrease in the number of admissions or care visits during strikes, with broader care delivery changes varying based on who is striking. For example, when early-career physicians strike, research suggests wait times and length of stay are unaffected or become shorter. "While patient safety obviously matters, the overly narrow framing of strikes as harmful to patients is not supported by current evidence; this also shifts focus away from the structural failings that drive strike action in the first place," "When health workers lack other avenues to enact change, failing to strike against suboptimal working conditions may actually be more harmful to patient health in the long run."
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- Workforce management
- Leadership
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Content ArticleNiche Health and Social Care Consulting (Niche) were commissioned by NHS England in November 2019 to undertake an independent investigation into the governance at West Lane Hospital (WLH), Middlesbrough between 2017 up to the hospital closure in 2019. WLH was provided by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV) and delivered Tier 4 child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) inpatient services. This review initially incorporated the care and treatment review findings of two index case events for Christie and Nadia who both died following catastrophic self-ligature at the unit. The Trust subsequently agreed to include the findings of the care and treatment review of Emily which related directly to her time at West Lane Hospital, even though Emily did not die at this site. This is to ensure that optimal learning could be achieved from this review.
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- Investigation
- Mental health
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Content ArticleIn this Channel 4 Dispatches programme, secret footage filmed over the winter reveals ambulance workers battling the odds and A&E departments overwhelmed as patients suffer needless harm and death The footage comes from Daniel Waterhouse, an emergency medical technician who wore a body-mounted camera during his shifts in north-west London for three months this winter, filming every crumbling layer of a system that is close to total destruction.
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- Emergency medicine
- Ambulance
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Content ArticleThis is an annual report by the Children’s Commissioner review in children’s mental health services in England during 2021-22. It considers key trends in children’s access to mental health services and considers the current state of care provided to children who are admitted to inpatient mental health settings.
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- Mental health
- Children and Young People
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Content ArticleIt's now a decade since the Francis Report, which outlined the causes of serious failures in care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. The report and prior media coverage exposed a wide set of issues surrounding the culture and transparency of health care, and these topics remain of major concern today. In this article for the Nuffield Trust, Shaun Lintern has interviewed Sir Robert Francis KC about the weight of those patient stories and treatment of the NHS's staff, then and now.
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- Patient / family involvement
- Investigation
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Content ArticleWith the NHS often characterised as being trapped in a permacrisis, what can be done to shift the dial? In this NHS Confederation podcast, Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust, talks about improvements in the urgent and emergency care pathway, shifting the narrative on primary care and busting the barriers holding the health and care system back. With industrial action taking a toll, Daniel, who leads the world’s largest ambulance service, sheds light on the untold impact of strikes, the effect on long-term innovation and recovery and why culture change in the ambulance service is top of his mission list.
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- Primary care
- Emergency medicine
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Content ArticleThe new NHS recovery plan accepts that data on long delays in emergency departments must be published monthly to help improve patient care and hold systems to account, writes Katherine Henderson in this BMJ opinion piece.
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- Long waiting list
- Transparency
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Content ArticleThis report looks into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of three young adults; Joanna, Jon and Ben. They each had learning disabilities, were patients at Cawston Park Hospital and died within a 27 month period (April 2018 to July 2020). It highlights multiple significant failures in care, including excessive use of restraint and seclusion, overmedication of patients, lack of record keeping and the physical assault of patients. The report also makes a series of recommendations for critical system and strategic change, both at a local and national level.
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- Patient death
- Patient / family involvement
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Content ArticleThe 2022 Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) report enables organisations to compare their performance with others in their region and those providing similar services, with the aim of encouraging improvement by learning and sharing good practice. It provides a national picture of WRES in practice, to colleagues, organisations and the public on the developments in the workforce race equality agenda The WRES provide detailed analysis to enable employers to understand how their staff experience compares with others in their region and with similar specialism.
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- Health inequalities
- Health Disparities
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Content ArticleThis report from the King's Fund looks at the reality of caring for acutely ill medical patients at the NHS front line and asks how care in hospitals can be improved. It comprises a series of essays by frontline clinicians, managers, quality improvement champions and patients, and provides vivid and frank detail about how clinical care is currently provided and how it could be improved. The essays are introduced and summarised by Chris Ham and Don Berwick and the report serves as the starting point of an ongoing appreciative inquiry into improving care processes, particularly for acutely ill medical patients.
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- Organisation / service factors
- Organisational Performance
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Content ArticleMany clinicians and managers struggle with the concept of waste in clinical processes. After hearing and reading about the transformation of healthcare at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, the Gordon Caldwell read Toyota Culture the Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way. This article discusses some of the concepts of waste in clinical processes, concentrating particularly on the waste and costs of over-investigation.
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- Investigation
- Testing
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Content ArticlePrevention of Future Deaths Reports (PFDs) made by coroners to address concerns arising from inquests can provide powerful leverage for change, although the reality is that health and social care organisations would generally rather avoid a PFD if possible because they also highlight - in a very public way - concerns about how their services operate which can, in turn, lead to further regulatory scrutiny, principally from the CQC. The need for more consistency in terms of thresholds for making PFDs and the form these take, plus the Chief Coroner’s strong commitment to ensuring that PFDs do what they are designed to do - i.e. harness learning from deaths - have been key drivers behind a recent re-vamping of the existing Chief Coroner’s guidance note on this. What do health and social care organisations need to know about the revised PFD guidance? This briefing looks in more detail about what’s changed (and what hasn’t).
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- Coroner
- Coroner reports
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Content ArticleMajor new reform of the NHS will not work until Government addresses multiple chronic issues in the service, says the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in a new report. The case has not been made for what improvements Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) will bring to patients, and by when. ICSs are the latest attempt to bring NHS and local government services together to join up services and focus on prevention. But the Committee says the reforms will founder if the major systemic problems in the NHS are not addressed by Government at a national level: the elective care backlog has breached seven million cases for the first time; major workforce issues have hamstrung both the NHS and social care; constantly increasing demand; a crumbling NHS estate; and limits on funding. These challenges require national leadership but there is a worrying lack of oversight in the new system, and crucial national projects like the NHS Workforce Plan and capital funding strategy are repeatedly delayed – what the Committee calls 'paralysis by analysis'. The cost of overdue maintenance has reached £9 billion - £4.5 billion classed as high or significant risk - and there are questions about who gets to keep proceeds of any assets sold under ICSs. Not enough is being done to focus on preventing ill-health, and not enough joint working between government departments to tackle the causes of ill-health. The failure to ensure adequate NHS funded dental care risks creating more acute dental health problems.
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News Article
Our job is to keep people out of A&E
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
As the pressures of winter and the Covid treatment backlog grow, the NHS is struggling. In Manchester, one organisation is pioneering a new way to care for people that tries to reduce the burden on the health service. It's the first call-out of the day for nurse Manju and pharmacist Kara in north Manchester. They are on their way to see Steven, who has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had a fall the previous night. This might have led to a call-out for an ambulance crew and a visit to A&E. But instead the Manchester Local Care Organisation (LCO) stepped in. Once at Steven's house, Manju makes sure he hasn't been harmed by his fall, while Kara checks his medication. Manju notes that Steven's tablets could have contributed to his fall. Manju asks Steven how he copes going up and down the stairs. "I'm OK, just about," he says. But when he has a go at coming down the stairs, Manju spots he could use an extra grab rail and says she will sort one out. This intervention by the team has not only avoided Steven ending up in A&E, but also ensures he can continue to live independently in his own home. That's a key part of the LCO mission, according to Lana McEwan, one of the team leaders in north Manchester. "We would consider ourselves to be an admission-avoidance service, so we're trying to prevent ambulances being called in the first instance. "When an ambulance has been called, we're taking referrals directly from the ambulance service and responding within a one or two-hour response depending on need, and that's an alternative to A&E." Local neighbourhood teams are made up of nurses, social workers, pharmacists and doctors, all working together to keep people out of hospital. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 December 2022- Posted
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- Accident and Emergency
- Community care
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News Article
Stubborn cancer backlog at record high
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The number of people waiting more than two months to start cancer treatment remained over 30,000 — double the pre-covid level — for three months to the end of October, according to new data published. NHS England previously committed to bringing the number of people waiting longer than 62 days to be diagnosed and begin treatment, after referral for suspected cancer, to pre-pandemic levels – roughly 14,000 – by March 2023. But the number has been generally growing since the spring, and remained above 30,000 from August through to the end of October, the latest figures available. September and October’s monthly totals were higher than the previous monthly peak in May 2020, after services were disrupted in the first covid wave. The increase in waiters this year has been caused by diagnostic and treatment capacity falling short of an increased number of referrals. Matt Sample, policy development manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “While it’s good to see significant numbers of people coming forward with potential cancer symptoms, performance against key targets are among the worst on record, continuing a trend that existed long before the pandemic hit, with one target having been missed for almost seven years.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 December 2022- Posted
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- Cancer
- Long waiting list
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News Article
Private hospitals could ease NHS backlog
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Patients will be encouraged to choose private hospitals for NHS care under plans to help clear backlogs of routine operations through outsourcing more treatment. A task force of private healthcare bosses and NHS chiefs met in Downing Street for the first time yesterday in an effort to find more capacity for hip replacements, cataracts and other routine procedures in the independent sector. NHS bosses are hopeful of meeting a target to eliminate waits of more than 18 months by April, but there is increasing concern in government about whether one-year waits can be eliminated by 2025 as planned. Private hospitals say they have spare capacity that could help bring down waits but NHS bosses have been sceptical. Patients have long had a legal right to choose where they are treated but ministers are planning a fresh push for GPs to offer them the choice of having NHS treatment in private hospitals, in a revival of a Blair-era scheme. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said he wanted to “turbocharge our current plans to bust the backlog and help patients get the treatment they need”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 8 December 2022- Posted
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- Private sector
- Long waiting list
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News Article
'A&E is absolute chaos - I spent 15 hours on a trolley'
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor in pain from a broken hip, Anne Whitfield-Ray could not believe she was in the care of the NHS. "It was absolute chaos - like something out of a third world country," said the 77-year-old from Worcestershire. "The staff were rushed off their feet, paint was peeling off the walls and patients were being squeezed in everywhere they could - in makeshift bays, in corridors and side rooms. It was horrific." Anne spent 15 hours in that position until a bed could be found for her. Such delays used to be the exception, something that happened on the odd occasion in the depths of winter. Now they are commonplace. Latest figures show nearly 40% of A&E patients who need admitting face what is called a trolley wait - a delay of four hours or more waiting for a bed to be found. These are the sickest and frailest patients - the ones who cannot be sent home immediately after treatment. Research has linked delays like this with longer hospital stays and even a higher risk of death. By the time patients get to this point, they may have already faced hours of waiting in A&E or, increasingly, stuck outside A&E in the back of an ambulance, as was the case for Anne. She is now back home recovering after surgery, a few days after her fall in October. She said that despite her experience she cannot fault the staff: "They are doing the best they can. But this is not what should be happening in the NHS". Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 December 2022- Posted
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- Accident and Emergency
- Long waiting list
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News Article
NHSE cuts £1bn from cancer, maternity and primary care funds
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England is raiding a national fund earmarked for improvements in cancer, maternity care and other priority services by up to £1bn this year, to pay for deficits elsewhere, and will cut it by a similar amount in 2023-24, HSJ has learned. The “service development fund” is allocated at the beginning of the year for priority service areas also including primary care, community health, mental health, learning disabilities and health inequalities. Several NHSE directors said it was being tightly squeezed this year, amid major cost pressures from inflation, a pay deal unfunded by government, and higher than expected covid-related costs. One well-placed source said the fund this year was required to underspend by about £1bn against what had been planned, which will help balance overspends elsewhere in the NHS. The cuts are likely to be linked to ministers’ view that the NHS should focus on “core” priorities and cut other activities, including reducing NHSE national programme work which is typically linked to SDF budgets. Patricia Hewitt is looking into giving integrated care systems more “autonomy” from NHSE to set their own priorities. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 December 2022- Posted
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- Leadership
- Cancer
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News ArticleThe government is setting up 19 more diagnostic centres in communities across England to help tackle the Covid backlog. Ninety one are already open and have delivered more than 2.4 million tests, checks and scans since last summer, ministers say. It is hoped the centres will speed up access to services for patients, thereby reducing waiting times. Seven million people in England are now waiting for hospital treatment. GPs can refer patients to community diagnostic centres so that they can access life-saving checks and scans, and be diagnosed for a range of conditions, without travelling to hospital. Some are located in football stadiums and shopping centres and can offer MRI and CT scans, as well as x-rays. In September, according to the government, the hubs delivered 11% of all diagnostic activity - and its ambition is for 40% to be achieved by 2025. Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 December 2022
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- Organisation / service factors
- Diagnosis
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News Article
Ambulance staff to strike on 21 December
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Ambulance staff across most of England and Wales will go on strike on 21 December in a dispute over pay. The coordinated walkout by the three main ambulance unions - Unison, GMB and Unite - will affect non-life threatening calls only. But it could mean people who have had trips and falls not being responded to. Members of GMB, which represents nearly a third of the 50,000-strong workforce, will then follow that up with another walkout on 28 December. It comes as Royal College of Nursing members are also preparing to go on strike on 15 and 20 December in parts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The walkouts will involve paramedics as well as control room staff and support workers, with the military on standby to help out. The only service which will be completely unaffected, however, is the East of England. Under trade union rules, life-preserving care has to be provided so the two highest category calls - covering everything from heart attacks and strokes to major trauma - will still be responded to. But Matthew Taylor, of the NHS Confederation, which represents health managers, said he was worried the action would "undoubtedly" affect patient care and how quickly ambulance services could respond and may even deter people from seeking help. "The prospect of industrial action over Christmas is very concerning," he added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 6 December 2022- Posted
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- Ambulance
- Staff factors
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News Article
Overcrowding at Forth Valley Royal Infirmary ‘risked harming patients’
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS managers will be held accountable for failings at an overcrowded hospital where patients were put at risk of “serious harm” and some were left waiting up to 25 hours for a bed, ministers have warned. Forth Valley Royal Infirmary’s A&E was operating at two and a half times capacity during a visit by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) in September. Inspectors said that patients were at risk because of poor handling of medicines and unsafe working conditions at the hospital, which was placed in special measures by the Scottish government last month. The Times reported last month that the hospital had been declared “unsafe” by staff after five consultants resigned following severe criticism of the hospital’s leadership. They described it as a “war zone” and told of fire-fighting to cope with patient numbers while working in a “toxic” environment. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 6 December 2022- Posted
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- Lack of resources
- Patient harmed
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News Article
Five million missed out on GP appointments in one month, says Labour
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Five million people were unable to book a GP appointment in October, analysis of NHS data suggests. The Labour party, which studied figures from the GP Patient Survey, warned the struggle to see a doctor will mean many patients will not have serious medical conditions diagnosed until it is “too late”. According to the survey, some 13.8% of patients, or around one in seven, did not get an appointment the last time they tried to book one. With almost 32 million GP appointments reported in England in October, the party said it means that more than 5 million people could have been unable to book a GP appointment when they tried to make one that month. October saw GP surgeries carry out the highest number of appointments since records began in 2017, despite a depleted work force. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told Labour List: “Patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment when they need one. I’m really worried that among those millions of patients unable to get an appointment, there could be serious conditions going undiagnosed until it’s too late". Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said in a statement: “GPs and their teams are working flat out to deliver the care and services our patients need. GPs want our patients to receive timely and appropriate care, and we share their frustrations when this isn’t happening. But difficulties accessing our services isn’t the fault of GP teams, it’s a consequence of an under-resourced, underfunded, and understaffed service working under unsustainable pressures.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 December 2022- Posted
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- GP
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News Article
Parents of man left to die in prison say care failures will haunt them for ever
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The parents of a 25-year-old man left to die in a cell by a negligent prison nurse given responsibility for 800 inmates have told how the conditions in which their son died will haunt them for ever. The case – the 27th death in just five years at HMP Nottingham – was said to illustrate the desperate state of Britain’s understaffed and increasingly dangerous prison system. Alex Braund was being held on remand awaiting trial when he fell ill in his cell with the first signs of pneumonia on 6 March 2020. Four days later, on the morning of 10 March, after a series of ill-fated attempts by Braund’s cellmate to get prison staff to take the situation seriously, the young man collapsed. Prison staff responded to an emergency bell rung by Braund’s cellmate at 6.55am, but they initially only looked through the cell hatch, taking five minutes to enter the cell in order to give CPR. Braund was subsequently taken to Queen’s medical centre in Nottingham, where he was pronounced dead at 11.44am of cardiac arrest caused by pneumonia. The jury at an inquest at Nottinghamshire coroner’s court found there had been a “continuous failure to provide adequate healthcare”, with a prison officer told by a nurse a few hours before Braund’s death that there was “nothing to be done at this time of night”. Questioning during the hearing revealed that the nurse, who has since lost her job and been reported to the nursing and midwifery council, had amended her records on the morning of Braund’s death. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 December 2022- Posted
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- Patient death
- Pneumonia
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News Article
My mum's 40-hour wait to get to A&E with hip break
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
When 85-year-old Koulla fell at home, her family immediately rang for an ambulance. She was in agonising pain - she had broken her hip. It was around 8pm. It took another 14 hours for an ambulance to get to her, leaving her pregnant granddaughter to care for her through the night. When they arrived the crews were able to give her pain relief and quickly transported her to the Royal Cornwall Hospital. But there the wait continued - there were around 30 ambulances queuing to handover patients to A&E staff. It was another 26 hours before she was taken inside to A&E. She then faced many hours in A&E before being taken for surgery. Koulla's daughter, Marianna Flint, 53, said: "It was awful. You feel helpless because you're giving your trust over to them to look after a family member who's in agony and who needs surgery." She has since received a written apology from the Royal Cornwall for the care provided to her mother in August. Ms Flint said: "I almost feel sorry for those looking after her. It's not down to them. There was no room inside to accept her in." Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022- Posted
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- Relative
- Accident and Emergency
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