Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Organisation / service factors'.

More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • Patient Safety Standards
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End

Group

First name

Last name

Country

Join a private group (if appropriate)

About me

Organisation

Role

Found 1,512 results
  1. News Article
    An MP who has just become a ministerial assistant in the Department of Health and Social Care has called for ‘underperforming’ NHS managers to be ‘sacked’, claiming some executives in the health service earn up to £500,000 per year. James Sunderland, who was made a Department of Health and Social Care parliamentary private secretary just days ago, told a Conservative party conference fringe event that money spent on executives should be reinvested into the coal face. Mr Sunderland, MP for Bracknell since 2019, also said the NHS is “better funded now than at any time in its history”. He said: “The solution is not more money, it’s better managers. We need to get to grips with the senior management of the NHS. People not performing need to be sacked. “We need to reinvest money spent on executives and management into the coalface. It’s about efficiency in how we do business.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 3 October 2022
  2. News Article
    A troubled trust’s inpatient wards for people with a learning disability or autism have been rated “inadequate”, with staff criticised for resorting to restraint too readily which sometimes injured patients. Care Quality Commission inspectors visited Lanchester Road Hospital in Durham and Bankfields Court in Middlesborough, run by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Foundation Trust, in May and June. They found most people were being nursed in long-term segregation and some patients had very limited interaction with staff. Among the CQC’s main criticisms was of high levels of restrictive practice used by staff, including seclusion, restraint and rapid tranquilisation. Inspectors said incidents were not always recorded and staff did not learn from them to reduce levels of restrictions in place. They also warned staff were not always able to understand how to protect people from poor care and abuse. Karen Knapton, CQC’s head of hospital inspection, said: “Three people had been injured during restraints, and 32 incidents of injury had been reported for healthcare assistants, some requiring treatment. “This is unacceptable and measures must be put in place to keep patients and staff safe.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 October 2022
  3. News Article
    A care home that will close after admitting "shortcomings in care" and failures in leadership has been labelled "not safe" by inspectors. The Elms in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire will shut later this month, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found the service to be inadequate. In May, the BBC first reported the concerns of relatives about The Elms after their loved ones died in 2019, weeks after a meeting in which worries were raised about "poor care". Inquests into the deaths of the residents - George Lowlett, Margaret Canham and David Poole - remain ongoing. HC-One also apologised to the family of Joyce Parrott, who died in April 2020. Inspectors found "people were not safe and were at risk of avoidable harm" and described multiple occasions when people had "not received their medicines as prescribed". Other findings included: Staff had not referred all potential safeguarding events to the local authority A failure to "establish systems to ensure people were effectively safeguarded from abuse" The provider had failed to learn when things went wrong "Widespread and significant shortfalls" in leadership No reliable record of the staff that had worked at the home and a reliance upon agency staff, which "resulted in people not receiving consistent care" Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 October 2022
  4. News Article
    Several ambulance trusts have moved to the highest level of alert in the wake of severe pressure on emergency services in recent days. Internal data seen by HSJ suggests ambulance response times have deteriorated dramatically, while the average time for call handlers to answer 999 calls has increased to almost two minutes in some areas. Staff across the country have been sounding the alarm over the pressures, with one senior source saying the situation was “really dire” again, after a period in which pressures had eased in August and September. The internal data showed ambulance trusts in the South West, East of England, London and the West Midlands had all declared the highest level of alert, known as REAP 4. More are expected to follow. The average response time for category 2 calls in the South West – including suspected heart attacks and strokes – was 1 hour 24 minutes, with 10% of these calls responded to in more than 3 hours 11 minutes. The target is 18 minutes. Emergency departments have also faced severe pressure. An emergency care consultant in Plymouth tweeted that patients were facing 70-hour waits to be admitted to wards, with some waiting 18 hours to be handed over by ambulance staff. Fionna Lowe added: “I have taken to asking families to feed their relatives. It has never been this bad.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 October 2022
  5. News Article
    A ‘leading’ cancer service has reported a series of safety incidents which contributed to patients being severely harmed or dying, HSJ has reported. An internal report at Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust suggests the incidents within the pancreatic cancer specialty were partly linked to patient pathways being ill-defined following the merger of its two major hospitals. The report lists seven incidents involving severe harm or death, and five involving moderate harm. It is not clear how many of the patients died. The trust was formed in 2019 through the merger of the Royal Liverpool and Aintree acute sites, with the consolidation of clinical services an integral part of the plans. However, there were no formal plans to change the configuration of pancreatic cancer services, which already operated under a “hub and spoke” model. In one finding relevant to all 12 incidents, the report said: “Patient ownership and clinician accountability (local vs specialist) have not been defined following the merger of the legacy trusts and subsequent service reconfigurations. “This has contributed to system failures in the provision of timely quality care, particularly in patients with time-critical clinical uncertainty.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 October 2022
  6. News Article
    A young teenager with complex needs in local authority care has been deprived of their liberty and held in hospital for several months because no secure placement could be found anywhere in England, a family court has heard. General hospitals are not registered to provide secure accommodation for children in this situation, and do not have the specialist staff required to provide the care and therapeutic input needed. High court judges have repeatedly raised concerns that children in urgent need of secure accommodation are waiting months to find a place, to the detriment of their mental health. England has an acute shortage of secure therapeutic placements for children with severe emotional and psychological needs. Government figures published in March show there are just 132 spaces in secure homes for children with urgent and complex needs. On any given day, about 50 children – twice as many as in the previous 12 months – were seeking a placement. About 30 children – an increase of a third on the previous 12-month period – end up placed hundreds of miles from home in Scotland due to the lack of available secure units in England. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “All children and young people deserve to grow up in stable, loving homes, and local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that there are enough places for their looked-after children. “We are supporting local authorities through providing £259m to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open children’s homes. “This will provide high quality, safe homes for some of our most vulnerable children. It will mean children can live closer to their families, schools, and health services, in settings that meet their needs.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 4 October 2022
  7. News Article
    Underperforming hospitals face special measures before what ministers warn will be one of the worst winters in the history of the NHS. Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, told a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference that there was too much “variation in what patients experience” as her department plans to impose closer control on failing hospitals. Robert Jenrick, the NHS minister, said that the government “shouldn’t be tolerant of those parts of the NHS which are underperforming” and had demanded quicker improvement from more than a dozen hospitals. He acknowledged that NHS staff were overstretched in the aftermath of the pandemic, saying that he wanted to “put boosterism to one side” and accept that the shortage of doctors and nurses was the biggest problem facing the health service. However, he also questioned why some hospitals were doing so poorly when other nearby hospitals with similar problems were seeing much shorter waits. “A very striking dynamic is the variability that we see within the NHS and I think this is where we as Conservatives have a message, which is that we shouldn’t be tolerant of those parts of the NHS which are underperforming.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 4 October 2022
  8. News Article
    Hospital authorities in Wales have been accused of attempting to cover up failings in the delivery of a baby born with significant brain damage. Gethin Channon, who was born on 25 March 2019 at Singleton Hospital, in Swansea, suffers from quadriplegic cerebral palsy, a severe disability that requires 24/7 care. There were complications during his birth, due to him being in an abnormal position that prevented normal delivery, and he was eventually born via caesarean section. An independent review commissioned by Swansea Bay University Health Board (SBUHB), which manages Singleton Hospital, found “several adverse features” surrounding Gethin’s delivery that were omitted from or “inaccurately specified” in the hospital’s internal report. The investigation, carried out by obstetrician Dr Bill Kirkup, said SBUHB had “significantly” downplayed the “suboptimal” care received by Gethin and his mother, Sian, and had erroneously attributed his condition to a blocked windpipe. It also suggests that amendments were retrospectively made to examination notes taken by staff during the course of Ms Channon’s labour. The family said that SBUHB, which was flagged by national inspectors in the months after Gethin’s birth due to “concerns” over its ability to deliver “safe and effective” maternity care, had “covered up” the failings in their case. SBUHB said it had been “working tirelessly” with the family to investigate and address their concerns, and that it would be inappropriate to comment on specific allegations as the process was ongoing. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 September 2022
  9. News Article
    Only a handful of integrated care systems have so far managed to implement a key expansion in their support for patients in mental health crisis. Internal NHS England documents, seen by HSJ, suggest that only 7 out of 42 health systems have begun offering enhanced mental health crisis support through the 111 helpline. This was a key target set out by the NHS long term plan in 2019, to be fully rolled out by next year. Some areas of the country have implemented the expansion, but others are lagging well behind, the document suggests. Currently, all areas offer separate 24/7 all-age crisis lines run by individual mental health trusts, offering brief psychological interventions and advice. But HSJ has been told of national problems affecting the existing helplines, with callers facing long waits. In a recent review, Healthwatch England said the services are having to “pick and choose” who to help because of high demand, which in effect led to “service rationing”. Siân Balsom manager for Healthwatch York, said: “People are overwhelmingly positive about the NHS. But there’s an acceptance that crisis support is not going to be there for people. That feels like a really bad place to be in. “We know people in the voluntary sector feel like they are holding people they don’t have the skills and experience to support. [They] feel they are holding people in the wrong service because the right service is not there for them. “People are trying to do a good job, but the system is more under pressure than it has ever been and there are clearly a lot of people who are experiencing significant mental illness who are not able to get support right there and then.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 3 October 2022
  10. News Article
    Surgical blunders have soared 60% in five years – and extreme mistakes are now a daily occurrence in the NHS. Some 13,921 people were treated for damage caused by botched operations in the year to March 31 – up from 8,695 in England in 2016/17. Cases involved an “unintentional cut, puncture, perforation or haemorrhage”. Separately, a report from NHS England shows 134 patients fell victim to so-called Never Events from April 1 to July 31. Extreme errors included two women left infertile after their ovaries were wrongly removed. Injections and invasive tests were given to the wrong patients and in 39 cases foreign objects, such as drill bits and wires, were left inside bodies. There were 57 cases of surgery on the wrong body part and 12 instances of patients being given the wrong implant or prosthesis. The Royal College of Surgeons in England said: “If the system is overstretched, there is a risk that mistakes will happen.” Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “When Never Events occur, the physical and psychological effects can stay with a patient for life.” Read full story Source: The Mirror, 1 October 2022
  11. News Article
    Multiple failures by the NHS 111 telephone advice service early in the pandemic left Covid patients struggling to get care and led directly to some people dying, an investigation has found. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) looked into the help that NHS 111 gave people with Covid in the weeks before and after the UK entered its first lockdown on 23 March 2020. It identified a series of weaknesses with the helpline, including misjudgment of how seriously ill some people with Covid were, a failure to tell some people to seek urgent help, and a lack of capacity to deal with a sudden spike in calls. It also raised concerns that the government’s advice to citizens to “stay at home” to protect NHS services deterred people who needed immediate medical attention from seeking it from GPs and hospitals, sometimes with fatal consequences. Mistakes identified by HSIB included that: The CRS algorithm did not allow for the assessment of any life-threatening illness a caller had – such as obesity, cancer or lung disease – to establish whether they should undergo a clinical assessment. When many callers reached the core 111 service, there was no way to divert them as intended to the CRS, which was operationally independent of 111. Although patients who had Covid-19 symptoms as well as underlying health conditions, such as diabetes, were meant to be assessed when they spoke to the core 111 service, some were not. The number of extra calls to 111 in March 2020 meant that only half were answered. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 September 2022
  12. News Article
    New hospitals may be required to have single patient rooms only, HSJ has revealed Chiefs at the New Hospitals Programme (NHP) are assessing whether to include a requirement for 100% single rooms in the new facilities, in what would be a major change for NHS hospital design. It comes a year after NHS England medical director Stephen Powis said single patient rooms should be “the default” in hospitals as this would improve infection control and patient flow. Currently, the Department of Health and Social Care expects hospitals to consider a minimum of 50% single rooms when refurbishing or building new sites. HSJ understands the NHP is working with the NHS’ technical standards team on how many single rooms will be required in the new hospitals the government has committed to building by 2030. The teams are considering recommending the percentage to be raised from 50% to 100%. The work is part of efforts to standardise design across the NHP projects and so therefore better control costs. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 September 2022
  13. News Article
    NHS England and local system leaders are investigating “consistently high” mortality rates over the last two years at an acute hospital after previous reviews failed to find an explanation, an integrated care board meeting was told this week. A Lincolnshire integrated care board member said previous work had “never got to the bottom” of what is happening at Peterborough City Hospital, which sits outside Lincolnshire but provides services to the county’s residents. Gerry McSorley, who chaired the predecessor clinical commissioning group and is now a non executive director on the ICB, said the problems at Peterborough were “masked” by better mortality rates at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, which is run by the same trust. He added that the concerns around the hospital’s summary hospital-level mortality indicator ration were also being looked into by NHS England. However, after publication of the story, NWAFT told HSJ: “Following an internal review we found the variance in mortality rates between our two main acute sites… is down to clinical coding variation and in no way reflects the safety or quality of care provided to patients”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 September 2022
  14. News Article
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has commissioned an independent review into handling of a high-profile whistleblower case, and a wider internal review of how it responds when it is given “information of concern”. The independent review will be led by Zoë Leventhal KC of Matrix Chambers and will consider how the regulator handled “protected disclosures” from University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust surgeon Shyam Kumar, alongside “a sample of other information of concern shared with us”. Mr Kumar won a tribunal against the CQC earlier this month, which found he was unfairly dismissed as a special advisor on hospital inspections after raising serious patient safety concerns. Between 2015 and his dismissal in 2019 Mr Kumar wrote to senior colleagues at the CQC with a number of concerns within his trust around bullying, patient harm and the quality of CQC hospital inspections. The tribunal drew particular attention to the two whistleblowing disclosures made by Mr Kumar about the CQC itself, which it found “clearly had a material influence on the decision to dismiss”. The CQC said in an announcement today that the independent review would aim to determine whether it took “appropriate action” in response to the information disclosed in Mr Kumar’s case and others. It will include consideration of whether the ethnicity of the people raising concerns impacted on decision making or outcome and is expected to conclude by the end of the year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 September 2022
  15. News Article
    The NHS should reduce the number of different electronic patient records (EPRs) used by trusts and instead rely on a smaller set of suppliers with nationally agreed prices, according to the CEO of NHS Digital. Simon Bolton, who is also NHS England’s interim chief information officer, also said NHSD and NHSE had “lost the narrative a little bit” over their forthcoming merger, due to a “fixation” with reducing NHSE staff numbers by a third; and that the centre of the NHS remained too “autocratic and authoritarian”. Mr Bolton said there were “too many” different EPRs used in the health service and said no private sector organisation would allow such variability for so long. His comments come amid a national drive to improve the uptake and quality of EPRs across NHS providers, following new technology targets set by the government earlier this year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 September 2022
  16. News Article
    Patients are being excluded from life-saving eating disorder treatment as services are severely underfunded, experts have warned. Adult eating disorder services are so severely underfunded and understaffed that they are having to employ rationing measures and turn away patients, leading psychiatrist Dr Agnes Ayton told The Independent. In their research, Dr Ayton and 22 other psychiatrists found that in 2019-20, just 31% of eating disorder services accepted all patients, regardless of the level of illness. The researchers warned that the situation had become more serious following the pandemic, which had driven a “worsening of the demand and capacity” crisis across the services. Experts have called for emergency funding to meet the needs of adult patients with eating disorders, and say that these services should be receiving at least £7m per million population each year to meet standards. Dr Ayton warned that patients who are “literally on death’s door” are not getting care when they need it. Read full story Source: The Independent, 25 September 2022
  17. News Article
    Hospital trusts are still treating many patients just before the four-hour A&E target deadline, whose proposed abolition was reversed by government last week, HSJ analysis has revealed. Several of those still treating large proportions of attenders in the 10 minutes before the cut-off are among the top performers on the target. NHS England’s 2019 clinical review of standards had proposed to scrap the four-hour target, claiming it was no longer the most appropriate or effective measure. NHSE had planned to replace it with a new bundle of measures, such as the average time spent in emergency departments. It has been trialling these at 14 trusts for more than two years, with enforcement of the four-hour target by NHSE being substantially wound down. The move to end use of the four-hour target was never officially endorsed by government, but both Matt Hancock and Sajid Javid indicated they backed the idea. However, their successor as health and social care secretary, Therese Coffey, announced that she would not be abolishing it. Royal College of Emergency Medicine president elect Adrian Boyle warned this “target-associated” patient flow could be “diverting clinicians away from more sick cases to people with lower acuity”. He added “the scrutiny and managerial grip that used to go with [the target]” has been “taken away”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 September 2022
  18. News Article
    The four-hour emergency care target is “not the right answer” long term, but services have been left “in limbo” by Therese Coffey’s promise that it will no longer be scrapped, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said. Katherine Henderson said RCEM was “delighted” there could be more focus on the four-hour target in the short term following the health and social care secretary’s surprise comment last week, as emergency care has been “in a performance policy vacuum since before the pandemic”. But Dr Henderson said that in the long term there should be performance metrics that account for the “journey” of the most acutely unwell patients, and should be a further review of NHS England’s clinical review of standards – which proposed a suite of new measures to replace the totemic four-hour target. She added that more than a dozen A&Es which are involved in trialling the new measures have been “left in limbo”. Dr Henderson, whose term as RCEM president ends in October, said plans to use virtual wards and urgent community response teams to improve patient flow and prevent emergency admissions would have limited impact this winter due to a lack of staff. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 26 September 2022
  19. News Article
    Staff at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have been left ‘in fear of speaking out’ against structural changes to the organisation which they believe ‘pose a significant risk’ to the CQC’s ability to regulate health services, trade unions have told the health and social care secretary. A letter signed by senior officers of Unison, Royal College of Nursing, Unite, Prospect and the Public and Commercial Services union has called on Therese Coffey to urge the CQC to pause its organisational change and enter into “meaningful discussions” with the unions. The unions have raised concerns that organisational changes to the CQC have been drawn up by consultants with no frontline experience in health and social care, or in regulation, and that staff have had limited input into the changes. They allege that staff raising concerns about the changes have been dismissed as being “disruptive” or “negative”, and significant numbers of experienced staff have recently left the regulator. The CQC said in response to the letter that the changes it was proposing were needed to enable the regulator to “work more effectively across the health and care system”, and that it has engaged with trade unions throughout the process. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ. 23 September 2022
  20. News Article
    Tinkering around the edges, the King's Fund said. A few short-term fixes, according to the Health Foundation. And a plan that will have minimal impact, the Royal College of GPs added. These were just a handful of the reactions from those involved with the NHS. And they were not even from organisations usually at the front of the queue when it comes to criticising government policies. So why has Therese Coffey's first announcement as Health Secretary for England received such a negative response? The fact is the problems the health and care system are facing are deep-rooted. Much is made of the impact of the pandemic but the health service was already struggling before Covid hit. The pandemic has simply exacerbated the situation. At the heart of it all is a lack of staff. Addressing this is not easy and cannot be done overnight. It takes five years to train a doctor, three a nurse, which is why there is a big push on international recruitment at the moment. To free up GP appointments, pharmacists are being asked to take on some of their workload, while funding rules are being relaxed to allow GPs to use more of their money to recruit senior nurses. But there is nothing in the plan about where these new senior nurses are going to come from, which is why the Royal College of GPs has been so dismissive. It is a similar story for hospitals services, where accident-and-emergency waits, ambulance response times and the backlog in routine treatments such as knee and hip replacements have all worsened in recent years. Coffey is also introducing a £500m fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible. Local areas will decide how to spend the money and it could allow hospitals to pay for extra help at home for patients who need it. But it amounts to little more than a sticking plaster and is an approach already used to relieve the pressure during the pandemic. The real issue is the care sector is short of staff, with even more vacancies than in the NHS. Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 September 2022
  21. News Article
    Several patients awaiting treatment on the Welsh NHS have turned to surgery abroad as waiting lists hit record levels again. Waiting lists hit a record of almost 750,000 in July prompting surgeons to demand "urgent action". The Welsh government said waits of more than two years were improving. Health Minister Eluned Morgan said there were "signs of hope" that a target for no-one to wait more than a year for their first outpatient appointment could be hit by the end of 2022. But the Conservatives accused Labour ministers of having "little strategy" to tackle "extraordinary waits", while Plaid Cymru called for action "to increase capacity and improve patient flow". Sharon Seymour, 62, from Monmouthshire, went to Lithuania after being told she faced a "two years plus" wait for a hip replacement. The council worker said she also found out about Lithuania from other patients in Wales and had her surgery in July. She said the fact that people were taking matters into their own hands suggested the health system in Wales was not working. "[The NHS] does need a huge cash injection... a rethink completely now," she said. "The sadder point is the people who have the ability to pay will get it. "The inequality between those who can't and that [can is] a sad state of affairs," she added. "It's only through luck that we've managed to find the funds to go to Lithuania. "For most people, it isn't an option and that's horrible." Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 September 2022
  22. News Article
    An integrated care system which has some of England’s worst waiting times for emergency care lacks “delivery structure and processes” to make desperately needed improvements, according to an external report. Research by consultancy Prism into the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly integrated care system (ICS) concluded it had “unclear governance” for management and recovery of urgent and emergency care, with “multiple disconnected structures in place to manage tactical and strategic recovery of performance”. The report comes as the ICS grapples with record waits for emergency care, with stroke and heart attack victims waiting three hours for an ambulance and patients stuck for two days in Royal Cornwall Hospital’s emergency department. The review was commissioned by the Cornwall Integrated Care Board to look at patient flow across the system and make recommendations about how this can be improved. Prism interviewed leaders from the organisations within the Cornish ICS. One leader described the system as “so broken”, while another commented that the role of the ICB in supporting and delivering urgent and emergency care “is not clear”.
  23. News Article
    Ministers are setting up a £500m emergency fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible in an attempt to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter. Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, unveiled the move in the Commons on Thursday as part of her plans to tackle the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays for care. The newly created adult social care discharge fund is intended to relieve the pressure on overstretched hospitals in England by ensuring that patients whom doctors have judged well enough to leave can be safely discharged either to their home or into a care home. In her first speech since becoming the health secretary 16 days ago, Coffey told MPs: “I can announce today that we are launching a £500m adult social care discharge fund for this winter. “The local NHS will be working with councils with targeted plans on specific care packages to support people being either in their own home or in the wider community. This £500m acts as the downpayment in the rebalancing of funding across health and social care as we develop our longer-term plan.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 September 2022
  24. News Article
    Therese Coffey has pledged there will be no changes to the four-hour target for A&E waiting times – despite NHS England’s prolonged bid to axe the controversial measure. The new health and social care secretary told the House of Commons Thursday: “I can absolutely say there will be no changes to the target for four-hour waits in A&E.” Ms Coffey’s comments appear to represent a major blow to NHS England, which has since 2019 been pushing for a new bundle of metrics to replace the target. Fourteen trusts have been trialling these, which include measures such as average time spent in an emergency department and 12-hour waits from time of arrival, as part of the Clinical Review of Standards. NHSE had also, after a protracted battle, secured the support of key stakeholders, including the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, NHS Providers and Heathwatch England, to back its plans to ditch the target, for so long the NHS’s most significant performance metric. The bold position – with Ms Coffey just weeks into the role – also contradicts the stance taken by both recent predecessors Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock, who both signalled they were supportive of scrapping the target. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 22 September 2022
  25. News Article
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has urged system leaders to move away from “quick fixes” to the “enormous gap in resources and capacity” in urgent and emergency care. A report by the CQC and a large group of emergency clinicians and other health and care leaders calls for a ”move away from reactive ‘quick fixes’ such as tents in the car park or corridor care to proactive long-term solutions and to address the enormous gap in resources and capacity”. The use of tents and treating more patients in corridors have been increasingly adopted by hospitals in recent months, sometimes encouraged by NHS England, particularly when they are under pressure to reduce handover delays from ambulances. The report, 'People First: a response from health and care leaders to the urgent and emergency care system crisis', suggests: expanding use of urgent community response teams to attend minor injuries 999/111 calls, giving acute and social care providers direct access to GP and community service booking systems, and providing “rapid access” to support packages to help people avoid hospital admission. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 22 September 2022
×
×
  • Create New...