In a comparative study of health system performance by The Commonwealth Fund, the UK ranks first across a range of measures covering quality, access and efficiency of care, while the US comes in last place.

Monitor is supporting the Sign up to Safety campaign, launched by the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, which aims to reduce avoidable harm by 50% and save 6,000 lives over the next 3 years.

Report from the Think Tank Reform that identifies in response to an affordability gap of £30 billion by the end of the decade and variability in quality the NHS will need to change an learn lessons from outside markets e.g. the retail sector. Key lessons are:

1. The “hub and spoke” model of the grocery industry with larger superstores and smaller local outlets is a powerful example for the configuration of specialist and community hospitals.
2. Like supermarket chains, the NHS can learn to harness the contribution of the consumer through membership cards and online access
3. If medicine took a “zero error” approach and learnt the lessons of advanced car manufacturing there would be a dramatic improvement in quality

To implement the change necessary this report suggests that the following three models are likely to provide a backdrop:

1. the existing model of fragmented care,
2. a new business model of integrated care
3. a technology-enabled business model that has yet to be developed.

King’s Fund report that reviews the impact of three approaches to NHS reform in England since the late 1990s: targets and performance management, inspection and regulation, and competition and choice. It argues for a fundamental shift in how the NHS is reformed, learning from what has worked (and what has not) in England and elsewhere.  Key findings are:

• Transforming the NHS depends on engaging doctors, nurses and other staff in improvement programmes.
• A new settlement is needed in which the strategic role of politicians is clearly demarcated to avoid frequent shifts of direction that create barriers to transformational change.
• Improvement in NHS organisations needs to be based on commitment rather than compliance, supported by investment in staff to enable them to achieve continuous quality improvement in the long as well as the short term.
• The experience of high-performing health care organisations shows the value of leadership continuity, organisational stability, a clear vision and goals for improvement, and the use of an explicit improvement methodology.
• Leadership in NHS organisations needs to be collective and distributed, with skilled clinical leaders working alongside experienced managers.
• NHS organisations should prioritise leadership development and training (preferably in-house) in quality improvement methods.

What more is possible when leadership is shared with patients and service users? This was the question we posed at a roundtable event last month.

Our intention was to host the diversity of perspectives on this question, and see what emerged. We invited people we knew had an interest – patient leaders, organisational and clinical leaders – and also put an open invitation on our website and Twitter. We were curious about who might value a conversation about shared leadership.

This business plan for 2014 and 2015 sets out the PHE’s core functions, outlines the key steps and actions it will be the taking over the next year to protect and improve the public’s health and reduce inequalities, and highlights some of its achievements in its first year. The accompanying letter from Jane Ellison MP confirms the role the government expects PHE to play in the health and care system in 2014 to 2015.

Article that considers how the Sefton CCGs identified where each CCG was an ‘outlier’ in terms of the outcomes it was achieving compared to other CCGs, and and how they gained insight into why and what they could do about it.

NHS Right Care and the Atlas of Variation were the first data sets that they looked at.This identified the areas where we were outliers, allowing them to look at other data sources such as Programme Budgeting, the Spend and Outcomes Tool (SPOT), different Health Profiles (eg. alcohol and mental health) and Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA). They then summarised the findings into a couple of pages for each CCG which was used to develop the CCGs’ commissioning intentions.

Framework from Monitor that sets out best practice requirements across planned and urgent and emergency care that local healthcare systems should reflect in their local plans, as well as providing information on more general requirements such as operational planning, patient experience and planning for higher dependency patient groups.

RCN report that finds that the pay bill for senior NHS managers is accelerating ahead of pay for nursing staff. This report analyses the results of FOI requests sent to NHS provider trusts in England which revealed that the amount spent on executive directors over the last two years has increased by an average of 6.1%, compared to a 1.6% rise in earnings for nurses, midwives or health visitors.

Plan focusing on how the DH will support the Secretary of State to deliver his strategic objectives. Identidies 3 goals:

1. Living and ageing well – helping people live healthier lives, making this country the best place in the world in which to grow old
2. Caring better– raising standards in health and care, ensuring everyone is treated with compassion and respect
3. Preparing for the future – making the right decisions today so that the health and care system can meet the needs of people in the future