Knowledge @lert for Thursday 11th August

August 11, 2016 CCG Daily News Uncategorized

Abandon the idea that all Trusts have to balance their books – Roy Lilly Blog
The NHS has to be put on life support. Start with the financial pressures.
Abandon the idea that all Trusts have to balance their books. Some will be ‘loss-makers’, they are socially-essential, have to be in-place, come what may, get over it.
Forget making individual components balance their activities, look for a balance across the whole health economy.Force people to share finances, share the risk and share the solutions. They used to be District Health Authorities, now they will be Accountable Care Organisations.

Integrated care a ‘main priority’ for Greater Manchester, says Burnham – Health Service Journal
Andy Burnham, Labour’s candidate to become Greater Manchester’s first elected mayor, has said handing control of running the region’s social care services to the NHS would be one of his “main priorities” if he is elected to the new role.

Junior doctors granted new whistleblowing protection – Health Service Journal
Health Education England has said it will extend whistleblowing protection to junior doctors in the NHS following concerns trainee medics were at risk of detrimental treatment.

Junior doctors will have whistleblowing protection added to contracts – BMJ
Health Education England (HEE) has introduced whistleblowing protection for junior doctors. The organisation said that this provided a new legal route to allow trainees to make legal claims against HEE if they believe that it has caused detriment to their career. The BMA, which campaigned for the change, said that this would close a loophole in which HEE, the body responsible for training junior doctors, was exempt from any legal responsibility for whistleblowers because it is not technically an employer. HEE said that this was not something the organisation itself could change.

Major acute trust to be rated inadequate – Health Service Journal
QUALITY: A large acute trust in Greater Manchester is set to be rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission, HSJ understands. It has been widely known that serious concerns were raised during an inspection of Pennine Acute Hospital Trust earlier this year, particularly around emergency services and staffing shortages in key areas.

Former franchise trust to exit special measures – Health Service Journal
PERFORMANCE: The district general hospital run for three years by a private company is to exit special measures after being rated good by the CQC, just over a year after it was handed back to full NHS control. Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust was rated “good” overall in its latest Care Quality Commission inspection, up from the “requires improvement” rating it was given in April 2015. It was rated “good” in terms of being safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

New framework for consistent learning disability care – NHS Employers
Find out about the new education and training framework for staff who work with people living with a learning disability.

Community-based care: an elusive strategy? King’s Fund Blog
Does anyone remember a time when shifting the balance of care into community settings and away from hospitals was NOT a strategic goal for the NHS? A new report from the Fund on the state of district nursing – due to be published later this month – will throw some light on the success (or lack of success) in delivering this goal.This report follows others that have looked at the core building blocks of care outside the acute sector, including in general practice and mental health. Once you move out of the acute sector there are a number of common themes across all these areas, including a relative lack of data and oversight on the workforce, service capacity and quality of care. Most of these services also fall outside the iconic performance targets that apply in A&E, referral-to-treatment, diagnostics or cancer care. Even the post-Francis focus on quality of care has been framed to date mostly around the quality of inpatient services and all that entails – whether it’s debates about nurse staffing ratios or the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection regime. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that of the 63 providers picked out by NHS Improvement as having excessive paybill growth (however controversial the measure), only four were community or mental health service providers.

Public health skills and knowledge framework (PHSKF) – Public Health England
The framework is accompanied by a helpful user guide, setting out how it can be used by individuals, employers and educational providers working in public health.

‘Worrying’ stress levels among primary care staff – Nursing Times
Practice nurses and their colleagues in primary care are being put at risk of developing mental health problems by the increasing stress levels they face in the workplace, a charity has warned.

Safety alert issued on faulty glucose test strips – Nursing Times
Patients with diabetes who use blood glucose test strips from a particular product range should be told to stop using them and seek an alternative as soon as possible, a safety watchdog has warned.

Health research: standard contract review
The Department of Health and the Health Research Authority have been working together to review the standard DH contract for NIHR funded research. Research funded by a National Institute for Health Research programme will now be able to receive payments for start-up in advance of ethical approval. This enables more rapid, efficient and streamlined set-up of research and quicker translation of research into patient benefit.

NHS England: assessment of performance 2015-2016
The Department of Health has published Annual assessment of the NHS Commissioning Board (known as NHS England) 2015-16. The Secretary of State for Health’s assessment report covers the extent to which NHS England met its mandate and business plan objectives, and fulfilled its duties to improve the quality of services, reduce inequalities and secure public involvement during 2015-16.

GP practices left with unused vaccine after 2015/16 flu season – GP Online
A third of GP practices were left with a larger stock of unused vaccine after the 2015/16 flu season compared with the previous year, a GPonline poll has found.

RCGP and GPC issue joint call for GPs to be given specialist status – GP Online
The RCGP and GPC have released a joint statement demanding the government recognises general practice as a speciality to give them greater parity with secondary care colleagues.

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