The non-executive director’s guide to NHS data: part one – NHS Confederation
This briefing is the first in a new series of guides to be launched by the NHS Confederation in association with healthcare intelligence provider CHKS.  The guides are for non-executive directors (NEDs) and aim to show how data can be used to drive improvement, provide effective oversight and support the transformation of care. The first guide considers data in acute care settings. It will be followed by a further three publications over 2017/18.

Towards an effective NHS payment system
The Health Foundation and NHS Providers have published Towards an effective NHS payment system: eight principles.  This report examines how current payment systems impact on those providing care to patients and identifies eight principles that a payment system should meet if it is to support providers deliver high quality care.  The eight principles are: clear purpose; realistic expectations about impact; national consistency with local flexibility; appropriate, aligned incentives; high quality data; balance between complexity of design and ease of use; independent oversight and support; and time to embed and evaluate systems.

Medical exposure to radiation
The Care Quality Commission has published IR(ME)R annual report 2016.  This annual report sets out CQC activity relating to the enforcement of The Ionising Radiation (Medial Exposure) Regulations 2000.  It provides the number and type of notification received from providers when patients received exposures of radiation that were much greater than intended during 2016.

Briefing on party conferences: health
NHS Providers has published Briefing on the 2017 party conferences which sets out the key health-related announcements made by the parties at their autumn conferences and the main discussion points from the roundtable discussions hosted by NHS Providers.

How graphene tattoos can monitor health – BBC News – Health 
The tattoo could be a wearable device measuring electrical activity of the brain, muscles or heart

Statistics

• Tuberculosis in England: annual report – 2017
• Reports of cases of TB to UK enhanced tuberculosis surveillance systems – 2016
• Psychological therapies: reports on the use of IAPT services, England – July 2017 final, including reports on the integrated services pilot and quarter 1 2017-18
• NHS Sickness Absence Rates – April 2017 to June 2017
• NHS Workforce Statistics – July 2017, Provisional Statistics

HSJ Roundup (contact the Library for further details)

• Exclusive: Airbnb style company bids to place NHS patients in spare rooms 
  Members of the public with no care experience are being offered up to £1,000 a month to rent spare rooms to patients after they are discharged from hospital, under an Airbnb style model to be piloted by the NHS.
• Trust boards not looking at e-prescribing ‘need to be sacked’
  Keith McNeil suggests CQC should make e-prescribing and medicine management uptake mandatory for best ratings.
• Special measures ambulance trust posts worst ever 999 performance 
  The ambulance trust covering the South East Coast has seen its performance for emergency calls slump to the lowest ever recorded by any service.
• Experts challenge NHS Improvement claims on theatre efficiency 
  Experts have questioned a claim by NHS Improvement that the NHS could conduct an extra 280,000 operations a year if theatres were more efficient.
• CCG given months to find 111 provider after private firm cuts contract 
  The private company operating NHS 111 and GP out of hours services in East Kent is to hand back the contract even earlier than previously planned – leaving commissioners to find an alternative provider to cover the winter.

Our Fabulous NHS – Academy of Fabulous Stuff
***Get involved*** –  share your fab stuff!

• Positivity Jar Having taken my new ward team through a staff engagement programme due to lack of engagement and low moral we needed to keep the positivity we gained. Working in a ward environment with the continuing pressures of staffing and providing safe care we needed to keep the positivity going. We introduced a positivity jar where […]