Knowledge @lert for Thursday 23rd November

November 23, 2017 CCG Daily News

Transforming elective care services

NHS England has published two transforming services handbooks aimed at commissioners, providers and those leading the local transformation of services:

Inpatient falls
The Royal College of Physicians has published National Audit of Inpatient Falls: audit report 2017. This second report presents aggregated and individual hospital data relating to falls in acute, community and mental health hospitals. It makes a number of recommendations for trust boards and executive teams for improving inpatient falls prevention.

Older people’s care survey

The Family and Childcare Trust has published Older People’s Care Survey 2017. This survey of local authorities and health and social care trusts examines whether enough care is provided in their areas and how much funding authorities and individuals have to pay for it. The results indicate that over 4.2 million people aged 75 and over live in areas that do not have enough care to meet demand. While 81 per cent of respondents said they had enough availability for care home places, the figure falls to 46 per cent for home care and 37 per cent for nursing homes with specialist dementia support.

Lung cancer audit
The Royal College of Physicians and The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland have published Lung cancer clinical outcomes publication 2017 (for surgical operations performed in 2015. This report focuses on the activity of surgeons or their specific contribution to lung cancer care. The data relate to patients diagnosed with lung cancer who underwent surgical operations during 2015.

Preventing cancer
The Chief Executive of NHS England is to announce the scaling up of schemes to save lives by catching more cancers early. This press release refers to mobile lung cancer scanning trucks, a more sensitive bowel cancer test, and use of high definition MRI scans to reduce average prostate cancer diagnosis time.

Multiple birth babies requiring neonatal care
The Twins and Multiple Births Associations (Tamba) has published Twin pregnancy and neonatal care in England: a Tamba report November 2017 (pdf). This report includes information from neonatal networks for stillbirth rates, neonatal death rates, NICE compliance and neonatal admissions for twins. The authors suggest admissions of twins to neonatal units could be reduced by a third per year if all neonatal networks had the lowest admission rate.

National vascular registry annual report
The Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland (VSGBI) and the Royal College of Surgeons have published National Vascular Registry: annual report 2017. This report provides data on provider activity, metrics on the process of care and clinical outcomes for major vascular interventions.

National clinical audit benchmarking
The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) has launched an online portal National Clinical Audit Benchmarking (NCAB). This tool provides access to national audit data benchmarked searchable by speciality, Trust, hospital or unit. The specialities currently available are lung cancer treatment, upper GI cancer surgery, lower GI cancer surgery, vascular surgery, hip fracture care and intensive care.

Alcohol policy and older people
The International Longevity Centre UK has published Calling Time: addressing ageism and age discrimination in alcohol policy, practice and research. This report examines ageism and age discrimination in alcohol policy, practice and research. It also contains research on age discrimination legislation and policy in the UK and includes examples of positive practice.

Advanced clinical practitioners framework
Health Education England has published National Framework for Multi-Professional Advanced Clinical Practice. This document sets out a vision for the further development of Advanced Clinical Practitioners. It provides national definition of the role as well as requirements for entry. It will provide ACPs with guidance and principles to follow throughout their careers.

Individual funding requests
NHS England has published a series of documents in relation to Individual Funding Requests (IFR). The following documents update existing published standard operating procedures for the management of IFRs and outline how the process for managing IFRs for NHS England will operate:

Primary medical care policy and guidance manual – NHS England
This document provides commissioners of primary care services the context, information and tools to safely commission and contract manage primary medical care contracts.

Addressing ambulance handover delays – NHS England
This letter and guidance sets out the main points from recent guidance documents and separates them into actions to be embedded as part of normal working practice, and actions to be taken should ambulances begin to queue.

Nutritional care tool report 2017 – BAPEN
The BAPEN nutritional care tool report provides organisational-level data on how nutritional care is organised and patient-level data on the quality of nutrition in hospitals, care homes and community organisations.

Multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice in England – Health Education England (HEE)
This national framework, produced in partnership with NHS Improvement and NHS England, sets out a vision for the further development of advanced clinical practitioners. It provides a national definition and framework of what advanced clinical practice is and what the requirements for entry are.

NICE Shared Learning