Knowledge @lert for Friday 6th September

September 6, 2019 CCG Daily News

Friends and Family Test guidance

NHS England and NHS Improvement have published Using the Friends and Family Test to improve patient experience. This guidance is intended to support all provider organisations to deliver the Friends and Family Test. It will also be of use to commissioners. It replaces all previous implementation guidance for the patient focused FFT. These revisions are effective from 1 April 2020

Atrial Fibrillation High Impact Intervention Toolkit

NHS RightCare has launched the Atrial Fibrillation High Impact Intervention Tool. The toolkit is an interactive dashboard that aims to support local health systems to measure the value of identifying and treating patients with Atrial Fibrillation (AF), including the impact of screening and treatment-based interventions. The toolkit is accompanied by a user guide.

Unrelieved pain in palliative care

The Office of Health Economics has published Unrelieved pain in palliative care in England. This study estimates the number of palliative care patients who would have their pain relieved if ‘best practice’ was adopted across all care settings and some projections of how these numbers may change over time.

Spending Round 2019

HM Treasury has published Spending Round 2019 which sets out the government’s spending plans for 2020-2021. The Department of Health and Social Care’s resource budget will rise by 3.1% in real terms. This settlement gives the NHS a cash increase of £33.9 billion a year by 2023-24 compared to 2018-19 budgets, as well as boosting other budgets to deliver better health outcomes for patients and the public.

Funding priorities for the NHS

NHS Confederation has published Five funding priorities for the NHS. Ahead of the 2019 Spending Review, this briefing sets out what the NHS Confederation believe to be the key funding priorities for the NHS which are: workforce, capital investment, social care, public health and mental health.

Capital funding

NHS Providers have launched a new campaign calling on the government to address the challenge of NHS capital funding in the forthcoming Spending Review. Their briefing, Rebuild our NHS: our asks of the government, sets out why there is a problem with NHS capital funding, what needs to be done address the problem, and the positive impact that addressing the problem will have. In addition, they have published the results of a survey of trust leaders which reveals the scale of the challenge of capital funding and the impact it has.

UK healthcare spending

The Office for National Statistics has published How does UK healthcare spending compare with other countries? This report analyses UK healthcare spending relative to comparable countries, using data produced to the international definitions of the System of Health Accounts (SHA 2011).

Medicines bill savings

NHS England has announced the NHS has saved more than £700 million from the annual medicines bill as part of its campaign supporting patient and doctors to maximise the use of ‘generic’ and best value ‘biologic’ treatments. This news release contains a list of the savings delivered by the uptake of best value medicines.

Drivers of health care expenditure

The Centre for Health Economics has published Drivers of health care expenditure: final report. This report examines the drivers of past trends in health care expenditure and how much each has contributed to past increases in expenditure. It also examines how much each type of health service has contributed to past trends in health care expenditure and why there have been different trends for different types of care. It presents four lessons that could inform decisions on building a projections model of health care expenditure.

Social care priorities

The Health Foundation has published What should be done to fix the crisis in social care? This ‘long read’ sets out five messages for government about priorities and options for social care reform in England, based on an assessment of the evidence and analysis of the costs of reform. It focuses primarily on changes to the funding system rather than other policy questions such as the relationship between the NHS and social care.

NICE guidance

NICE guideline

NG137

Twin and triplet pregnancy

Clinical guideline

CG132

Caesarean section (updated)

Quality standard