Monitor publishes a Guide to Special Measures – Monitor
NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts can be put into special measures where there are serious failures in the quality of care and there are concerns that the existing trust management cannot make the necessary improvements in quality without support.
The guide to special measures was developed jointly by Monitor, the Care Quality Commission and the NHS Trust Development Authority.
Power to the people: the mutual future of our National Health Service – Kings Fund Health Management Policy Alert
This report argues that moving towards an integrated system of healthcare provision would make it possible to offer whole-person, holistic care to patients. It highlights the role mutuals could play in integrating public, private and third sector bodies to both improve patient outcomes and plug any funding gaps.
Piercing the Illusion – The Health Foundation: Inspiring Improvement
‘Probably most of us think we are doing a good job… But how much of this is comfortable illusion?’ In her latest blog, Dr Jennifer Dixon suggests we are often blind to the quality of our own work. Which is why using intelligent data and measurement is central to improving quality – ‘from the “national” health system level, to the local, to the personal’.
Delivering for Patients: the 2014/15 Accountability Framework for NHS trust boards
Improving quality for patients at a time of growing financial constraint is an increasingly demanding goal for NHS trusts, one which we must take on at a time when the scrutiny applied to the NHS is rightly more intense than ever before. This Accountability Framework sets out how the TDA will work alongside NHS trusts to meet this challenge.
A crucial issue facing the NHS today is how the health service can balance the imperative to provide better care with the need to reduce costs overall.
This briefing brings together the views of NHS leaders and highlights the key messages arising from a roundtable held at the end of last year. These messages will be of interest to other NHS leaders who are tackling similar challenges, the national bodies and politicians supporting them in doing so, and members of the public who need to engage in this important debate