By Mencap (2012)
This report calls for action to prevent people with a learning disability being sent to institutions where they are at risk of abuse and neglect. It suggests measures such as the development of local services by commissioners that specifically meet the needs of children and adults with learning disabilities, the integration of local assessment and treatment units with local services, and frequent, rigorous inspections by the Care Quality Commission.
By The Health Foundation (August 2012)
This report describes a new approach to priority setting called Star (socio-technical allocation of resources) designed to help commissioners and others pinpoint where they may be able to get additional value from their resources by using them more effectively. It works by producing simple visual models, developed interactively with stakeholders, so that everyone involved can understand the nature of the choices to be made, and the disadvantages of not changing current practices. The approach combines value for money analysis with stakeholder engagement. This allows those planning services to determine how resources can be most effectively invested, while the engagement of stakeholders means the decisions are understood and supported by those most affected.
By Department of Transport (August 2012)
This is a new statistical release which presents information on walking and cycling amongst adults (aged 16 and over) in England, by local area. The statistics in this release are based on results from the Active People Survey (APS), an annual household telephone survey administered by Sport England. The APS is designed to measure recreation but includes questions about all cycling and walking activity. The APS covers more than 160,000 persons, which is sufficient to enable detailed analysis at local authority level.
By The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (August 2012)
This study explored the lives of young people in two regions of England where alcohol-related harm rates differ and found that: the north has a higher degree of reported indicators of alcohol-related harms than the south-east and the south-west, but despite this young people’s drinking behaviour in these areas followed similar patterns; young people rarely drank on their own; young people actively sought out clusters of youth-orientated bars, and sometimes these clusters encouraged young people to drink more than they intended; and planning authorities had often been unable to resist commercial pressures to allow clubs and bars to fill units that would otherwise be vacant, despite a wish to limit the number of licensed premises.
By Public Health Observatories (2012)
The North West Public Health Observatory is pleased to announce publication of the Local Alcohol Profiles for England 2012 (LAPE) on behalf of the Public Health Observatories in England. The profiles contain 25 alcohol-related indicators for every local Authority (LA) and 22 for every PCT; the indicators measure the impact of alcohol on local communities, including local area data on alcohol-related hospital admissions and alcohol-related crime.
By Department of Health (August 2012)
At present there are three population based cancer screening programmes; for breast, cervical and bowel cancer. All three cancer screening programmes require rigorous quality assurance if they are to maximise reductions in cancer mortality and cause minimal harms.
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By NHS Commissioning Board (August 2012)
The NHS Commissioning Board has published ‘A framework for collaborative commissioning between CCGs’. The framework draws together relevant information that proposed CCGs might consider and sets out steps that many will want to take in their preparation for authorisation and the 2013/14 contracting round. In some cases, a large number of CCGs might commission a single service that is organised across a large geographical area (such as ambulance services) or in other cases, a group of CCGs who are geographical neighbours may wish to work together on a contract with a single provider to which the majority of their patients flow.
By Reform Scotland (September 2012)
This report examines the practical arrangements regarding how patients access their GPs and whether these could be improved to encourage a provision of service more suited to patients’ needs. It argues that patient choice could be improved by opening up general practice to a larger range of providers and also makes recommendations for a greater amount of information to be made available to the public
By Department of Health (2012)
This report describes the development and implementation in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of nine showcase hospitals, and the National Centre for Infection Prevention and Management of a smartphone application for the trust’s antibiotic prescribing policy. The aim of the report is to help directors of infection prevention and control decide whether they should consider using smartphone technology as a cost-effective means of disseminating policy and guidelines to improve practice at the point of care.
By London and South East Regional Medicines Information Service (August 2012)
This annotated bibliography with 194 references is based on searches of the National Electronic Library for Medicines (NeLM), Medline, Google Scholar and publishers’ websites. The use of inhaled therapy is of great importance in the treatment of asthma, COPD and other respiratory conditions. However, a substantial percentage of users of inhaler devices worldwide have been found to have inadequate technique or to make critical errors, which means that they do not obtain full benefit from their medication. Despite attention by researchers and the introduction of new types of device, real life use of inhalers seems to have made little progress over the past thirty years.