Friday 17 August 2012

About 1,260 hospital admissions a day due to smoking, new figures show

About 1,260 hospital admissions a day due to smoking, new figures show: An estimated 460,000 hospital admissions in 2010/11 among people aged 35 and over were due to smoking, according to new figures. This is the equivalent...NHS Information Centre

General needs to improve A&E waits in Northampton - Northampton Chronicle & Echo


 
General needs to improve A&E waits in Northampton
Northampton Chronicle & Echo
Christine Allen, Northampton General Hospital's chief operating officer, said: “We've done all we can in terms of creating capacity, but what we now need to do is work with our commissioners to improve the urgent care pathway from primary care right ...

Majority of organisations ready for revalidation

Majority of organisations ready for revalidation:
The Organisational Readiness Self-Assessment Report 2011-12, which shows the state of organisational readiness for medical revalidation in England at 31 March 2012, reveals that 82% of doctors covered by the survey are linked to organisations that are ready to support them with revalidation. 
NHS Networks

Review of local formulary processes to support Innovation Health and Wealth

Review of local formulary processes to support Innovation Health and Wealth:
The NICE Medicines and Prescribing Centre has been commissioned to develop supporting good practice guidance on local medicines formularies. This is likely to be published by the end of 2012.  In advance of the publication of that guidance Dr Keith Ridge, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, has written a letter to NHS acute, mental health and primary care chief pharmacists, England and strategic health authority pharmacy and prescribing leads, encouraging action to review local formulary processes to begin implementation of the Innovation Health and Wealth (IHW) action.  This work should be undertaken in collaboration with emerging clinical commissioning groups and in a way that not only supports the IHW action, but considers:
  • local clinical and patient needs
  • how best to reduce inappropriate variation
  • how best to optimise medicines use
  • whether there is scope to reduce any administrative burdens of formulary maintenance.
Local medicines formularies have an important role in underpinning safe and effective use of medicines. It is also important that they support the introduction into practice of NICE technology appraisal recommendations.
The NHS Chief Executive’s report Innovation Health and Wealth sets out a broad range of actions, under a programme of work being led by Sir Ian Carruthers. The whole programme is being implemented in partnership with the life sciences industry, and include a commitment to:
‘require that all NICE technology appraisal recommendations are incorporated automatically into relevant local NHS formularies in a planned way that supports safe and appropriate clinical practice.’
David Nicholson wrote to NHS CEOs on the 9 August, on the work, and alerted colleagues to a requirement to publish local NHS formularies by 1 April 2013.
Department of Health

Maintaining and improving quality in the new health system – National Quality Board report published

Maintaining and improving quality in the new health system – National Quality Board report published:
The National Quality Board have published a report setting out how quality will be maintained and improved in the new health system.
The NQB brings together the national organisations across the health system responsible for quality including the NHS Commissioning Board Authority, the Care Quality Commission, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority, NICE, the General Medial Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council  and the Department of Health.
This report, focuses predominantly on how the new system should prevent, identify and respond to serious failures in quality and provides a collective statement from NQB members as to:
  • the nature and place of quality in the new health system;
  • the distinct roles and responsibilities for quality of the different parts of the system;
  • how the different parts of the system should work together to share information and intelligence on quality and to ensure an aligned and coordinated system wide response in the event of a quality failure; and
  • the values and behaviours that all parts of the system will need to display in order to put the interests of patients and the public first and ahead of organisational interests.
Read Quality in the new health system – Maintaining and improving quality from April 2013
The report is in draft form, and the NQB would welcome views on the approach it describes from those working in or with an interest in the health system.  Please send any views to nationalqualityboard@dh.gsi.gov.uk by 30 September 2012.
The NQB will publish a final version, once it has been able to consider any relevant conclusions, findings and recommendations from the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry.
Read letter on the report from NQB Chair Sir David Nicholson
NHS Commissioning

Monitor launches consultation on proposed Commissioner Requested Services Guidance

Monitor launches consultation on proposed Commissioner Requested Services Guidance:
Monitor has today launched the draft Commissioner Requested Services and Protected Services Guidance for consultation.
The guidance sets out a process for commissioners to follow to ensure that key NHS services remain available for patients if a provider gets into serious financial difficulty.
Commissioner Requested Services are services that will be considered by the commissioner for protection should a provider fail. The system will form part of Monitor’s Continuity of Service framework which aims to make sure patients continue to have access to the services they need in their local area.
As part of the Continuity of Service framework, commissioners will decide which services should be designated Commissioner Requested Services and the guidance helps them to do this. Providers of Commissioner Requested Services will be subject to additional licence conditions in the proposed NHS provider licence, which was released for consultation on 31 July.
The Consultation on the Commissioner Requested Services guidance: The consultation will start on 16th August 2012 and run for 12 weeks until 8th November. The Commissioner Requested Services guidance will act as a guide for clinical commissioning groups as they work to ensure the availability of good quality NHS services for patients if a provider has serious financial problems. Further information and the consultation document can be found on the Monitor website.
Monitor is launching a number of other consultations and documents over the next six months.
NHS Commissioning

Whooping cough outbreak warning

Whooping cough outbreak warning: Scotland is experiencing the worst outbreak of whooping cough since the 1980s, according to health chiefs. BBC Health News

NHS trusts 'competition warning'

NHS trusts 'competition warning': Eight NHS trusts are warned about anti-competitive behaviour over the way they ran their private patient units. BBC Health News

Statistics on smoking and NHS Stop Smoking services in England now available

Statistics on smoking and NHS Stop Smoking services in England now available:

The NHS Information Centre (NHS IC) has published the following statistics on its website:
 
. Smoking in England - 2012
 
This report presents a range of information on smoking which is drawn together from a variety of sources. The report aims to present a broad picture of health issues relating to smoking in England and covers topics such as smoking prevalence, habits, behaviours and attitudes among adults and school children, smoking-related ill health and mortality and smoking-related costs.
 
The report's main findings include (direct from source):
 
. An estimated 460,000 hospital admissions in 2010/11 among people aged 35 and over were due to smoking
. This is the equivalent of 1,260 admissions a day; representing one in 20 of all admissions to hospital in 2010/11.
 
Among people aged 35 and over:
. Around 1.5 million hospital admissions had a primary diagnosis of a disease that can be caused ...