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NHS England has today published an independent report into the deaths of people with a learning disability or mental health problem at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, and highlighted a system-wide response.
CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards and the Chief Executive of NHS Improvement, Jim Mackey have written to all 255 NHS hospital trusts in England to ask them to consider quality and finances on equal footing in their planning decisions.
Ahead of publishing the consultation response into the functions of the office of the National Guardian, Dame Eileen Sills has set out the principles and priorities that will guide her first months in post.
We will publish two documents covering foundation trusts’ requirements for 2015/16. This consultation includes:
our proposals for indicators to be subject to assurance in our detailed guidance for external assurance on quality reports 2015/16
our proposal to clarify guidance on how auditors should report a modified conclusion on their limited assurance work
an invitation for you to comment on who should provide the external assurance on quality reports from 2016/17
We will consider all responses in finalising these documents for 2015/16.
Day-to-day responsibility for smooth operational running of trusts lies with their boards, and when things go wrong, formal oversight of trust boards is provided by regulators. But between those two stools is performance management; in the current system, that sits with commissioners.
Presentation from NHS Transformathon. This session will show how, as a nation, Scotland is seeking to achieve large scale improvement in health and care through a combination of programme-specific activities and supporting development of sustainable QI cultures within health and care organisations. They’ll do this by sharing their experience of using a range of activities to support cultural change including the Building a QI Infrastructure Programme and Board development activities. They will also share their learning and outcomes from a specific example in the care of people living with frailty and delirium.
Patient-centred care, defined as respecting and responding to the needs and preferences of patients, empowering them to make decisions that best fit their individual needs, has been identified by the Institute of Medicine as an essential element of high-quality care.1 It can be thought of as respectfully involving the patient2 in a way that helps practitioners provide care that is concordant with their patients’ values, needs and preferences while better enabling patients to actively provide input and participate in their healthcare.3 Patients are more satisfied with their care when they feel that healthcare providers are understanding their needs, carefully listening and clearly providing information4; in addition, patient-centred care has been found to be associated with improved patient outcomes.5 In order to provide exemplary patient-centred care, one needs well developed communication skills, especially in the realm of active listening and responding to patient cues. The importance of physicians mastering the art of patient-centred communication skills can be seen as a theme in the educational objectives of medical school curricula as well as in the competencies of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens
Objectives One important component of patient-centred care is provider incorporation of patient contextual factors—life circumstances relevant to their care—in managing the patient's health. The current study uses data sets collected from direct observation of care to examine if how a provider learns contextual information influences whether the provider incorporates the information into a care plan.
This quality standard covers the recognition, assessment, care and treatment of mental health problems in women during pregnancy and the postnatal period (up to 1 year after childbirth). It also includes providing pre-conception support and advice for women with an existing mental health problem who might become pregnant, and the organisation of mental health services needed in pregnancy and the postnatal period.
Managing demand for planned health care is described in this report as a “wicked problem” – demand for healthcare is outpacing capacity to meet it.
Health economies have tried various approaches to managing demand; referral management centres, expanded roles, direct access amongst others. But the evidence base has been mixed, of variable quality and sometimes conflicting findings.
This synthesis of evidence sets out to understand what works but with a particular focus on context, to understand what works, in what settings and why.
Adherence to medicines has been identified as a key issue by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain,1 the WHO2 and, most recently, by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.3 Estimates of adherence vary widely but are often reported to be as low as 50%.4 When a patient does not take their prescribed medicines as intended, they may not derive the expected outcomes. As well as implications for the individual patient, this can result in increased costs associated with patient hospitalisations or avoidable escalation in other costs of care.3 It may also result in unused medicines, the cost of which is estimated at £300 million per year in England alone.3 To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
Prescribing errors occur in up to 15% of UK inpatient medication orders. However, junior doctors report insufficient feedback on errors. A barrier preventing feedback is that individual prescribers often cannot be clearly identified on prescribing documentation. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details