Innovative ‘red bags’ that help care home residents admitted to hospital be discharged quicker are being rolled out across the country.
The bags, which contain key paperwork, medication and personal items like glasses, slippers and dentures, are handed to ambulance crews by carers and travel with patients to hospital where they are then handed to the doctor.
NHS doctors and nurses are using Skype to help older people get faster care, reduce avoidable ambulance call-outs and help people stay out of hospital.
The on-call Skype NHS team takes around 8,000 calls a year from wardens working in sheltered accommodation, care home staff and community teams looking for expert support for their residents.
Scheme running in Tameside (Greater Manchester).
Health service staff in England will be able to move seamlessly between sites in a bid to make it easier to take on new roles, plug gaps in staffing and improve patients’ care.
Following successful pilot projects, all hospitals in England are being urged to sign-up to passporting agreements, which will cut the need for up to two-day inductions and other admin when staff move between organisations.
'Over the last two years ‘Bradford Beating Diabetes’ (BBD) has contacted 2,300 people they knew to be at high risk of Type 2 diabetes and offered them help to reduce that risk.'
200,000 homeless, older and vulnerable people have had ‘lessons’ to get online and contact their doctor reducing GP visits and costs to the NHS.
In the first two years of the NHS England pilot scheme ‘Widening Digital Participation’ 14,000 people registered with a GP and looked online first before contacting the doctor.
Half of those who would have gone to the GP or A&E said they would now use NHS Choices, 111 or a pharmacy first.
Run by the Tinder Foundation for NHS England, the scheme works with hardest-to-reach communities giving them the skills and confidence to access online health information.
Twelve NHS hospital trusts have been selected to trail blaze new ways of using digital technology to drive radical improvements in the care of patients. [Most exemplars acute hospitals]
Of the 1.4 million new referrals for talking therapies as part of NHS England’s Increasing Access to Talking Therapies (IAPT) programme, 965,000 people began treatment, a 32,000 rise on patient numbers from the year before.
As well as increasing numbers of people getting treatment, performance statistics for 2016/17 show that waiting times are decreasing and recovery rates improving. The number of people recovering from their condition has increased on the previous 12 months, with over 50 per cent of patients making a recovery in every month of this year.
Responding to the Independent Review of Gross Negligence Manslaughter and Culpable Homicide, Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “Employers will welcome this report, which carefully balances an appreciation of the impact of clinical errors and mistakes on patients and their families, and our medical workforce.
Sent on behalf of employers in the NHS, the response outlines the issues raised, as well the positive elements organisations feel the proposed changes will bring.
Danny Mortimer, Chief Executive, NHS Employers said:
“We are delighted with the recommendation to retain nurses on the shortage occupation list. Demand for skilled overseas staff will continue whilst domestic supply increases and this decision will be welcomed by all providers of health and care. We await with interest the full response from the Home Office to MAC’s recommendations both on nurses and tier 2 migration.
More than £1 million is up for grabs for digital social care projects thanks to funding from NHS Digital.
The Social Care Digital Innovation Programme (SCDIP) aims to support local authorities using digital technology to design and implement social care.
Ten authorities will receive up to £30,000 to design a digital solution to address specific issues within their service.