Leadership culture in the NHS, reactions to Berwick report plus the rest of today’s latest news and comment
5.31pm Here’s HSJ’s full story on the bailout of the three trusts.
3.56pm The Care Quality Commission has lifted the three warning notices it placed on Weston Area Health Trust earlier this year. During a visit in April inspectors found the trust was not meeting standards on respecting and involving people who use services, care and welfare of people who use services and assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision.
3.40pm The bailouts of a series of trusts by the Department of Health has been discovered by HSJ.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust received a £25.8m bailout in April.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals Trust have bothbeen given £6m bailouts.
2.34pm @nhsgooroo alerts us to the Network Locum blog’s guide to the runners and riders to be new NHS England chief executive. Mark Britnall is 9/4 favourite and many of the other frontrunners may be familiar. However, Michael J Dowling, chief executive of the north shore of the Long Island Jewish Health System comes in at 33/1 and Clare Gerada, scourge of the government’s health reforms, is a surprising tip at 25/1.
2.32pm The union Unite has launched an animated film warning that £20bn of NHS contracts will be under private hands in the next few years. It is planning a mass protest in Manchester on 29 September to “save our NHS from the government’s ideological assault on one of the most effective health services in the world”.
2.25pm The Care Quality Commission has appointed Oliver Delany as its new director of corporate services. Mr Delany joins from the Bar Council, where he was director of central services, supporting its regulatory and representative roles. He previously served for 25 years in the RAF, rising to the post of air commodore.
The director of corporate services - a new post - will be responsible for a directorate comprising organisation development, human resources, finance, legal services, estates, facilities management and the CQC’s national customer service centre.
1.08pm A social enterprise has won a £65m contract to run community services in South Gloucestershire. Read Sarah Calkin’s report here.
12.54pm HSJ’s revelation of an extra £500m to help some emergency departments over the next two winters has led to a certain amount of scepticism.
One reader writes: “Sounds like a real incentive for incompetent performance.”
Another adds: “What about all the other trusts which spent money they didn’t have to prop up their EDs to keep patients flowing? No help for them I guess. This is profoundly unfair.”
12.44pm Tory Commons health committee member Sarah Wollaston has used an article on the Berwick review for the Daily Telegraph to urge the health secretary to stop gagging clauses - including for his own aides.
The former GP wrote: “This is yet another report which stressed that gagging clauses can have no place.
“My own view is that it is unacceptable that they remain written into the code of conduct for the health secretary’s own parliamentary aides. That matters, as a culture of secrecy has always percolated down with damaging effects throughout our healthcare system with a tendency for inconvenient data or complaints to be massaged or ignored.”
12.33pm: At 12.30pm tomorrow, Liverpool Community Trust chief executive Bernie Cuthel and assistant mayor Roz Gladden will be answering questions about Liverpool’s integrated care model on HSJ’s LinkedIn page.
Ask them what improvements they expect to see and why; how they have engaged the public and clinicians; what sort of costs they expect to see; and if they have any do’s and don’ts to pass on to others.
If you are not already a member of the HSJ group on LinkedIn you can join here.
12.22pm A campaign to promote a culture of learning has been launched in the NHS. The Learning for Life campaign encourages staff to maintain their aptitudes in maths, English, IT and other areas.
It has been set up by the Social Partnership Forum which consists of NHS Employers, health unions and the Department of Health.
12.17pm The Local Government Association has warned the sector is facing cuts even greater than was envisaged at the time of the spending round, which signalled a 10 per cent funding reduction.
The LGA says the sector’s real terms cut will be 15 per cent, with many councils being uncertain whether they will receive elements of their funding that have conditions attached. It warns some authorities will be unable to fulfil their statutory responsibilities.
12.15pm A reminder that tomorrow Liverpool Community Trust chief executive Bernie Cuthel and Liverpool assistant mayor Roz Gladden answer your questions on the city’s model for integrated care.
This will take place tomorrow on HSJ’s Linkedin site at 12.30pm. All you need to do to take part is post a question here. If you are not already a member of the HSJ group on LinkedIn, you can join here. More details here.
12.08pm And NHS Choices has been rapped for failing to make clear the higher cost of its 0844 number.
12.06pm Commissioners in Bath and Wiltshire have drawn up plans to spend the marginal tariff on measures to boost seven-day working at their local hospital.
12.03pm We have spoken to members of the Berwick review into patient safety. They have played down the impact of their proposed law against neglect or ill-treatment while lawyers have questioned the measures impact on senior managers.
12.02pm A quick recap on HSJ’s main stories of the morning.
Amid fears of winter pressures, the Treasury is to give the health service an extra £250m both this and next year to help the most struggling. emergency departments deal with high demand.
11.37am: The Berwick review stopped short of recommending minimum staffing levels despite stating that providers should “ensure they have sufficient staff to meet the NHS’s needs now and in the future”.
The refusal to support calls for a national minimum staffing level is a blow to unions and campaigners who argue patients are being put at risk on understaffed wards.
Don Berwick said that instead of a specific number of staff being prescribed real time analytical tools should be in place to allow trusts to examine their staffing levels each day.
11.30am: BBC News health correspondent, Nick Triggle reports that a price comparison website is being created for the NHS to encourage cost effective purchasing of goods and services.
This was initiated after the National Audit Office estimated that more than 10% could be saved through cost effective purchasing. “For example, the price paid for the same box of medical forceps ranged from £13 to £23, while for blankets the costs differed from £47 to £120.” The website will include everything from price comparison of rubber gloves to building work.
11.23am: The blame games in the NHS that have led to the vilification of staff at hospitals such as those in Mid Staffordshire must end and be replaced by a new culture of openness, the Guardian writes reporting on Berwick’s review.
Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs is quoted as being delighted by the emphasis of the report. “At last, we have a report that tells it how it really is - that we are trying to do the best that we can for our patients,” she says. “[Berwick] recognises that we do not get it right every time but also acknowledges that a blame and shame culture is not the way to bring out the best in NHS staff so that they can provide compassionate patient care.”
11.08am: Foundation Trust Network chief executive Chris Hopson has written an article on HSJ’s opinion page giving his assessment of the Berwick review.
He says: “What I particularly welcomed is the sense that, after six months of lurid headlines, we may now be reaching a balanced, well calibrated, evidence based view of NHS performance on these issues.”
10.51am: Commissioners in Bath and Wiltshire have agreed a plan to spend cash withheld from their local acute trust following a rise in emergency activity on helping it move towards seven day working.
10.43am: The Telegraph reports that junior doctors have been recommended to “know their limits”, as they begin their first day on the wards, also known as Black Wednesday.
This title has been attributed to a reported increase in mortality rates amongst emergency admissions on the first Wednesday in August. To address this issue, the NHS introduced a shadowing system in attempt to increase safety in August.
10.40am: The NHS Choices website misled users by failing to state the costs of higher-rate 0844 numbers, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
10.35am: Rachel Reeves, principal research fellow in the school of health and social care at Greenwich University, argues that with its poor methodology and unrepresentative results, the “friends and family” test is not fit for purpose and other means should be used to assess patient feedback and respond to it appropriately.
She says: “The casual brutality with which these wards have been selected as examples of all that is wrong with the NHS is a disgrace. The friends and family test provides no reliable evidence of poor care, but these reports will have had a devastating effect on the ward managers and nurses singled out for vilification.”
10.30am: The Treasury will release £250m this year to ease “winter pressures” on emergency departments in around 50 of the highest risk health economies in England, HSJ has learned.
The DH expects to receive a further £250m the following year. The money is likely to be allocated to the areas worst hit by winter pressures in 2012-13.
10.23am: The Telegraph’s health correspondent, Laura Donnelly reports also writes on the Berwick review suggesting that health care professionals could be prosecuted for “reckless and wilful neglect” of patients. Sanctions would be modelled on the Mental Capacity Act 2005, however Berwick believes the use of these sanctions would be “extremely rare”.
10.12am: The Times reports on Professor Don Berwick’s review that a culture where staff learn from mistakes will trump any new law. Staff should not be blamed for the problems of the NHS because most are dedicated “but the system isn’t supporting them”.
9.48am: Good morning. Today on HSJ’s leadership channel, Jean Hartley, professor in public leadership at the Open University Business School, writes that the challenges facing public leaders today should not all be approached in the same way − sometimes political astuteness rather than “heroic” leadership is needed to get to the heart of complex issues.
She says: “In difficult situations leaders must understand the depth, variety and severity of wicked problems but they also need to inspire hope in themselves and others − and I don’t mean Pollyanna optimism, but a real sense of direction and energy…We have much less research on hope in organisational leaders, though promising work is emerging from the NHS about it.”
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