Bids to co-commission primary care have been submitted by the majority of England’s 211 clinical commissioning groups, plus the rest of today’s news and comment.
5.20pm David Williams “Keogh: we hope to trial new payment systems in 15-16. And, we’re drawing up service specs to tender. NHS 111 services.”
5.15pm Here are some more interesting tweets from the Commissioning Show:
David Williams - @dwilliamshsj - “Keogh says that there are ppl who will want there to be a crisis in A&E, whether or not there is one, cos of elexn etc.”
Dave West - @davewest - “Tim Moorhead, chair Sheffield CCG, says CCGs should have say over use of winter funds rather than told to pass direct to provders”
4.10pm In an interview with The Guardian the chief executive of Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust, Lisa Rodrigues, talks about her depression and the campaigning role she intends to take up when she retires in August.
3.39pm Beating national organisations to contracts means local providers striving to offer a more attractive solution, as a county-wide effort in Lincolnshire has shown, says director of Lincolnshire Home Improvement Agency Mick King in our Comment section.
3.34pm Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has responded to the exclusive HSJ story that 180 of England’s 211 clinical commissioning groups have submitted bids to co-commission primary care.
He said: “It is unbelievable that the NHS is being reorganised one year after the last one. No wonder the NHS doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.
“Now GPs are being asked to commission services from themselves. It has the potential to be a conflict of interest writ large.
“The Government must call a debate in Parliament - it raises major concerns about proper accountability.
“The mess of Cameron’s re-organisation deepens by the day. He has already wasted £3bn and it is leaving the NHS weakened and confused. It is proof you can’t trust David Cameron with the NHS.”
In a statement, Monitor said the trust has “repeatedly failed to consistently meet the national target of seeing most A&E patients within four hours, and ensure most wait less than 18 weeks for operations”.
The regulatory body said it believes that “continuing to keep patients waiting too long for both emergency treatment and routine operations is indicative of wider problems with the way the trust is led.”
2.55pm In his latest column Michael White suggests that the new chair of the health select committee, Sarah Wollaston, has taken on a minefield of a job but that so far she seems to be navigating it successfully.
2.13pm One Mumsnet user has said that improving miscarriage care does not have to involve large sums of money, it is also about a sensitive approach from NHS staff.
Burnham replies: “It’s not just about money but the way we do things. One of the problems with the NHS is sometimes it is too much like a production line. It sees the immediate problem but not the person behind it. And professionals are sometimes working in silos leaving people frustrated and upset when they have to re-tell their story time and time again.”
2.09pm Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is taking part in a live webchat on Mumsnet, where he has just announced that a commitment to improving miscarriage care will be in Labour’s 2015 manifesto.
Topics of discussion included joint venture models, what a community trust might look like in the future and avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.
1.50pm Bids to co-commission primary care have been submitted by around 180 of England’s 211 clinical commissioning groups, HSJ can reveal.
A spokewoman for NHS England this afternoon confirmed to HSJ: “We have received a significant number of expressions of interest from CCGs.”
“These will now undergo a robust review and assessment to establish which can be taken forward quickly to begin benefiting local health communities,” she added.
“We will shortly announce which CCGs will be the first to take this forward.”
Speaking this morning at the Commissioning Show in London, Bob Ricketts, NHS England’s director for commissioning support strategy and market development, said there was “a lot of interest among commissioning support units in [becoming] staff mutuals and social enterprises”.
“That’s where I guess I would put most of my money if I was betting on it,” he said.
CSUs have to become independent of NHS England by the end of 2016.
Mr Lamb’s comments - made at the Commissioning Show in London today - follow a tightening of the assurance process for the 2015-16 pooled budget initiative in recent months, and following the arrival of Mr Stevens as NHS England chief executive in April.
The minister – who has been a champion of the fund – said he recognised “the system is under a lot of pressure and [there is] concern about whether new ways of working will actually deliver those acute admission [reductions]”.
12.46pm An investigation by Dr Andrew Goddard, registrar at the Royal College of Physicians and Ceri Phillips,
Professor of Health Economics at the Swansea Centre for Health Economics has found that thousands of patients with iron deficiency anaemia are being admitted through A&E departments.
The number of IDA hospital admissions classified as emergencies has increased to 15,420 a year,
up 10 per cent from two years ago.
Commenting on the findings Dr Goddard said: “Iron deficiency anaemia is under-treated and under-diagnosed, which is concerning given the impact it has on patients. The rising number of emergency hospital admissions suggests GPs and hospital doctors need to work together to improve diagnosis and management of patients.”
Twelve trusts have so far joined the campaign - launched by the health secretary yesterday - and aims to halve avoidable deaths over the next three years.
It is being led by Salford Royal Foundation Trust chief executive Sir David Dalton and directed by Suzette Woodward, director of safety, learning and people at the NHS Litigation Authority.
The website, launched on Tuesday as part of the government’s new Sign up to Safety campaign, features a measure of whether trusts have an open and honest reporting culture - one of three new indicators.
According to the Department of Health, the reporting culture metric is the first of its kind in the world. It combines five data points, including the reporting of patient safety incidents to the National Reporting and Learning System and staff views on the effectiveness of their organisation’s incident reporting procedures. Trusts have been given a green, blue or red rating, depending on whether they have been judged good, OK or bad.
A change to the law comes into effect on June 25 which means that medics licensed to practice in the UK can have their language skills checked by the General Medical Council.
The doctors’ regulator hailed the change as a “milestone” for patient safety.
Until now only doctors from outside Europe could have their language skills tested by the GMC, but this has been extended to doctors coming to Britain from inside Europe.
12.00pm At the Commissioning Show Judith Welikala reports that around 180 CCGs have put in expressions of interest for co-commissioning primary care, according to Helen Hirst, Bradford City CCG and NHSE’s director of CCG development.
10.45am Here are some tweeting highlights from the Commissioning Show so far:
Dave West - “Norman Lamb: I see great leaders emerging across CCGs”
“Lamb repeats his view Health & care budgets should be joined locally. ‘Perhaps by 2018’. Route not top down.”
Judith Welikala - “[Sam] Everington says primary care is criticial to everything being done in CCGs, but it is being threatened”
10.40am Three of our reporters are at the Commissioning Show today where they are tweeting updates. Follow @judithwelikala, @davewest and @dwilliamshsj for the latest news from the event.
In an exclusive interview with HSJ, the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust special administrators Hugo Mascie-Taylor and Alan Hudson shared their reasons for asking the care regulator to conduct a focused inspection at the hospital.
The TSAs announced last week that they had requested the assistance of the regulator because of concerns about the “fragility” of services, linked to difficulties recruiting and retaining staff.
10.10am A change in the law today giving the General Medical Council new powers to check the English language skills of licenced doctors in the UK, has been hailed as a ‘milestone’ for patient safety by its chief executive.
The independent regulator of doctors has campaigned for changes to be made to legislation since 2010, after voicing concerns that European doctors were being allowed to register with a licence to practise medicine in the UK without being asked to evidence their English language knowledge. This has been a long-standing requirement for doctors trained outside the European Union.
The GMC has now been empowered to direct any doctor working in the UK to undergo a language assessment, should a serious concern be raised about their ability to communicate effectively in English, whether to patients or colleagues.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the GMC, said: “This is an important milestone in creating better, safer care for patients. Everyone has a right to expect to be treated by doctors who can communicate effectively in English and this will help us achieve this. European law does not yet allow us to check every doctor but that reform will come and this is a vital first step.
“It is also important that everyone understands this doesnot in any way absolve those who employ doctors of their responsibilities - they must carry out thorough pre-employment checks and make sure that the doctor is qualified and competent to carry out the duties they are being given.”
10.05am The Guardian reports that patients are being put at risk by “brutal disinvestment” in general practice and now often wait two weeks for appointments, the chair of the British Medical Association’s GPs’ committee will warn today.
In a speech at the annual BMA conference today, Chaand Nagpaul will warn that a reduction of £450m in funding in real terms over the past three years, combined with a 40m increase in annual demand for appointments over the past five years, is causing general practice to “implode”.
The Labour peer, who has previously carried out a review of the NHS pathology services, told HSJ trusts must ensure they are “comparing like with like” when they look at the centralised prices offered by NHS Supply Chain.
He said: “I don’t doubt that we could go and get a pencil off the internet or the high street for cheaper than the NHS Supply Chain.
9.50am One in five children who has a persistent cough has whooping cough, even if they were vaccinated, a study published in the British Medical Journal suggests.
The Times reports that the findings highlight concerns that the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes, leaving older children vulnerable to the infection.
Patients are “insulted” by rushed consultations which put their health at risk, said Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA’s GP committee.
9.43am The Times reports that the sale of cigarettes to anyone born this century should be banned for the whole of teir lives, doctors declared yesterday in an attempt to create “the first tobacco-free generation”.
The BMA has supported a permanent ban on the selling of cigarettes to anyone born after 2000 in an attempt to “break the cycle of children starting to smoke”.
7.00am Good morning and welcome to HSJ Live. We start the day with the news that GP surgeries in areas with some of the highest patient to doctor ratios are increasingly relying on nurses and other non-medical professional to plug gaps left by the shortage of medics, HSJ has found.
At least three of the 10 clinical commissioning group areas with the biggest GP to patient ratios - including Swale, Luton and South West Lincolnshire - are depending on the wider primary care community as they struggle to recruit general practitioners.
Two of the other CCGs in the top ten are in Essex - Basildon and Brentwood, and Southend - and have many practices making use of specialist nurses to reduce reliance on GPs, according to NHS England.
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