A white paper from health policy experts calls for a single regulator, plus the rest of today’s news and comment
3.33pm The NHSmail email system used by 650,000 people across the health and care sectors suffered technical problems due to a network issue, taking it offline for most of yesterday.
Users took to Twitter to vent their frustrations and try to find out what had happened.
The project, called “NHSmail 2”, will include upgrades designed to make it easier for the system’s 650,000 users to interact with colleagues using other secure email services.
The five year contract, which covers the system in England and Scotland, will also include expanded video and audio capabilities, a DH spokeswoman said.
The network boards will have members representing primary and secondary care including commissioners, acute trusts, NHS 111, local authorities, and health and wellbeing boards.
Guidance has been published by NHS England in the latest stage of its urgent and emergency care review, led by national medical director Sir Bruce Keogh and director for acute episodes of care Professor Keith Willett.
The networks will cover populations of between 1 million and 5 million.
1.25pm More than 23,000 extra nurses will be trained over the next four years to help meet growing demand in the NHS, HSJ can reveal.
Health Education England has confirmed it plans to train an additional 23,121 full-time equivalent qualified nurses by 2019 based on workforce levels in 2014-15.
There were 325,000 nurses working in the NHS as of August 2014, HEE’s workforce plan said.
1.13pm Michael Mire has been appointed interim of the care Qulaity Commission, the Department of Health has confirmed.
He will assume his position on 9 June for six months or until a permanent chair has been appointed, whichever is sooner.
Mr Mire is currently a non-executive director at the CQC. His new role will involve a 2-3 days per week commitment a rate of £63,000 per annum.
11.55am A quick reminder that there are only four days left to enter the HSJ Awards.
The entry deadline is this Friday, 3 July.
There are 22 categories to enter this year, including a new category to showcase the organisation that best improves outcomes through learning and development.
The last year has been a crucial period in the development of the NHS. The need to improve efficiency, while maintaining or improving quality, has been combined with the challenge of introducing new care models and navigating increasing levels of government and regulatory scrutiny.
The winners will be announced at an event at Grosvenor House Hotel in London on 18 November.
11.27am The BBC reports on warnings that the death rate following emergency bowel surgery is too high, according to an audit by the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit.
10.53am Coastal West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group today announced that it will begin direct, formal contract negotiations with Western Sussex Hospitals Foundation Trust to become the prime provider of its musculoskeletal services contract.
The contract was initally been awarded to a joint venture between health insurance company Bupa and a community services social enterprise, but they pulled out after an independent probe suggested that the loss of the services could put Western Sussex Hospitals into deficit.
In a statement issued this morning, the CCG said it “will now enter a period of close and intensive working with [the trust] to agree the detailed provisions of the service and a sustainable timetable to introduce improvements for patients”.
10.29am The Financial Times reports that the most senior Conservative in local government has called for the end of ringfenced NHS funding.
Gary Porter, who today takes over as head of the Local Government Association, described the decision to increase the health service budget in real terms was a “bizarre policy”.
His comments come amid concern in Whitehall about the effect of the Conservative’s manifesto commitment to increase NHS funding by £8bn above inflation by 2020 on other unprotected areas of public spending. The paper also reports some departments are already trying to redefine parts of their own budget so they can fall under the health banner.
10.17am The Daily Mail reports that lung cancer patients are to be offered a “game-changing” treatment that trains the body to single out and attack diseased cells.
It is being made available under a Government policy that enables life-saving treatments to be fast-tracked through the licensing process that usually takes years.
Administered in a vaccine every two weeks, the drug nivolumab works by teaching the body’s immune system to attack cancerous cells.
9.52am The penalty imposed on providers who breach the remaining elective waiting time target is to be increased, regulators have told all NHS providers and clinical commissioning groups.
Two of the referral to treatment waiting time standards – admitted and non-admitted – were abolished at the start of the month.
A letter to provider chief executives and CCG senior leaders from NHS England, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, sent last week, sets out the detail of the new approach to RTT performance.
The national bodies said they will consult on increasing the penalty for breaching the “incomplete” target, which stipulates that no patient should be waiting longer than 18 weeks to start treatment.
9.35am A third of clinical commissioning groups with control of their primary care budgets plan to fund member GP practices to get them to form federations, HSJ has found.
HSJ asked all 63 CCGs that have taken delegated responsibility for general practice in 2015-16 whether they had in place, or plan to introduce, measures to incentivise or facilitate GP practices forming federations.
Encouraging practices to scale up is a priority for NHS England under the new models of care programme.
7.00am A white paper by the chair of Four Seasons Group Ian Smith and dean of the Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Professor Stephen Smith, calls for the merging of health and social care at ministerial level, decentralised leadership at a local level and a single regulator.
This report was produced and printed on behalf of the authors by HSJ, but HSJ had no involvement in the writing and in the opinions expressed.
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