Your essential update on health for the week.

HSJ Catch Up

This weekly email gives HSJ subscribers a vital update on the biggest stories in health. If you have been out of the office or otherwise just too busy to keep up, HSJ Catch Up will ensure you are still in the know.

Back to the drawing board… again

Back in 2014 someone had the bright idea of looking at the configuration of stroke services in Kent and Medway, with one option being to move to a smaller number of hyper-acute stroke units.

Eight years later the number of stroke units has fallen from seven to three (partly due to staffing challenges) but there are still no hyper-acute units in the county and won’t be for another two years. The go-live dates for the three proposed units – at Maidstone Hospital, Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford and the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford – have just slipped back by another year as commissioners re-examine the likely activity and bed numbers.

A cure for procurement?

A new “central commercial function” for NHS procurement will simplify the routes through which trusts and integrated care systems buy goods and services, NHS England chief commercial officer Jacqui Rock has told HSJ.

The new “function” is being developed by NHS England will also set a national commercial strategy, improve the quality of procurement data flowing to the centre and professionalise the procurement and commercial workforce.

Ms Rock attempted to allay fears expressed to HSJ by some leading figures in the sector that the CCF is a means to begin incorporating NHS procurement into the Government Commercial Function – a Cabinet Office agency that either buys on behalf of departments or provides intensive support to department procurement efforts.

Awkward

Oh to be a fly on the wall when NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor welcomed Sajid Javid in the green room ahead of the health and social care secretary’s keynote speech to the ConfedExpo 22 conference this week.

During an exclusive HSJ interview Mr Taylor accused ministers, including Mr Javid, of bashing health service managers and exploiting the culture wars to try to “explain away” the crisis in the NHS instead of facing up to the problems that 12 years of Conservative-led government have created.

The Confed CEO told HSJ: “If you can’t recognise that the fundamental reasons [underpinning why] we face this yawning capacity gap are to do with, particularly, the decade of austerity… then you have to look for other culprits and you end up manager bashing and talking about wokery, because it becomes a way to explain away the reality.”

The two-year waiter slayers

The chief executive of one of the first teaching trusts in the country to have eliminated two-year waiters for elective care cites “boot camps” for managers as key in the success.

Andy Hardy of University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire Trust says “there is no magic to it” and that their formula can be copied elsewhere.

Since the beginning of April, the trust has reported zero patients waiting over two years for their elective treatment – ahead of NHS England’s target of July 2022.

Stand by your beds

In her first speech addressing the annual NHS Confederation conference since she took post, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the health service has a low bed base and NHSE was reviewing how it got the size of its capacity right.

She said: “The NHS has long had one of the lowest bed bases among comparable health systems. And in many respects this reflects on our efficiency and our drives to deliver better care in the community.

“But it was true before the pandemic, and it remains true now that we have passed the point at which that efficiency actually becomes inefficient.

“So the point has come where we need to review how we right-size our capacity across the NHS.”

A deadly strike

Next week’s rail strikes will “probably end up killing people”, a senior NHS leader has told HSJ.

The source, who is closely involved in southern England’s emergency and urgent care services, told HSJ: “Next week’s rail strikes will probably end up killing people because they’ll prevent ambulance trust staff getting to work.”

Ambulance trusts are already experiencing high demand amid soaring temperatures and continuing problems with lengthy handovers at the accident and emergency departments. Fears are now growing that next week’s rail strikes will push services to breaking point as many ambulance staff travel to work by public transport.

Only in the NHS

The outgoing CEO of an acute trust has said the system of board chairs in the NHS is “weird” and in any other industry would be seen as “mad”. 

In a wide-ranging interview with HSJ, Christine Allen of West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals Trust said she had been “lucky” with the chairs she had worked with but she knew of other people who had not been.

“You have someone on a part-time basis who has generally not got NHS experience as your boss. That is weird and in any other industry it would be a mad idea.”

She continued: “You have a couple of types of chairs. There are chairs who want to be chief exec – that never works. You have to be very clear about what is operational, and what is more strategic…”