3.48pm: Sarah Calkin’s tweeting of the health select committee:
* @drwollastonmp asks whether Nicholson blames H&SC Act for how competition law is being applied in NHS. He says he doesn’t know as he’s not a lawyer
* David Nicholson portraying the £3.8bn integration fund as a kind of bribe to get local government to back reconfiguration of acute services
* DN says @CLeslieMP’s criticisms of @ruthcarnall are ‘beyond response’.
3pm: More from Sarah Calkin’s live tweeting of the health select committee, which is currently grilling Sir David Nicholson. Follow Sarah on twitter. Latest:
DN: If £2bn is taken from NHS budget to shore up social care without transformation of services, the NHS will be in a managed decline…
(And when asked about comments he made at the HSJ summit on misuse of competition law). We have got competition lawyers all over the place and they are causing enormousdifficulty [in making service changes].
3.05pm: North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group says it is shocked to hear about the findings of the CQC on cancer services at Colchester University Hospital Foundation Trust. “Our overriding concern is the safe care of patients who will be feeling very distressed at this news.” The hospital has set up a freephone helpline 0800 028 2026. Anybody who has concerns about their current or previous cancer treatment should call this number.
2.32pm: The Chief Inspector of Hospitals has recommended Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust should be placed into special measures. Professor Sir Mike Richards’ call follows serious concerns, highlighted during a Care Quality Commission inspection, regarding the quality of some services for cancer patients at the trust.
2.24pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin live tweeting the health select committee. Follow her here. Some points so far:
David Nicholson: Getting emergency demand under control and centralising services are the areas where we are behind on transformation change
@KeeleyMP giving DN a hard time over senior manager pay, along the lines of how do VSM salaries look to those lower down the pay scales
DN: These jobs are among most complicated, difficult jobs in the world; chief exec jobs of a scale managerially very few of us wd understand
2.19pm: NHS England and EHI Intelligence have today announced the launch of the Clinical Digital Maturity Index, a benchmarking tool that enables NHS hospitals to better understand how investing in, then effectively using information technology can improve patient safety and outcomes, reduce bureaucracy, and deliver efficiencies.
2.10pm: Patient care could be put at risk if NHS managers are given further pay rises, because it will take money from front-line clinical staff, health officials have claimed. The warning comes as separate figures show that hospital chief executives have more than doubled their earnings in 13 years. Telegraph story here.
1pm: Increasing numbers of accident and emergency patients are being treated outside the maximum four hour wait year on year over the past four summers, an HSJ analysis shows. Our examination of NHS England data on type 1 incidents - the most serious - suggests a significant proportion of trusts will fail to hit the target to treat, discharge or admit 95 per cent of A&E patients within four hours at the end of 2013-14.
12.07pm: The Department of Health’s integrated care “pioneers” will be monitored centrally to check progress against their plans and could be stripped of their status if they lose their way, health minister Norman Lamb has said.
12pm: The Care Quality Commission employs the highest paid senior executives among the so-called NHS arm’s length bodies, it has emerged. Evidence submitted to the Senior Salaries Review Board by the Department of Health names the CQC as the highest paying such body.
11.58am: The government will amend the Care Bill so it can force clinical commissioning groups to share a chunk of their budgets with local authorities, a health minister has told HSJ. Read David Williams’ story here and follow him on Twitter here.
11.53am: Responding to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s commission Now or never: shaping pharmacy for the future, Michael Dixon, chair of the NHS Alliance was “particularly impressed by the report, which demonstrated significant areas of alignment with the NHS Alliance manifesto”. He added: “I was pleased to see that our call for the employment or attachment of medicines optimisation pharmacists to all general practices was included in the executives summary. Pharmacists are often the missing link to providing good care and a valuable resource that should be better used”.
11.40am: The number of clinical commissioning groups expecting to record a deficit at the end of this year has nearly tripled to 24, while NHS England is also expecting to overspend its own budgets by £93m. Read Dave West’s story here and follow him on Twitter here.
11.33am: NHS England’s primary care contact managers will be reorganised and reduced by September next year, with the services potentially being outsourced. Read Dave West’s story here.
11.25am: Soaring demand for GP and emergency services could be reduced if there is a “radical shift” in the role of pharmacists, a new report claims. High street presence and long opening hours mean that community pharmacies have the potential to play a “crucial role” in providing care, the authors said.
9.44am: 10% of Britons are ‘close to breaking point’ because of stress, with people in their 40s and 50s suffering the most, writes the Mail.
And they take seven women of different ages and get an expert to assess their risk of a heart attack, which they say kills more women than breast cancer.
9.36am: Not much health news in today’s Independent but a frankly very amusing story about French teenagers who stole a llama and took him on a tram.
9.30am: In the Guardian, Kailash Chand and JS Bamrah offer their thoughts on how to reduce the pressure on A&E. They say the challenge is to reduce avoidable admissions and ensure that patients are treated in the most appropriate setting.
9.26am: In the Guardian: “The UK is one of best places to live and work, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, although income inequality has risen by more than in other countries since the global financial crisis struck in 2007.”
9.21am: Commenting on the latest report from the RoyalPharmaceutical Society, Now or Never: shaping pharmacy for the future, Royal College of Physicians president Sir Richard Thompson said: “We agree with the RPS that there is a greater need for joint working of professions, including pharmacists in multidisciplinary teams, in order to widen the provision of care for people in hospital and the community. The RPS is also right to note the need to control costs, and that therefore all professions working in or with the NHS will have to drive change using existing funding and innovation.”
9.05am: All this week, HSJ is celebrating innovation: from launching our inaugural list of top 50 innovators in the healthcare and featuring some of their key leanings to exploring what can be done to make NHS innovation friendly. Join our panel tomorrow to discuss the best ways to encourage innovation in the NHS. The discussion will take place in the comments section on this page from 12.30pm-1.30pm. You can post your questions and comments before the discussion.
9.02am: Good morning and welcome to HSJ Live. Senior health service figures are being asked to address the under-representation of women in leadership of the NHS, in the wake of HSJ’s Women’s Issue earlier this year. Research published in the issue found just 37 per cent of senior positions on NHS boards and clinical commissioning group governing bodies were held by women, despite the fact that 81 per cent of the non-medical workforce is female. Read Sarah Calkin’s article here.
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