The latest exclusive on Mid Staffordshire FT - and the rest of the day’s news.
17.27pm The BBC has obtained CCTV footage of “multiple failings” in the home care provided by one company to an 83-year-old woman. Read more here
17.15pm Should doctors make jokes on Twitter? Julian Sheather, the British Medical Association’s ethics manager, blogs on bmj.com about tweeting black medical humour Read his blog here
17.06pm “I hear lots of NHS staff, who weren’t in unions before, joined unions for protection during the transition. Probably not Lansley’s intention?” tweets HSJ reporter David Williams from the Commissioning Show. @dwilliamsHSJ
16.54pm The National Institute for Care and Health Excellence has today launched a consultation on updated guidance on helping people recover from a heart attack. Click here.
16.02pm Monitor chief executive David Bennett has told delegates at the Commissioning Show that “there’s a lot of mythology about what we’re doing around competition”, tweets HSJ reporter David Williams @dwilliamsHSJ. “Bennett acknowledges this is a comms issue for Monitor. Will be much engagement, wants Monitor people to get to know all the CCG people…not sure CCG people will be thrilled to hear that.”
15.55pm The latest breastfeeding stats are out. Click here
15.47pm The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has published a Department of Heath-funded handbook for councils on how they can help reduce accidents and hospital admissions in their areas. The guide is backed by Public Health England. Read more here.
15.05pm Dr Foster has launched its latest What’s in the Hospital guides (attached right) which feature site-level data for the first time including death rates for some. The company is also providing information on commissioners for the first time using indicators at CCG and population level.
14.56pm NHS England has welcomed the findings of the latest GP patient survey, which found 86.7 per cent of patients rate their overall experience of GP practices as good. See the survey results here.
13.44pm EXCLUSIVE: The special administrators running Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust are to ask Monitor for extra time to decide the fate of its acute services, HSJ can reveal. An announcement is expected this afternoon. Read more here.
13.07pm Monitor and NHS England are seeking the views of providers and commissioners on the first National Tariff for NHS services ahead of a formal consultation in the autumn. The regulator today urged NHS organisations to submit feedback on a trio of documents by July 9: The National Tariff 2014/15: an engagement document, a discussion paper on local payment variations, and draft guidance on enforcement
12.02pm “John Parkes of Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit says competition between CSUs is not like the Tour de France with people knocking into each other”, tweets HSJ reporter David Williams from the Commissioning Show. Follow him at @dwilliamsHSJ
12.00pm We can learn from primary care in America, says care and support minister Norman Lamb. Read his opinion piece for HSJ here.
11.56am Foundation trusts are still feeling the pinch despite their £4.5billion cash pile, say HSJ columnist Sally Gainsbury. Read morehere.
11.52am Are women in heathcare really putting a strain on services? Read what Michael White has to say about public health minister Anna Soubry’s controversial comments.
11.41am HSJ reporter David Williams is tweeting live from the Commissioning Show. Follow him at @dwilliamsHSJ #commshow
11.33am Sir David Nicholson has insisted he “absolutely refutes” allegations he has been complicit in a “cover up” about the use of gagging orders in the NHS.
The NHS England chief executive told the Public Accounts Committee accusations that he misled MPs and took part in a “systematic cover-up” of secret deals used to buy NHS staff’s silence were “entirely inappropriate”. Read HSJ’s story here.
11.28am Check out the latest A&E data with HSJ’s performance tracker, which shows a small improvement across the hospital sector in the past four weeks.
11.18am The shadow health secretary has said clinical commissioning groups should be relegated to an advisory role because councils are more in tune with their local populations than GPs. Read HSJ’s story here.
11.06am The University Hospital of South Manchester will today become the first hospital trust in the country to publish ratings of consultants that show their results, measured against national standards, and what their patients say about them. Read the story on hsj.co.uk here.
11.03am The elderly care system “incentives neglect” health minister Norman Lamb will warn today as a review is launched into home-help services, reports The Daily Telegraph.
10.57am Doctors will be given the opportunity to opt out of new league tables assessing their performance, it has emerged. Read more on hsj.co.uk here
10.45am The Daily Mail carries a page eight story headlined “Go Now - MPs demand immediate exit of NHS chief who misled Commons over gagging of whistleblowers”.
Sir David pointed out the payments to 52 staff totalling £2m did not apply to people raising safety concerns.
The page also carries short stories on “Bribes to use new IT system” and the decision of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel on paediatric cardiac surgery.
10.40am A senior hospital consultant has criticised the way doctors in hospitals are dressing claiming they risk losing the respect of patients.
Dr Stephanie Dancer, a consultant microbiologist at Hairmyres Hospital in Lanarkshire has written in the BMJ: “‘I hear that patients complain that they do not know who the doctor is: no tie, no white coat, no jacket and no presence.
“Untidiness erodes the image of doctors as responsible and competent. [Smartness] gives confidence to patients who might be facing life or death decisions,” she says.
Dr Dancer blames a 2007 ban by the Department of Health who instructed doctors to stop wearing white coats and to be bare below the elbows to help reduce the spread of infections. She says there is no evidence that wearing a white coat helps spread infection.
She adds: “It could be argued that ditching the white coat and tie for hygiene purposes has had the converse effect, in that the informal attire now gracing our wards has encouraged a less robust view of infection control.”
10.36am One in 20 junior doctors working in hospitals are concerned about patient safety, according to the General Medical Council’s annual training survey. Click here to read the full story on hsj.co.uk
10.28am Patients with more timely access to GP appointments make fewer visits to accident and emergency departments, suggests a study published by Imperial College London today.
10.24am About a quarter of clinical commissioning groups are facing “real difficulty” in “making ends meet” this financial year, the NHS England finance director has said. Read the full story on hsj.co.uk here.
10.21am Former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is to join private health company Bupa as adirector on its board.
The Times is reporting she will earn £52,000 for attending 10 board meetings a year. Ms Hewitt was a Cabinet minister in Tony Blair’s Government and served as Health Secretary between 2005 and 2007. See the story here.
10.16am The Financial Times reports this morning that business lobbying group the CBI is pressing for chancellor George Osborne to raid the ringfenced health budget in 2015-16, rather than imposing cuts on the business, innovation and skills department.
The paper states that the CBI has identified £3bn of savings that could be found “from ‘aligning’ NHS spending with health-related spending in other departments, and overseas aid spending with the defence budget”.
Itadds: “The CBI wants more than £2.5bn of social care spending to be funded by the Department of Health, as well as £700m of medical research funding now paid out of business department coffers.”
10.09am NHS England has published interim specifications for the commissioning of specialised services following a consultation earlier this year that generated more than 3,500 responses from patients, carers and clinicians.
10.01am One in 20 junior doctors working in UK hospitals have a concern for patient safety according to the General Medical Council’s annual training survey. Over 50,000 doctors completed the survey. HSJ’s full report on the issue will appear soon.
1 Readers' comment