Health secretary to say NHS can save £10bn through better use of innovation and technology, plus the rest of today’s news and comment.

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4.09pm The chief executive of one of the biggest and most prestigious acute trusts in England is to step down, the trust has announced.

The departure of Sir Jonathan Michael as chief executive of Oxford University Hospitals Trust was announced by trust chair Dame Fiona Caldicott at a public board meeting yesterday.

Sir Jonathan, a former doctor and medical director, intends to retire from the NHS “by the middle of next year”, according to a trust statement. The trust is widely expected to have achieved foundation trust by then, and was told in September that NHS Trust Development Authority bosses would be recommending it for approval.

3.05pm Here’s what Care Quality Commission chief executive David Behan had to say about the role of his organisation in improvement:

2.45pm Clare Marx, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, discusses the role of clinicians in reducing waste:

2.42pm Mr Hunt has now finished his speech and has been joined on the panel by Fiona Caldicott, David Bennett, David Behan, Claire Marx and Richard Bohmer.

2.30pm John Appleby puts Mr Hunt’s saving proposals in the overall context of the £22bn efficiency challenge (i.e. very big savings will still have to be made elsewhere to close the gap):

2.24pm Mr Hunt makes the link between financial performance and quality:

2.21pm That reference to Mr Hunt’s step count plays into a wider theme which the health secretary is elaborating on this afternoon:

2.18pm King’s Fund chief economist John Appleby:

2.13pm Mr Hunt is discussing innovation and technology:

2.08pm Jeremy Hunt’s speech is now underway, with the health secretary setting out the bleak financial context:

1.53pm Mr Hunt is due to deliver his speech at 2pm. Stick around on HSJ Live for full coverage and reaction.

1.45pm Jeremy Hunt will announce that Fiona Caldicott is to be the first ‘national data guardian’.

Dame Fiona will oversee the safe use of people’s personal health and care information and hold organisations to account if there is any cause for concern.

Dame Fiona and her panel, the Independent Information Governance Oversight Panel, currently provide advice to the government on healthcare information sharing, but today’s appointment strengthens her powers.

  • Dame Fiona will be able to intervene if she is concerned by how an organisation is sharing data - she can refer concerns directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office and the CQC to investigate and sanction where necessary. Organisations that fail to act on her recommendations will face punishments including fines and the removal of the right to share personal data.
  • No data will be extracted from GP practices as part of the care.data programme until Dame Fiona has advised the health secretary that she is satisfied with the proposals and safeguards.

Mr Hunt is expected to say: “I intend to put the national data guardian on a legal footing at the earliest opportunity, but the CQC and ICO have decided to sanction organisations that do not comply with her recommendations even before that legislation is passed so patients will benefit immediately from the security of a much tougher and more transparent regime.”

Dame Fiona said: “Everyone should feel confident that their healthcare information is shared safely.

“As the first national data guardian I am committed to holding the health and social care system to account and acting on behalf of patients and care users.”

1.26pm Mr Hunt is to outline ‘four pillars’ that form the basis of the government’s response to the NHS Five Year Forward View: a strong economy, more integrated care closer to home, innovation and efficiency, and an open and transparent culture.

Setting out plans to harness innovation and efficiency to improve care, Jeremy Hunt will present the detail of the third pillar of the plan and is expected to say “if we are to be truly financially sustainable we need to rethink how we spend money in a much more fundamental way.”

To make progress in finding the £22 billion of savings identified in the forward view, he will outline a number of areas that he will say can save between £7 billion and £10billion by 2020:

  • Reduce avoidable harm - according to a recent independent report from Frontier Economics the total cost of preventable harm in the NHS is up to £2.5billion a year;
  • Minimise prescribing errors - £551 million could be saved, as outlined in an Academy of Royal Medical Colleges report last week;
  • Cut down wastage of unused drugs - £150 million spent on unused drugs could be saved as identified by the University of York and School of Pharmacy’s joint study;
  • Improve procurement - the procurement efficiency challenge aims to deliver £1.5billion savings on the £15 billion annual procurement budget by next year;
  • Bring down agency staff bills - these have increased by £1billion to almost £2.5billion;
  • Sell off surplus land and estates - total value of surplus estate is estimated to be worth £1.5billion in London alone;
  • Ensure visitors and migrants contribute to services they use - the government’s objective is to recover £500 million by the middle of the next parliament;
  • Reduce administration costs – the government wants to save £300m in 2015-16 through shared services and bearing down on costs in the DH and its agencies;
  • Reduce spend on management consultants – which currently stands at around £500m a year;
  • Make better use of IT to free up time for front line staff – one study by the Health and Social Care Information Centre found that 66 per cent of a junior clinician’s time is spent finding, accessing and updating patient notes.

1.13pm In a speech to the King’s Fund today, Jeremy Hunt will call on the NHS to work together to deliver the efficiency challenge outlined in the NHS Five Year Forward View. He will announce a new compact with the support of organisations such as the NHS Confederation and the Foundation Trust Network to set out how such savings can be delivered, highlighting 10 areas that could deliver up to £10billion of savings including through better use of innovation and technology.

12.47pm The new professional guidance that demands doctors and nurses are open about their mistakes does not include an explicit warning against staff obstructing or bullying their colleagues, campaigners have claimed.

The new professional duty of candour, unveiled last week by the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, follows recommendations by Sir Robert Francis QC after the public inquiry into failings at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust.

11.59am NHS England’s drive to boost the representation of ethnic minorities in senior positions will be followed by an equalities push on disability, sexual orientation and gender, its head of equality has said.

Ruth Passman told HSJ that the commissioning body’s work on a national workforce race equality standard for the NHS was the first phase of a wider programme.

“We will evaluate that, and we will then be bringing forward future phases of work [on] disability, sexual orientation and gender,” she added.

11.20am Patients will be able to add comments into their care records from March 2018 under new plans to make the NHS fully digital by 2020.

The plans are set out in Personalised Health and Care 2020, a framework for action developed by the pan-NHS National Information Board.

10.55am Wide ranging proposals aimed at making the NHS fully digital by 2020, including new regulatory powers and allowing patients to write in their care records from 2018, have been revealed.

The Personalised Health and Care 2020 blueprint, which aims to put technology at “the heart of the NHS’s future”, was developed and published by the national information board, which includes senior figures from the Department of Health, NHS England, regulators and other arm’s length bodies.

9.56am Foundations trusts will “furiously resist” any attempt to push them into ploughing their accumulated surpluses into primary care as envisaged by theNHS Five Year Forward View, HSJ has been told.

Their response comes as HSJ reveals which organisations hold the purse strings on the £4.3bn in cash and cash equivalents the FT sector had built up by the end of 2013-14.

9.55am Good morning and welcome to HSJ Live. We start the day with the news that NHS England’s information director has acknowledged trusts will need “incentives” as well as “consequences” to encourage them to hit new national standards for information technology.

Tim Kelsey spoke to HSJ as the pan-NHS National Information Board set out plans to give regulators a role taking action against trusts that were missing the proposed targets.

The board’s strategy document, Personalised Health and Care 2020, revealed the new data quality standards would be published next October, and trusts would be regulated against them from April 2016.