HSJ Live 23.05.14: TDA struggles to replace resigned chairs

3.31pm This week’s issue of HSJ magazine is now available to read on our tablet app.

2.17pm Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust has challenged key claims in a Care Quality Commission report which alleges that poor surgical practices could be widespread in one of its hospitals.

The critical CQC report follows the release of an earlier probe of specialist surgery at Maidstone Hospital by the Royal College of Surgeons.

1.49pm Some of the most financially challenged health economies were among the biggest contributors to an £800m pot established to settle continuing healthcare claims that was clawed back by the Treasury, anHSJ investigation has found.

1.47pm The introduction of waiting time standards for mental health care “must happen from next year”, a health minister has told HSJ.

Norman Lamb was speaking ahead of the publication of interim guidance by NHS England for the introduction of choice of provider in mental health.

The minister said choice, waiting time standards and a move from tariff-based payments system to block contracts would improve focus and funding for the sector.

11.47am Finally, the Mail (paper only) writes that the family of a pensioner killed by an incompetent foreign locum doctor branded European justice a joke yesterday after being told he would not face justice in Britain.

David Gray, 70, was given ten times the recommended dose of a painkiller by Dr Daniel Ubani, who practised in Germany.  The GP was tired after flying in for a 12-hour shift, and there was evidence of language problems, an inquest heard.

Prosecutors in Germany gave him a nine-month suspended sentence and a 5,000 Euro fine. This, the paper reports, prevented him having to face justice in the UK because it would have meant prosecuting him for the same offence twice.

11.45am Elsewhere, the Mail reports that children with minor coughs and colds are being taken straight to accident and emergency units by their parents, according to a senior government advisor.

Mike Sharland, a consultant at St George’s Hospital in south west London, said most of the children who attend the paediatric A&E unit there have not seen their first GP.

11.44am The Daily Mail reports that up to 12,500 patients are dying needlessly every year on NHS wards because of blunders by staff, health Sscretary Jeremy Hunt said last night. Speaking at the Patient Safety Congress in Liverpool, he also said errors considered so serious they should never happen occurred six times a week.

One patient had heart surgery that was not needed after staff mixed up test results, a woman was left infertile because the wrong organs were removed, and feeding tubes were put into the lungs instead of the stomach on 14 separate occasions

11.26am An exclusive from HSJ’s Dave West: the NHS England top team is to be shaken up, amid a string of departures of less senior directors from the organisation.

10.56am More from The Telegraph: ten-minute consultations with GPs are endangering patients and should be “consigned to the dustbin of history”, a senior GP has said.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee said patients were routinely subject to “conveyor-belt medicine at breakneck speed” because there were too few doctors.

10.55am Also in The Telegraph, criminals have infiltrated the NHS and diverted millions of pounds worth of medicines to drug dealers and illegal websites, regulators have disclosed.

For the first time someone within the NHS supply chain has been arrested after being found to be siphoning off controlled substances to sell on the black market, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulators Agency said.

10.54am The Daily Telegraph reports that Jeremy Hunt will today issue guidance making it clear to doctors that sex-selective abortion is “unacceptable and illegal”.

The guidance follows an investigation by the paper that found doctors who were willing to terminate pregnancies for women who said they did not want to have a girl.

10.40am The NHS Trust Development Authority has become concerned at the number of chairs that have resigned from the 99 trust boards it oversees, after 17 left their posts in 2013-14.

The figures – revealed in papers presented to the TDA board last week – were described as a “particular concern” because “attrition” rates of just 10 per cent are generally to be expected. Despite recent improvements, the authority admitted it struggled to recruit replacements for departed chairs.

10.35am The Guardian reports on AstraZeneca’s biggest shareholder calling on the pharmaceutical firm to hold fresh told renewed talks for a potential deal US rival Pfizer after the current offer period comes to an end.

The asset management group BlackRock is understood to support the decision by AstraZeneca’s board to refuse Pfizer’s £55 a share offer. However it would like the company’s directors to restart negotiations at a later date.

10.13am The Times reports that the threat to humanity from drug-resistant infections is worse than that of climate change, a group of eminent medical experts warned yesterday as they called for a global body to be created to tackle the crisis.

Speaking at the Royal Society in London the group, which includes Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, and Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, warned that the world is facing a scenario in which people die from routine infections because effective drugs have run out.

10.12am Jeremy Hunt has suggested more whistleblowers could help the NHS, as a leading doctor said GPs’ surgeries were dispensing “conveyor-belt medicine”, The Times reports (newspaper only).

The health secretary told the Patient Safety Congress in Liverpool yesterday that more staff should report concerns about safety and the quality of patient care in order for the NHS to tackle the estimated 12,500 avoidable deaths early.

9.52am Two Manchester trusts have launched an ambitious bid to create a combined cardiac service to compete on the international stage.

Central Manchester University Hospitals Foundation Trust and University Hospital of South Manchester Foundation Trust this month signed a ‘heads of terms’ as a first step towards developing the single service.

7.00am Good morning and welcome to HSJ Live.

It can be hard to know when a flu epidemic will hit and with what severity. Plans must therefore be developed to ensure that everyone is prepared for any scenario.How these plans are developed will affect how healthcare professionals must respond in different scenarios and how effective they will be. Ariel Beresniak reports on the initial findings of a €1.2m prevention project.