Charities driving a change in the NHS and the rest of today’s news and analysis
15.33pm: A new civil service “style guide” has been released, which aims to remove some of the jargon from government, the BBC reports.
14.32pm: Councils can complain to the health secretary if they believe local NHS groups are ignoring the commissioning strategies set by health and wellbeing boards, the Department of Health has said.
12.13pm: The Care Quality Commission has published a report on bullying within the organisation.
Chief executive David Behan commissioned the investigation after the December staff survey found 28 per cent of staff said the organisation’s culture was one of “bullying”.
The report released today came from interviews with 236 staff and 92 per cent of them said “they felt there was a problem and that they had been subject to bullying behvaiours.”
11.41am: Interesting perspective from an aspirant FT under our story about Monitor having had its budget cut: “I wonder if we are amongst the first of the cuts. We are an aspirant FT, three working days from submitting several thousand pages of plans, models, information and evidence to the NHS Trust Development Authority.
“We have been through external reviews (BGAF, QGAF, HDDs 1 and 2, SHA), a public consultation, working with stakeholders and commissioners, iterations (multiple) of everything and assurance on everything else.
“We have burned midnight oil and sacrificed weekends to meet deadlines and to make sure that our submission is the best it can be, and to make it as real as possible for our trust. This morning I left for work with my head full of all the tweaks, checks and tasks still needed to make sure that the send button could be pressed with confidence next week.
“We have accepted over the years that the FT application process is a Hogwartian game of snakes and ladders. It has no ladders, snakes that move randomly in size and position and an ever changing number of squares on the board.
“I arrived at work to discover that the Council of Wizards in the stratosphere above us have decreed that as of now, all aspirant FTs must pass a new-style Mike Richards inspection before they can proceed any further. These have not yet started, and we’re not on the list of the first 18 trusts to be done. No one can tell us when it will be our turn - but what they can tell us is that there’s no point in submitting anything to anyone for now. Demoralised does not even begin to describe it. But never mind - at least Monitor won’t have any new trusts to assess for a while which will help their finances.
“So I will press send on this, then turn my computer off and put my head in my hands. Perhaps I will come into work on Monday (after my now free weekend) and remember that our real job is to run a hospital.”
11.03am: The Times has a story this morning on an inquest into the death of a six-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome who died of pneumonia at the Leicester Royal Infirmary in February 2011.
The paper reports that a nurse told the inquest she could not explain why she did not tell doctors about his fever, respiratory problems and raised heart rate. It adds that Jack Adcock “became unconscious and was left to die after a paediatrician mistook him for another child patient who was the subject of a ‘do not resuscitate’ court order”.
The inquest continues.
10.56am: The Daily Mail reports on a survey by Pulse Magazine which found 51 per cent of 441 GPs polled backed charging for appointments. It also reports on NHS Employers’ rejection of calls to pay A&E doctors more for out of hours shifts while its coverage of chancellor George Osborne’s night spent visiting workers on the night shift carries a photo with the caption “Osborne joins the night shift (whingeing doctors take note!)”
10.54am: The Times’ Chris Smyth reports today that the first nurses have been struck off as a result of the care scandal at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust.
He writes that Sharon Turner “was found to have said she didn’t give a ‘flying f***’ about patients, falsified A&E waiting time records and threatened to make a colleague’s life hell to drive him out of the hospital”.
He adds: “Tracey White, who still works at the hospital, called an elderly patient a ‘naughty little monkey’ and told another who had arrived in A&E after an abortion she would have to wait ‘if you can do that to your baby’.”
The paper reports that the Nursing and Midwifery Council ruled yesterday that both should be struck off the nursing register after a panel found that their actions constituted misconduct and their fitness to practice was impaired. Both nurses had denied the allegations.
10.46am: What do you think moral leadership means, does the NHS have a problem with it, and what are the solutions?
Mike Roddis, author of this article on the alleged NHS moral leadership crisis https://www.hsj.co.uk/leadership/how-to-fix-the-nhss-crisis-of-moral-leadership/5060701.article will be on Twitter from 1pm today to answer your questions and discuss how to fix it. Just use the hashtag #HSJLeaders.
10.40am: Trusts in Sheffield are applying to be one of the government’s integration pioneers, building on work already carried out in the city.
10.36am: The Press Association report that only a fraction of patients receive the “ideal patient pathway” for head and neck cancers.
10.24am: Trouble for another hospital trust, this time Plymouth, which is calling in the consultants after problems with its financial planning.sali
9.52am: A late-breaking story you may have missed from yesterday. Bolton’s new chief executive has decided he will stay at his old trust instead.
George Eliot Hospital Trust’s Kevin McGee was due to start at Bolton later this year but has opted to stay in Warwickshire to make the strategic changes needed after the organisation’s Keogh mortality review.
8:15am: Good morning, today on HSJ’s innovation and efficiency channel, Stephen Bubb looks at why the old hospital based model of long term treatment is unsustainable, and how integrated pathways involving the third sector are paving the way for a new approach.
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