4.18pm: @ShaunLintern tweets:
“David Bennett said Monitor would have just 40 staff investigating competition at 211 CCGs, each with an estimated 60 to 600 contracts.”
2.50pm: Mike Birtwistle analysis of Labour’s health policy. @MBirty tweets:
“Option A or B? Why the health community needs to learn from experience and pay attention to Labour health policy http://www.mhpc.com/health/labour-wants-integration-but-at-what-pace-and-price/ …”
2.34pm: @BenClover tweets:
“So Monitor’s guidance on anti-competitive behaviour by providers says it could look at decisions by providers NOT to compete in some areas.”
“It adds that anti-competitive agreements could be explicit or “an implicit understanding between parties, without any formal agreements”
“Think Monitor doc has word missing but says: Anti-comp. provider behaviour OK if benefits outweigh costs and anti-comp was only way to do it.”
2.08pm: Pharma company Dainippon Sumitomo has changed its name to Sunovion Pharmaceuticals. The company has a central role in the DSP Group and is preparing to commercialise the Group’s atypical antipsychotic lurasidone hydrochloride (generic name) in the UK.
12.36pm: The Financial Times reports this morning that hospital managers are being “urged to identify unused wards and outbuildings that could be used to house the coalition’s flagship free schools for as little as a period of six months”.
The paper states that while “all government departments are expected to give the Department for Education advance notice of vacant sites and suitable buildings that might be suitable for the new schools, NHS trusts are now being pressed to tell education officials about any possible locations even if they do not consider them to be suitable”.
12.25pm: Exclusive - Monitor chief executive says it would be ‘mad’ to force unnecessary tendering. David Bennett has rejected claims that new competition regulations could lead to a sharp increase in competitive tendering for NHS services.
In an exclusive interview with HSJ, Mr Bennett said the watchdog would be “mad” to enforce those rules in a way that left commissioners “spending all their time running competitive processes because they’re terrified they’re going to get in trouble if they don’t”.
11.40am: The Time to Change mental health campaign seems to have made an encouraging impact in England reports The Guardian. According to independent evaluation of the campaign’s first four years, people with mental health problems are experiencing less stigma but the attitudes of health workers are not improving
10.37am: Waiting times expert Rob Findlay has taken an in-depth look at the latest official data for waiting lists in England, which show an increase in 2012. After trawling through the statistics, he says there is enough evidence “to cast serious doubt on the apparent increase, and I think we can all be more relaxed about it”.
10.36am: The Daily Telegraph carries a short report from an inquest into a death at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust.
Deputy medical director Dr Mike Iredale apologised to the family of a 52-year-old man who died after staff failed to give him medication to prevent blood clots following an operation.
10.34am: @marshall_johnny tweets:
“there is no room for complacency in response to NHS satisfaction survey results http://bit.ly/14KSxch”
10.18am: More on the NHS missed A&E targets story - Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, responds that “standards of care are deteriorating in many parts of the country as the NHS is dragged down by David Cameron’s toxic mix of cuts and re-organisation.” He said that in the last six months, an extra 107,000 patients have had to wait beyond the four-hour target time compared to the same period last year.
10.02am: Public satisfaction with the NHS stabilised last year after a record fall in 2011, suggesting concern about the spending squeeze and the government’s reforms has not grown stronger. The British Social Attitudes survey data, published by The King’s Fund, shows that satisfaction with the way the NHS runs now stands at 61 per cent.
9.53am: The NHS has failed for the last two months to meet its target of dealing with 95% of A&E patients within four hours, according to official figures, reports The Guardian. Targets were missed in each of the last nine weeks, with 93.3% of patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours in the most recent week for which data are available – ending on 24 March.
9.45am: The Daily Mail reports that cash bribes to hospitals, to put patients onto the Liverpool Care Pathway will be ended. Their headline reads “Hospital ‘death pathway’ bribes will be scrapped. The disclosure means that the payments which amount to at least £30 million are likely to be stopped later this year says the newspaper. An inquiry is under way into the pathway.
9.35am: Board members must live the values of the constitution says Steve Field. Today Robina Shah talks to him on how leaders can embed the values of the NHS constitution as an important first step in building a safe NHS.
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