Keeping patients with long-term conditions out of hospital and the rest of today’s news
- Analysis of Kent project to improve health of patients with long-term conditions
- Epsom Hospital ‘is safe’
- Child asthma hospital admissions fall since smoking ban
- £3m telehealth scheme in trouble
4.48pm More than 80 per cent of GPs have been registered by the Care Quality Commission, with over two months still to go before the April 2013 deadline.
GPs are the last group of health and social care providers regulated by the CQC to go through the registration process. The regulator was criticised for cumbersome procedures in previous registration processes, particularly for dentists, and got permission from the government to extend the deadline for GPs by 12 months.
Today the CQC announced they were on course to meet the deadline and had received applications from 95 per cent of GPs, registered more than 80 per cent, and issued two notices to refuse registration.
4.00pm @HSJEditor tweets: “Return of the NHS as an election winning/losing issue? RT @jappleby123: MT Concern about NHS up 6 points on last month.”
3.57pm The new Choose and Book electronic appointment booking system is “very unlikely” to be in place by the NHS Commissioning Board’s December deadline, industry figures told HSJ this week. Full story is here.
1.15pm NHS Property Services Ltd is likely to charge clinical commissioning groups for any assets it takes ownership of whose costs are not fully met by rents or service charges. An audit of property related costs and incomes is understood to have identified a gap of around £500m a year.
The Department of Health has asked PCTs to urgently repeat the audit to “enable NHS [Property Services] to recover all property related costs from building users and the appropriate commissioner”. It is the first clear indication that the property company is likely to charge CCGs for properties previously owned by PCTs which had not set up tenancies to bring in enough income to cover property costs.
11.01am @SteveJFord tweets: “Most nurses ‘feel betrayed by those who provide poor care’, Eng chief nursing officer Jane Cummings tells Commons health select committee session on nursing.”
11.00am More children who suffer heart failure could survive if doctors continue resuscitation attempts for longer according to a study reported in the Daily Telegraph.
Researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia examined over 3,400 cases of child heart failure finding one in eight children whose CPR went beyond 35 minutes lived.
10.54am A military nurse simulated sex with a soldier on her ward and exposed her underwear according to a Daily Telegraph report of a hearing at the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Lisa Watson is accused of behaving inappropriately at Queen Elizabeth Centre, in Tidworth, Hampshire in 2009. If found guilty of misconduct she could be struck off the nursing register.
10.32am The parents of a 12-year-old boy used Google to diagnose his brain tumour after doctors told them he had migraines, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Kian Jones underwent an emergency operation at Birmingham Children’s Hospital after he was seen at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital three times where his condition was dismissed as a stomach infection or migraines.
10.23am The Daily Telegraph is reporting details of a study which suggests patients who regularly take aspirin triple their chances of developing ‘wet’ age-related macular degeneration.
The study followed almost 2,400 middle-aged and elderly people for 15 years - details here.
10.19am The Yorkshire Post has reported that the future of a £3m telehealth project is in jeopardy less than three years after its launch. Only 650 devices used to monitor patients’ vital signs at home are still in use out of 2,000 purchased in 2010.
10.16am The number of children admitted to hospital with symptoms of asthma has fallen since the ban on smoking in enclosed public places came into effect, a study has found. There was a 12.3 per cent fall in admissions in the first year after the law came into place in July 2007, and these have continued to drop in subsequent years, suggesting that the benefits of the legislation were sustained over time.
10.10am Epsom Hospital in Surrey will remain open, according to assurances given to local councillors by NHS managers. Epsom and Ewell councillors met health service chiefs to express concerns that Epsom Hospital could close as part of the NHS’s Better Services Better Value review, which covers Surrey and south west London.
7.45am An initiative in Kent is adopting a holistic approach to improve the health of patients with long-term conditions with the aim that it will be successful in keeping them out of hospital. Alison Moore reports.
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