Knowledge @lert for Wednesday 30th July

July 30, 2014 Daily News

Stevens calls for NHS staff slimming drive – HSJ Article

Junk food could be off the menu in hospital canteens and overweight doctors and nurses encouraged to take part in weight loss competitions, under plans floated by Simon Stevens.

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Complying with Monitor’s integrated care requirements – Monitor

Monitor has published Complying with Monitor’s integrated care requirements. This document assists providers and commissioners of healthcare services, and health and wellbeing boards to comply with their integrated care obligations. It also explains the relationship between these obligations and the other rules that Monitor enforces.

Addressing missing data in Patient-Reported Outcome Measures – Centre for Health Economics

The Centre for Health Economics has published Addressing missing data in Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): implications for comparing provider performance. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are now routinely collected in the English NHS and used to compare and reward hospital performance within a high-powered pay-for-performance scheme. However, PROMs are prone to missing data. A key concern with missing PROMs is that the individuals with complete information tend to be an unrepresentative sample of patients within each provider, and inferences based on the complete cases will be misleading. This study proposes a strategy for addressing missing data in the English PROMs survey using multiple imputation techniques, and investigates its impact on assessing provider performance. It finds that inferences about relative provider performance are sensitive to the assumptions made about the reasons for the missing data

Making research nurses feel part of the team – Health Service Journal Article

Nursing staff costs are a major expense for any hospital trust, but while the role of ward based nurses is well understood, a large proportion of the nursing workforce is employed as non-ward based nurses. These diverse roles are often solitary and not well understood.

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Autism Innovation Fund: apply for grants to improve local services – Department of Health

The government has made £1.2 million of funding available to improve local autism services and increase awareness. The funding is available as part of Think Autism, the update to the 2010 Adult Autism Strategy for England. Local authorities, NHS, third sector, commercial and voluntary organisations or individuals with autism in co-production with any of the above are all encouraged to apply.

Funding will be awarded in 2 main areas:

£1 million for innovative projects to improve advice and support services and skills and employment services for those with autism
£200,000 to help co-ordinate national work on awareness

Information about capital funding to make local environments more autism friendly will follow at a later date. The deadline for applications is 17:00 on Tuesday, 26 August.

Is access to surgery a postcode lottery? – The Royal College of Surgeons

The Royal College of Surgeons has published Is access to surgery a postcode lottery? This report analyses information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act gathered in April. The study investigated commissioning policies relating to four common surgical procedures carried out on the NHS and compared those policies to evidence-based guidance published by The Royal College of Surgeons, the surgical specialty associations and NICE.

Staff experience and patient outcomes – NHS Employers

NHS Employers have commissioned a report Staff Experience and patient outcomes: what do we know? The report written by Sheffield University Management School finds that there are clear links between improved staff experience and better care for patients. Good Human Resources (HR) practice and in particular staff engagement, should therefore be seen as integral to overall objectives for the NHS not a separate HR initiative.

Staff sickness costs £1.5bn, NHS Employers claims HSJ Article

Sickness absence is costing the NHS around £1.5bn a year, NHS Employers has claimed as new analysis reveals that hospital managers and doctors have some of the lowest rates.