Culture change lessons from Educating Yorkshire’s Thornhill Academy – NHS Employers
We discuss culture change with the Headmaster from Educating Yorkshire’s Thornhill Academy. It looks at the challenges he faced and the steps he took to build a positive organisational culture.

Telehealth report
The Good Governance Institute has published Views on day-to-day service issues and the role of telehealthcare: a report from the Model for Optimising Sustainable Telehealthcare programme. This report is part of the Model for Optimising Sustainable Telehealthcare (MOST) project, a collaboration between Tunstall Healthcare, NHS North Yorkshire, Ernst and Young, and the Nuffield Trust. The project had the dual goals of developing a toolkit and demonstrating the deployment of new product solutions that would enable the upscaling of telehealth services. The report analyses the impact of changes in the health landscape since the inception of the MOST project and also summarises the findings of a series of interviews and focus groups held with commissioning managers and GPs in early 2014, the results of which make the case for the greater implementation of telehealthcare.

Evidence update: Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding
NICE has published a new evidence update Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding (Evidence Update 63). This update provides a summary of selected new evidence relevant to NICE clinical guideline 141 ‘Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding: management’ (2012). Evidence updates are intended to increase awareness of new evidence they do not replace current NICE guidance and do not provide formal practice recommendations.

Eyes on Evidence
The August 2014 issue of Eyes on Evidence includes the following items:

• Integrated disease management programmes for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Agomelatine for depression
• Psychotherapy for anorexia nervosa
• Muscle training for pelvic organ prolapse
• Adverse events after quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccination

NHS Foundation Trust membership statistics
Monitor has published NHS Foundation Trust membership statistics as at 31 March 2014.   has released figures showing that around 33,000 more people have signed up to have their say about how their local foundation trust is being run.  In March 2014, there were 2,231,708 members of foundation trusts in England. Of these, 1,567,198 were patients or members of the public. This compares with 2,198,943 foundation trust members in March 2013 (of whom 1,555,995 were patients or members of the public).

Achieving value in hard times – The Health Foundation
Webinar recording from the Health Foundation, that explores how the socio-technical allocation of resources – the Star approach – which can help commissioners and those planning services in resource allocation.

We are the Change Leaders 2024 – NHS Improving Quality
Video from Helen Bevan of NHS Improving Quality imagining the future of change and the leadership of change. Identifies that the focus needs to move from focus on the structure of change to a focus on how to achieve change.

Five year NHS strategy to set out preferred ‘care models’ –  Health Service Journal
The five year strategy being developed by NHS England will set out ‘a range of care models’ aimed at putting the service on a sustainable financial footing, it has said.

Nice one NICE: developing the policy narrative on preventing disability, frailty and dementia in later life – Kings Fund Blog
As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, it is easy to forget that in 1914, UK life expectancy at birth was only 49 for men and 53 for women. Advances in societal wealth, nutrition, employment, environmental health, housing, perinatal care and preventative and curative medical treatment mean that the era in which those servicemen and their families lived is almost unrecognisable. Life-expectancy is now 79 for men and 83 for women, and when we reach the age of 65 we can expect to live another two decades on average.

Measuring the quality of infection control in Dutch nursing homes using a standardized method; the infection prevention RIsk scan (IRIS) –  Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control
Background: We developed a standardised method to assess the quality of infection control in Dutch Nursing Home (NH), based on a cross-sectional survey that visualises the results. The method was called the Infection control Risk Infection Scan (IRIS). We tested the applicability of this new tool in a multicentre surveillance executed June and July 2012. Methods: The IRIS includes two patient outcome-variables, i.e. the prevalence of healthcare associated infections (HAI) and rectal carriage of Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase (ESBL) producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E); two patient-related risk factors, i.e. use of medical devices, and antimicrobial therapy; and three ward-related risk factors, i.e. environmental contamination, availability of local guidelines, and shortcomings in infection prevention preconditions. Results were categorised as low-, intermediate- and high risk, presented in an easy-to-read graphic risk spider-plot. This plot was given as feedback to management and healthcare workers of the NH. Results: Large differences were found among most the variables in the different NH. Common shortcomings were the availability of infection control guidelines and the level of environmental cleaning. Most striking differences were observed in the prevalence of ESBL carriage, ranged from zero to 20.6% (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The IRIS provided a rapid and easy to understand assessment of the infection control situation of the participating NH. The results can be used to improve the quality of infection control based on the specific needs of a NH but needs further validation in future studies. Repeated measurement can determine the effectiveness of the interventions. This makes the IRIS a useful tool for quality systems.