Four steps to a healthier nation – British Medical Association (BMA)
This manifesto sets out the key changes that the BMA identifies as priorities for implementation following next May’s general election. It calls for greater partnership working between politicians and the health service to ensure the sustainability of the NHS, while promoting key BMA public health policies such as minimum unit pricing on alcohol and restrictions on tobacco sales.

Future hospital: more than a building – Royal College of Physicians (RCP) 
This five-point plan is aimed at the next government and it sets out a series of clear messages to improve patient care and safeguard the NHS from an impending financial crisis. It calls for the government to invest in medical education and support research, promote public health through evidence-based legislation, and adopt the RCP’s Future Hospital model for redesigning health services that brings care closer to the patient.

Improving surgical weekend handover – BMJ Quaity Improvement 
Considers the implementation of a unified weekend list ordering all surgical patients by ward and bed number was introduced. Discrepancies in the layout of each team’s weekday list necessitated the design of a new weekday list to match the weekend list to facilitate the easy transfer of information between the two lists. A colour coding system was also used to highlight specific jobs. Prior to this improvement project only 7.1% of those polled were satisfied with the existing system, after a series of interventions satisfaction increased to 85.7%. The significant increase in overall satisfaction with surgical handover following the introduction of the unified weekend list is promising. Locating patients and identifying jobs is easier and weekend ward rounds can conducted in a more logical and timely fashion. It has also helped facilitate the transition to consultant ward rounds of all surgical inpatients at the weekends with promising feedback from a recent consultants meeting.

Monitor to ‘help FT become an integrated care organisation’ – Health Service Journal  
Monitor is to send a team of “experts” to Tameside Hospital Foundation Trust to consider whether and how it could be turned into an “integrated care organisation”. This would involve the hospital potentially offering public health, social care and wellbeing services, and represents the first time the NHS has “tried to create a full integrated care organisation at a foundation trust”, Monitor said today.

Choice And Competition: Hypothetical Scenarios For NHS Healthcare Providers – Monitor
Guidance from Monitor that provides examples of the types of conduct that can breach the competition condition of the NHS provider licence and competition law. Each example looks at the effect of an agreement or conduct on patients and what Monitor’s analysis would be under the provider licence and competition law.