Commissioning better community services for NHS patients – Monitor
This report looks at what CCGs are doing about community services as the contracts entered into after the Transforming Community Services programme expire. As contracts expire, commissioners need to consider what options are best for patients. This review of community services commissioning explaining how commissioners can support a move to more co-ordinated care for patients closer to home.

• Additional Info – Infographic

Another Welsh board rolls out free wi-fi –  EHI News
Hywel Dda University Health Board is rolling out free wi-fi to patients, staff and visitors, with plans to provide tablets to chemotherapy and dialysis patients during their treatment.

Walk This Way: Estimating Impacts of Walk in Centres at Hospital Emergency Departments in the English National Health Service (SERC Discussion Paper 167) – London School of Economics 
Evaluates the impacts of one type of Walk in Centres (WiCs) – relying on timing differences in the deployment of a single wave of services and restricting attention to places where new facilities opened to mitigate demand for Accident and Emergency Departments. Results indicate that WiCs have significantly reduced attendances at hospital Emergency Departments in places close by, but suggest that only between 10-20% of patients seen at hospital-based WiCs and between 5-10% patients seen at other WiCs were diverted from the more costly Accident and Emergency Departments at hospitals.

Potentially Avoidable Hospitalisations in England – European Collaboration for Healthcare Optimization 
The study of systematic variations in Potentially Avoidable Hospitalizations (PAH) offers a critical view on how healthcare organizations provide care to patients with chronic conditions. In particular, it signals how effectively they are managed in the ambulatory setting.  This report analyses the magnitude and the variation in unplanned hospitalisations from six chronic conditions highly sensitive to ambulatory care: angina, adult asthma, congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), dehydration and short-term complications of diabetes; as well as an additional indicator aggregating admissions for all 6 conditions (All PAH).

Better Training Better Care Evaluation Reports – Health Education England 
Health Education England published the evaluation report to the Better Training Better Care pilot projects and the evaluation report to the national elements on 16 January 2015. Both reports set out what was achieved, the benefits that were realised and opportunities that have arisen, as well as the challenges and lessons learnt.

Using case finding and risk stratification: A key service component for personalised care and support planning – NHS England
This handbook is one of three service components and provides some valuable practitioner insights into case finding and risk stratification to support personalised care and support planning – both of which are key elements of the vision and outcomes in the NHS Five Year Forward View. The Document will be uploaded onto the NHS England Website and therefore will be available for all to access.

The use of outcome and process indicators to incentivize integrated care for frail older people: a case study of primary care services in Sweden – International Journal of Integrated Care 
Aims to analyse limitations in the use of outcome and process indicators to incentivize integrated care for elderly patients with significant health care needs in the context of primary care. Finds both the ranking exercise and regression models revealed important problems related to risk-adjustment, attribution, randomness and measurement fixation when using indicators in P4P schemes and for external accountability purposes. Instead of using indicators in incentive schemes targeting individual providers, indicators may be used for diagnostic purposes and to support development of new knowledge, targeting local systems that move beyond organizational boundaries.

Health Education England launch directory of widening participation initiatives – NHS Employers
Health Education England have captured and highlighted areas of innovative practice in a new online directory, which supports the development of the ‘widening participation: it matters’ strategy.

Care.data suffers new set back – Health Service Journal 
The Health and Social Care Information Centre has pledged to contact a potentially large number of patients who objected to the Care.data programme, after it emerged that their opt-outs could unintentionally exclude them from NHS services such as bowel screening.

Regulator receives first ‘fit and proper person’ complaints – HSJ Article
A mass referral of more than 20 senior NHS managers has been made to the Care Quality Commission in what will be the first test of the new ‘fit and proper person’ regulations.

How is the NHS performing? January 2015 Quarterly Monitoring Report – King’s Fund
The King’s Fund is warning that problems in hospitals are spreading beyond A&E to other key areas of performance, increasing the risk of a NHS crisis. The Fund’s latest quarterly monitoring report, which follows widespread reports about pressures on A&E units, underlines that hospitals are stretched to the limit. The report shows that waiting times for treatment and other key performance indicators are worsening, as the NHS struggles to cope with increasing demand for services and the unprecedented financial squeeze.

Physios get first competence framework for palliative care – Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.
An expert on palliative care has welcomed the publication of the only profession-specific competency framework for physiotherapists working in palliative care.