Please circulate with CCG colleagues who my be interested in this bulletin.

Full text of any of the HSJ articles below can be emailed directly to you – just contact the Library & Knowledge Service with your request.

Health and social care priorities for the Government: 2015–2020 – Nuffield Trust 
Briefing from the Nuffield Trust identifying 10 key priorities for the government to deliver on health and social care:

1. Address the funding crisis facing the NHS by:developing a plan to enable NHS hospital trusts to achieve financial balance over the next two to three years
   • committing to bringing in the £8 billion minimum of extra funding smoothly over the course of the Parliament
   • demonstrating that this will be sufficient to support the transformation of services and to deliver on pledges such as moving to a ‘seven-day’ NHS
   • publishing the assumptions underlying the £22 billion of required efficiency savings.
2. Commit to a fundamental review of health and social care funding that involves all major political parties.
3. Review the problems in the management and culture of the NHS and work across organisations to set in place an action plan to tackle them.
4. Review the effectiveness of performance targets in the NHS, starting with the four-hour A&E target.
5. Tackle the imbalance experienced by those accessing mental health compared to physical health services.
6. Set out a credible and funded plan for improving people’s health and wellbeing through effective prevention of ill health.
7. Ensure that initiatives aiming to transform health and social care are adequately supported and evaluated, given time to succeed (or fail), and can be adopted in other areas.
8. Support and encourage the development of new care models in general practice and wider primary care.
9. Reconnect with the core NHS workforce in order that they are engaged and empowered.
10. Help the NHS implement successful workforce development and planning that realigns ways of working with the needs of patients.

Co-production in practice: how people with assisted living needs can help design and evolve technologies and services – Implementation Science 
The low uptake of telecare and telehealth services by older people may be explained by the limited involvement of users in the design. If the ambition of ‘care closer to home’ is to be realised, then industry, health and social care providers must evolve ways to work with older people to co-produce useful and useable solutions. Analysis revealed four main themes.

• there is a need to raise awareness and provide information to potential users of assisted living technologies (ALTs).
• technologies must be highly customisable and adaptable to accommodate the multiple and changing needs of different users
• the service must align closely with the individual’s wider social support network.
• the service must support a high degree of information sharing and coordination.

Obesity data challenge calls innovators to bid for new £30k prize – NHS England 
A £30,000 international challenge prize – the first of its kind – is up for grabs to innovators or organisations who can publish or present data on obesity in a new, exciting and useful way. The challenge, to promote innovation in open data, is being carried out in both England and the US and will either help create an innovative tool by ‘mashing up’ existing data or will help publish data collected but not publicly available.

Tobacco use: inequalities by protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors – Public Health England
Provides a summary description of inequalities in tobacco use in the Equality Act in relation to the protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors.

Tuberculosis: inequalities by protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors – Public Health England
Provides a summary description of inequalities in tuberculosis according to the Equality Act in relation to the protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors.

NHS Health Checks and target diseases: inequalities by protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors – Public Health England 
Provides a summary description of inequalities among the protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors for:

• cardiovascular disease (CVD)
• heart disease
• stroke
• diabetes
• kidney disease
• dementia

Stevens issues clarion call to NHS leaders to redesign care for patients – NHS England
The head of NHS England issued a clarion call to health care leaders to redesign the care of patients across the NHS so that it is sustainable for the future and better able to meet the needs of patients.  Speaking to delegates at the NHS Annual Conference in Liverpool today (Wed), Simon Stevens set out three priorities: putting the NHS on a financially sustainable footing, redesigning care, and getting serious about prevention.

CCG Bulletin: Issue 85 – NHS England
Latest policy and web updates for CCGs.

Talent Management: Developing Leadership Not Just Leaders – The King’s Fund 
In light of the high number of board-level vacancies in the NHS and an increasing reliance on expensive locum and agency staff, NHS organisations need to have effective strategies in place to develop future leaders. It identifies four key areas:

• recruiting the right staff to meet not only the organisation’s current needs but also its future needs
• retaining and developing staff by valuing their contribution and encouraging personal growth
• deploying talent effectively by providing stretch opportunities and rotating leadership roles
• succession planning to identify critical roles and consider how internal candidates might fill these when a vacancy arises.

The four steps to capitalise on talent management in the NHS – Health Service Journal
Successful talent management is an ethos and is core to developing a safe, compassionate culture. Sarah Massie and Katy Steward outline four key components of a successful strategy for developing future leaders.

Leadership Q&A: Leading with military precision – Health Service Journal
Trust chief executive Suzanne Rankin draws on her nursing experience in a war zone to help empower her NHS staff. Jennifer Trueland tells her story  In some ways, managing a hospital is a bit like running a military operation – both involve the same sort of leadership challenges.

Emergency care to be ‘completely redesigned’ within three years, says Stevens – Health Service Journal 
Urgent and emergency care will undergo a “complete redesign” and be in “a very different place by the middle of this Parliament”, the NHS England chief executive has announced.

Acute sector productivity dwarfs everything in the search for savings – Health Service Journal 
For all the forward view’s welcome emphasis on prevention and new care models, its success depends on the part of the NHS to which it pays the least attention.

Stevens interview: Dealing with agency staff is NHS’s ‘biggest operational risk’ – Health Service Journal
NHS trusts will ‘undoubtedly’ struggle to employ the doctors and nurses they need as the service clamps down on the cost of temporary staff from next month.   Stressing that guidance would be developed within days to make sure patient safety was not endangered, he nevertheless acknowledged the NHS would face “volatility” while the temporary staffing market is reset.

CCG forecasts largest cumulative deficit – Health Service Journal
Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group is forecasting the largest cumulative deficit of any CCG to date.  The CCG ended 2014-15 with a cumulative deficit of £38.9m, but plans for this to increase to £78.9m by the end of 2015-16, according to its June board papers.

First three troubled areas to be put into ‘success regime’ – Health Service Journal 
Simon Stevens has confirmed the three areas to be the first put into a new whole health economy ‘success regime’.  The areas are:

• North Cumbria;
• Essex;
• Northern, Eastern and Western Devon.

NICE suspends work on nurse staffing levels – Health Service Journal 
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has suspended with immediate effect its work to determine safe staffing levels across the NHS. The decision appears to mark a significant departure from recommendations of the Francis report.  NICE moved to suspend work on the safe staffing programme yesterday, in response to a speech by NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens to the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool.

Time To Act – Urgent Care And A&E: The Patient Perspective – The Royal College of Emergency Medicine
This report concludes that the NHS not only needs to ensure that patients are fully informed of services such as out-of-hours GPs, walk-in centres and the NHS 111 service, but must also ensure that these services have sufficient capacity and are available when required to prevent more pressure on A&E services.

Consultation On Changes To The Risk Assessment Framework: June 2015 – Monitor 
This consultation proposes a number of measures to strengthen Monitor’s regulatory regime so that foundation trusts live within their means and support improvements in financial efficiency across the sector. These changes will enable Monitor to take regulatory action earlier if a foundation trust is in deficit, failing to deliver its financial plan, or not providing value for money.

Five Year Forward View – The Success Regime: A Whole Systems Intervention – Monitor
The Five year forward view signalled the intention by the national bodies to introduce a new regime to create the conditions for success in the most challenged health and care economies. This guidance is aimed at providing increased support and direction to the most challenged systems in order to secure improvement in three main areas.