Knowledge @lert for Thursday 3rd March
Using root cause analysis techniques in clinical audit – Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP)
This guide aims to improve patient care and clinical audit delivery by providing practical advice on how established root cause analysis techniques can ‘add value’ to clinical audit. The guide is primarily aimed at clinical audit professionals and healthcare staff that participate in clinical audit initiatives at both local and national level. Please note that free registration is required to access this document.
A long and winding road: improving communication with patients in the NHS -Marie Curie
This report warns that poor communication in the NHS has a profound impact on patient care, staff burnout and public funds. It argues that inadequacies in communication are damaging medical care and wasting much-needed NHS resources and estimates that the total cost, in England alone, is likely to be in excess of £1 billion a year. It says that better communication between healthcare professionals and patients can save costs, improve health outcomes and enhance the quality of experience of patients and the professionals who support them.
NHS England Board meeting, 25 February 2016
Papers available here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/02/board-meet-25-feb-16/
NHS finances
The Health Foundation has published A perfect storm: an impossible climate for NHS providers’ finances? This report examines the financial performance of the NHS in England. The main focus is on the finances of NHS providers and the financial position of the commissioners of care (NHS England and clinical commissioning groups). The report examines commissioners’ budgets and how spending has changed by type of provider, as well as the specific issues facing NHS providers.
Best Possible Value – practical tools to support NHS finance
- A toolkit for commissioning and providing organisations using a value-based approach
- As part of the Future-Focused Finance programme, this work-stream provides practical tools and resources to support NHS finance business partners and NHS organisations in delivering the Best Possible Value for patients and the public.
- The website provides details of the Best Possible Value process and is also a repository of value-oriented tools, data sources and case studies including a Practice Guidebook which is suitable for commissioning and providing organisations and contains:
- a definition and overview of value in health systems,
- practical tools and techniques that enable the delivery of value,
- links to more value resources and the NHS value community.
Inspection fees for CQC reviews: consultation result
The Department of Health has published the Government response to the consultation on introducing regulations to allow the Care Quality Commission to include in its fee scheme the cost of inspections which look beyond registration requirements. Having considered the views expressed during consultation, the Department intends to lay regulations in Parliament to extend the fee raising powers to cover all aspects of the CQC’s comprehensive inspections by March 2016. These regulations will come into force on 1 April 2016.
Improving maternity services through patient feedback
Maternity services have been invited to bid for money from a new Challenge Fund aimed at finding innovative ways to use patient feedback to improve maternity services. Emails with full details have gone out to chief executives of all trusts inviting them to put in their bids to be among the two to four projects that will get funding for their initiative from the £195,000 available. The fund aims to explore new ways to use the feedback that trusts are already collecting to generate change and add value for patients.
Statistics
Dementia Assessment and Referral data collection – December 2015, Q3 2015/16
E.coli bacteraemia counts by Clinical Commissioning Group – January 2015 to January 2016
(E. coli) bacteraemia counts by NHS acute Trust – January 2015 to January 2016
Mycoplasma pneumoniae laboratory surveillance data 2015 England and Wales
Bulletins
Public Health Awareness Bulletin – Issue 47, March 2016
The Royal College of Anaesthetists Bulletin – Issue 96, March 2016