Reduce NHS’s reliance on migrants, HEE is told – BMJ
Health Education England has been told by the government that it must produce a plan by September 2017 to reduce the NHS’s reliance on migrant workers. Earlier this month Jeremy Hunt, health secretary for England, announced plans to increase medical school places by 25% in a bid to expand the number of home grown doctors and to replace doctors recruited from overseas.

Non-clinical demands are pushing experienced UK surgeons out of the NHS – International Journal of Healthcare Management. 
Early retirement of surgeons represents lost assets to a health service. Non-clinical demands are a key to surgeon exit from the UK health service – it pushes them out and makes it attractive to enter retirement. By contrast, knowledge, judgement, and operative factors all made surgeons content to continue working and were not a pressure to leave practice. We would recommend a debate on how to mitigate non-clinical pressures on experienced surgeons to prolong their careers.

Improvement update: October 2016 – NHS Improvement 
A roundup of improvement work and innovation from across the NHS.

Does health literacy matter? – Jonathan Berry NHS England Blog
Jonathan Berry, Personalisation & Control Specialist in NHS England’s Person Centred Care Team, provides an update on the current work being done to transform health literacy and explains why it is so important and the positive impact it can have for patients. “Does health literacy matter?”. I am often asked this by clinicians and managers […]

Fail fast and learn faster – Samantha Jones – NHS England Blog
The national new care models programme brings together local health and care systems as ‘vanguards’ to radically redesign care for the local populations they serve. Professor Don Berwick was appointed in 2015 to support the vanguards learn from international best practice and visits the UK this week to see how the vanguards are progressing and to […]

National reviews into children’s specialised services accelerated – NHS England
NHS England announced more details of the accelerated national reviews into paediatric critical care and specialised surgery for children. The reviews, which are part of NHS England’s regular round of specialised commissioning service reviews, would normally take up to two years to complete, but have been fast tracked to run in parallel with other […]

Why midwives leave – revisited – Royal College of Midwives
Midwives are leaving the profession and are being driven out by excessive workloads and poor staffing levels according to this report. The report details a survey of over two-thousand midwives across the UK who have left the profession in the last two years or are intending to leave in the next two years. It also makes recommendations to prevent this flow of midwives out of the profession and the NHS.

Maternity safety innovation fund: application form – The Department of Health
The Department of Health has set up a new £250,000 maternity safety innovation fund to support initiatives for NHS trusts and foundation trusts to improve NHS maternity services. The application form allows NHS trusts and foundation trusts to apply for funding for innovative projects that offer creative and cost effective solutions to make improvements in maternity safety, and which would have the potential to be rolled out more widely to benefit other maternity units across England. The guidance provides trusts with further information about the fund, the eligibility criteria and how to apply. The closing date for applications is midday on 18 November 2016.

Northumberland health and care leaders sign MOU with India – Department of Health 
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Northumberland County Council (Northumbria) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Indo UK Healthcare Pvt Ltd (IUHP) in support of the Indo UK Institute of Health programme. The agreement between Northumbria and IUHP will see the sharing of NHS expertise as India aspires to achieve the high standards of care which exist in Northumberland. The project aims to help accelerate the development of integrated care outside hospital. It aligns with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of delivering affordable healthcare for all. It is thanks to a long-standing and unique collaboration between Northumberland County Council and Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust that the area provides some of the best and most fully integrated call anywhere in the NHS, if not the world. The model creates a seamless experience for patients by integrating:

• acute hospitals (including emergency services)
• community services
• care delivered at home

Providing a ‘safe space’ in healthcare safety investigations – consultation – Department of Health
The proposal outlined in this consultation will legally ensure that information that staff provide as part of a health service investigation will be kept confidential except where there is an immediate risk to patient safety, or where the High Court makes an order permitting disclosure. This broadly mirrors the procedures followed in air accidents investigations. The closing date for comments is 16 December 2016.

HSJ roundup: (contact the library for further details on any of these HSJ articles)

Hunt: I want to be health secretary until 2019  
Jeremy Hunt has said he would “love to serve another two to three years” as health secretary. In a major interview with HSJ he also set out wide-ranging plans for the next phase of his tenure.

Health secretary: The number of permanent NHS nurses will keep rising
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt expects the numbers of qualified nurses in permanent NHS employment to continue rising, in spite of its severe financial pressures, he has told HSJ.

Hunt: Quality of death investigations is ‘a problem across the NHS’
Jeremy Hunt has said “we are kidding ourselves” if people think the problems with investigations identified at Southern Health Foundation Trust do not exist across the health service.

Government negotiating on employment contracts for one million NHS staff  
The government is having “constructive” negotiations with NHS staff unions with a view to reforming the Agenda for Change contract framework, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

Drive to cut litigation costs may be extended ‘throughout the NHS’ 
The government could extend changes aimed at curbing the costs of clinical negligence claims in maternity care to the entire NHS, Jeremy Hunt has told HSJ.

Hunt vows to act on NHS’s ‘biggest area of weakness’  
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has called children’s mental health services the “biggest single area of weakness in NHS provision” and vowed to make it a top priority.

Exclusive: Private firm quits high profile £120m NHS development 
A private healthcare firm has pulled out of a high profile partnership with the NHS, which is due to develop a £120m multi-purpose complex, HSJ can reveal.

Reforms after Winterbourne View scandal hit by NHS funding inertia 
The NHS’s failure to sufficiently fund the care costs of people with learning disabilities who are being transferred from long term health service placements has resulted in major overspends for many councils.

CCGs expect ‘evolution’ and ‘recalibration’ of commissioning 
Local clinical commissioning will see substantial evolution linked to new care models and moves to plan services across a larger footprint, but will remain important, NHS Clinical Commissioners will argue in a new report.

Trust in special measures after safety and leadership failings
The Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust, which has long struggled against key performance targets, has been rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission and placed in special measures.