HSJ Roundup

• New safety checks for trust workforce plans in development
  Two nursing directors have been asked by NHS Improvement to lead work developing new safeguards to protect care quality when trusts make significant changes to their workforce.
• Trust to transfer junior doctors after ‘inadequate’ training warning
  A teaching trust recently taken out of special measures has been told its level of consultant cover for 38 of its junior doctors is “not adequate”.
• Regulators crack down on NHS areas ‘living off bailouts’
  National leaders have set out new measures to control spending in health economies deemed to be “living off bailouts”, which may result in some contracts having to be revisited for the current financial year.
• How one STP pioneer is harnessing the power of prevention
  The latest chapter in HSJ and NHS England’s series on the progress made by sustainability and transformation plans travels to Lancashire and South Cumbria, where the whole community is involved in tackling public health problems.
• ‘Amazon style’ NHS procurement platform delayed
  The implementation of a new platform intended to save millions of pounds from procurement spending has been delayed, HSJ has learned.
• Dalton reacts to hospital chain criticism
  The chief executive running one of the NHS’s most advanced hospital chains has responded to claims made by another trust leader that the model will not work.

Giving antibiotics immediately reduces deaths from sepsis – NIHR Signals
Giving immediate antibiotics (defined as within one hour) when people present to emergency departments with suspected sepsis reduces their risk of dying by a third compared with later administration. This meta-analysis of observational data from 23,596 people in emergency department settings confirmed that giving antibiotics within one hour was linked to a lower risk of in-hospital mortality compared with giving antibiotics later. This adds weight to recommendations from NICE and other organisations that antibiotics should be administered straight away in people with suspected sepsis. However, in practice up to a third of people in the UK do not receive antibiotics within the hour. NHS England and the UK Sepsis Trust have recently launched a campaign to encourage all healthcare professionals to act quickly when they recognise sepsis.

NHS workforce race equality standard: 2016 data analysis report for NHS trusts – NHS England
This report publishes data from providers of NHS-funded care, including the voluntary and private sector, to demonstrate how they are addressing equality issues. It includes data covering nine indicators including four relating to the workplace covering recruitment, promotion, career progression and staff development alongside BME board representation. The remaining four indicators are based on data from the NHS staff survey 2016, covering harassment, bullying or abuse from patients, relatives or the public. It shows a positive change in a range of areas including the number of nurses and midwives who have progressed from lower grades into senior positions; in BME representation at very senior management and executive board level; and a slight reduction in the reported experience of discrimination of BME staff from colleagues and managers.

Productivity of the English NHS: 2014/15 update – Centre for Health Economics
This report updates the Centre for Health Economics’ time-series of NHS productivity growth. It finds that the rate of NHS productivity growth since 2004/5 compares favourably with that achieved by the economy as a whole. It suggests that increased NHS output has come about in response to pronounced increases in NHS expenditure which has funded both higher wages and more staff and resources.

Outcome performance measure development for persons with multiple chronic conditions – RAND Corporation
This report summarises analyses to assess the reliability and validity of a patient-reported outcome performance measure: the Veterans RAND twelve-item health survey (VR-12). The report makes recommendations towards the future use of performance measures and argues for the need for evaluation of the psychometrics of these measures at practice level.

New pensions infographic – NHS Employers
Our new infographic shows there are many stages during an employee’s career when it can be a good time to talk about the benefits of the NHS Pension Scheme.

CCG functions benchmarking
The NHS Benchmarking Network has published details of the Clinical Commissioning Group Functions benchmarking pilot project. This new pilot project uses publicly available data and information from a short questionnaire to show key metrics with regards to the running of CCGs.  Due to the variation in sizes of CCGs, there is a wide variance in how they are run. Participants to the project have received a bespoke report.

BMJ Quality & Safety – May 2017 (available with your NHS OpenAthens login)

Editorials:

• Extended opening hours in primary care: helpful for patients and—or—a distraction for health professionals?

  Richard Baker, Nicola Walker

• Root-cause analysis: swatting at mosquitoes versus draining the swamp

  Patricia Trbovich, Kaveh G Shojania

• Clinical summaries for hospitalised patients: time for higher standards

  Sunil Kripalani

• Responding to the challenge of look-alike, sound-alike drug names

  P L Trbovich, Sylvia Hyland

Original research:

• Extended opening hours and patient experience of general practice in England: multilevel regression analysis of a national patient survey

  Thomas E Cowling, Matthew Harris, Azeem Majeed

• Opportunities to improve clinical summaries for patients at hospital discharge

  Erin Sarzynski, Hamza Hashmi, Jeevarathna Subramanian, Laurie Fitzpatrick, Molly Polverento, Michael Simmons, Kevin Brooks, Charles Given

• Our current approach to root cause analysis: is it contributing to our failure to improve patient safety? FREE

  Kathryn M Kellogg, Zach Hettinger, Manish Shah, Robert L Wears, Craig R Sellers, Melissa Squires, Rollin J Fairbanks

• Six ways not to improve patient flow: a qualitative study

  Sara Adi Kreindler

• Cognitive tests predict real-world errors: the relationship between drug name confusion rates in laboratory-based memory and perception tests and corresponding error rates in large pharmacy chains

  Scott R Schroeder, Meghan M Salomon, William L Galanter, Gordon D Schiff, Allen J Vaida, Michael J Gaunt, Michelle L Bryson, Christine Rash, Suzanne Falck, Bruce L Lambert

• Reviewing deaths in British and US hospitals: a study of two scales for assessing preventability

  Semira Manaseki-Holland, Richard J Lilford, Jonathan R B Bishop, Alan J Girling, Yen-Fu Chen, Peter J Chilton, Timothy P Hofer, The UK Case Note Review Group

Additional paper:

• The problem with root cause analysis Mohammad Farhad Peerally, Susan Carr, Justin Waring, Mary Dixon-Woods

Statistics
Provisional Accident and Emergency Quality Indicators for England– January 2017 by provider
Provisional Monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for Admitted Patient Care, Outpatient and Accident and Emergency data – April 2016 – February 2017
Recorded Dementia Diagnoses – March 2017
NHS 111 Minimum Data Set– February 2017
Diagnostics waiting times and activity– February 2017
Young people’s well-being – 2017