Sustainability and transformation in the NHS
The National Audit Office has published Sustainability and transformation in the NHS.  This report examines the progress the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement have made towards achieving financial balance.  It provides a summary of the financial position of NHS England, CCGs and trusts; looks at what the Department, NHS England and NHS Improvement have done to support local NHS bodies to improve their financial positions; and examines the support the national bodies have given local NHS bodies to help them work better in partnership.

Accountable care
The King’s Fund has published two articles relating to accountable care:

• Making sense of accountable care – answers key questions about accountable care, what it is, how it is being implemented and what it has achieved so far.
• Accountable care explained – explains where accountable care came from and what it means

Policies for healthy lives
The Health Foundation has published Policies for healthy lives: a look beyond Brexit.  This collection of essays underlines the value of taking a health-in-all-policies approach to the legislative programme that will follow the UK’s departure from the EU.  The authors identify some common challenges and point towards the necessary conditions required to deliver better domestic policymaking for health, while exploiting opportunities to innovate, be progressive and put health at the heart of policy.

End of life care collaborative
NHS Improvement have published information about the End of life care collaborative.  They ran a 150-day programme, involving 16 volunteer trusts, to improve end of life care across a number of settings to improve the experience and quality of care received by patients at end of life.  They have published the following case studies:

• Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS FT
• Rotherham NHS FT
• St George’s University NHS Trust
• Colchester Hospital University NHS FT
• Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT
• Hillingdon Hospitals NHS FT
• Cumbria Partnership NHS FT

Routes to cancer diagnosis
Public Health England has published the latest Routes to Diagnosis dataset which shows an improvement in the way some cancers are being diagnosed.  This latest update includes a new interactive tool which shows trends in cancer diagnosis for 53 different types of cancer.

Health Education England
The Department of Health and Social Care has published DHSC mandate to Health Education England: April 2017 to March 2018.  The mandate sets out the government’s objectives for Health Education England around workforce planning, health education and training and development.

PFI and PF2 – National Audit Office
This briefing looks at the rationale, costs and benefits of the Private Finance Initiative; the use of and impact of PFI, and ability to make savings from operational contracts; and the introduction of PF2.

No homes for nurses: how NHS land is being sold off to build unaffordable homes – New Economics Foundation
This report examines the NHS sites that have been sold under the Government’s public land sale programme. These include hospitals, community health centres and other health service infrastructure that have been identified as surplus by the NHS. It compares the homes planned on these sites to the average wages of NHS key workers.

Patient safety review and response

NHS Improvement has published Patient safety review and response: October 2016 to March 2017.  This document provides a summary of how NHS Improvement reviewed and responded to patient safety issues reported by patients and the public.  It provides examples of the action taken between October 2016 and March 2017 as a direct result of incident reviews.

Never Events policy and framework

NHS Improvement has revised the Never Events policy and framework and Never Events list 2018.  The policy and framework explains what Never Events are, how staff providing and commissioning NHS-funded services should identify, investigate and manage the response to them. These documents will become active upon initiation of the update to the 2017-2018 NHS Standard Contract on 1 February 2018.

NICE guidance

Medtech Innovation Briefings

Statistics

• Geographic patterns of cancer survival in England – Adults diagnosed 2011 to 2015 and followed up to 2016
• Diagnostic imaging dataset – September 2017
• Direct access audiology waiting times – November 2017
• House of Commons Library – NHS key statistics – January 2018

HSJ Roundup (contact the Library for further details)

• Trust chief warns county council over unpaid invoices 
  A foundation trust boss in a struggling health economy has raised the prospect of a “formal dispute” with the county council over more than £2m of late invoice payments.
• Major GP partnership expands into sixth STP area 
  One the largest scale GP providers in the country has expanded into a sixth sustainability and transformation partnership region.
• Hospital trust and GPs sign deal in move towards ACS 
  A leading large scale primary care provider, which also runs a national vanguard site, has agreed to formally partner with its local acute trust.
• Trusts hit by ‘serious’ apron shortage following Chinese pollution crackdown 
  Patient care is being affected by a “serious” shortage of suitable aprons for NHS staff, after the service’s supply chain was hit by a crackdown on pollution by the Chinese government.
•  ‘At least 40 patients died or harmed’ after ambulance delays 
  At least 40 patients in the East of England were “harmed or died following significant ambulance delays” in less than three weeks between mid-December and early January, a senior whistleblower has told HSJ.
• NHS Improvement abandons consultancy turnaround programme 
  A financial turnaround project where management consultants are sent to work with NHS trusts has been shelved by NHS Improvement, HSJ has learned.
• Consultants threaten trust chair with ‘no confidence’ vote 
  The chair of Wirral University Teaching Hospital Foundation Trust has been called to an extraordinary meeting of the trust’s consultant body and could face a vote of no confidence, HSJ has learned.