Talking leadership: Clinicians leading transformational change – The King’s Fund
Ahead of our latest report and eighth annual leadership and management summit – both on the subject of transforming health and care – Taj Hassan, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and President, Royal College of Emergency Medicine, answers our questions about how clinicians are contributing to transformational change in the NHS.

Breakeven duty: a guide for NHS trusts – NHS Improvement
This guidance explains the breakeven duty and how breakeven financial performance should be measured and reported within NHS trusts’ annual accounts.

New initiatives to support staff retention – NHS Employers
In this joint case study working with NHS Improvement, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust shares how it has introduced a number of new initiatives to support staff retention. The case study features key learning points, explores how the trust overcame certain challenges, and highlights a number of additional resources which may be useful to organisations looking to develop an approach to workforce retention.

Regulation in the NHS
NHS Providers has published The changing nature of regulation in the NHS.  This report is based on a survey which explores trusts’ experiences of the current regulatory approach by NHS Improvement and the Care Quality Commission.  Trusts were also asked about their experiences of moving to local system collaboration through STPs and integrated care systems and the implications of local systems working for the regulatory framework.

Cancer Taskforce progress
Public Health England has published PHE progress report on the Independent Cancer Taskforce recommendations.  This document outlines Public Health England’s progress on strategic priorities identified in the Independent Cancer Taskforce report.

Personal health budgets
The Department of Health and Social Care has launched a consultation on extending legal rights to have for personal health budges and integrated personal budgets.  The consultation seeks views on giving more people the right to have personal health budgets and integrated personal budgets and whether individuals would welcome the opportunity to incorporate additional funding streams into integrated personal budgets.

Approved costing guidance
NHS Improvement has published / refreshed the following costing guidance documents:

• Healthcare costing standards – mental health: information requirements and costing processes (new)
• Ambulance standards and the accompanying technical document (refresh)
• Acute costing approaches and technical document (refresh)

Statistics

• Community Services Statistics for Children, Young People and Adults – December 2017
• NICE Technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard) – to September 2017
• Loneliness – what characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely? 2016-2017
• GP practice prescribing presentation-level data – January 2018
• NHS Injury Costs Recovery scheme:  amounts collected – April 2017 to March 2018
• Laboratory reports of respiratory infections made to PHE from PHE and NHS laboratories in England and Wales – weeks 9 to 13, 2018

HSJ Roundup (contact the Library for further details)

• Faults in trust investigation of brain surgery deaths 
  A trust investigation into patient deaths or harm following brain surgery was hampered by “significant shortcomings”, a royal college review has found.
• NHS Improvement criticises ‘strength of leadership’ at teaching trust 
  The medical director of a Shelford Group trust was singled out in criticism of its leadership by NHS Improvement, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.
• Government plan to expand ‘right to personal health budgets’ 
  The Department of Health and Social Care has launched a consultation to significantly extend the scope of personal health budgets in England.