Tag: care quality commission

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

How many care home staff in England have received two Covid-19 vaccine doses? Nuffield Trust chart.
Nuffield Trust; 2021.
[After the deadline passed, care home staff in England now need to have received two Covid-19 jabs to carry on working. Nina Hemmings looks at how many had been vaccinated twice only a few weeks before the deadline.]

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes in a cohort of early psychosis patients.[Abstract]
Szmulewicz AG. Early Intervention in Psychiatry 2021;15(6):1799-1802.
[AIM: To evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical outcomes, we used data from Electronic Health Records from 128 patients receiving care at a First Episode Psychosis clinic. CONCLUSIONS: We report that patients have avoided accessing higher levels of care, except in extreme cases. We argue that this is not a sustainable trajectory and that public health actions are required.]

Provider collaboration review: Mental health care of children and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Care Quality Commission (CQC); 2021.
[Review of care in 7 areas of England in June and July 2021 found COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on the mental health of children and young people, and has led to an increased demand on services, particularly eating disorder services.]

Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis.
BMJ; 2021.
[This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that several personal protective and social measures, including handwashing, mask wearing, and physical distancing are associated with reductions in the incidence covid-19. Public health efforts to implement public health measures should consider community health and sociocultural needs.]

COVID-19 Young people and vaccines Toolkit.
Cabinet Office; 2021.
[An updated vaccines toolkit for younger people has been launched by the Cabinet Office. The toolkit includes links to assets and videos designed to encourage vaccine uptake among young people aged 18 to 29.]

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

COVID-19: guidance on shielding and protecting people defined on medical grounds as extremely vulnerable.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2020.
(Information for shielding and protecting people defined on medical grounds as extremely vulnerable from COVID-19. Updated 31 December: Added new shielding advice for the clinically extremely vulnerable in Tier 4.)

COVID-19 vaccination programme 2020/21: COVID-19 Enhanced Service Vaccination Collaboration Agreement.
NHS England; 2020.
(The purpose of this COVID-19 ES Vaccination Collaboration Agreements to support the delivery of the individual and collective responsibilities of the Collaborating Practices as part of the COVID-19 vaccination programme as set out in COVID-19 vaccination programme 2020/21 Enhanced Service Specification.)

New SARS-CoV-2 variant.
Public Health England (PHE); 2020.
(Information on the new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.)

Rapid evaluation confirms lateral flow devices effective in detecting new COVID-19 variant.
Public Health England (PHE); 2020.
(Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that lateral flow devices (LFDs) used in mass testing can detect the new COVID-19 variant.)

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 variant from South Africa identified in UK.
Public Health England (PHE); 2020.
(Two cases of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, which originated in South Africa, have been identified in the UK.)

Persistent symptoms after Covid-19: qualitative study of 114 “long Covid” patients and draft quality principles for services.[Abstract]
Ladds E. BMC Health Services Research 2020;20(1):1144.
Full-text availability
(Suggested quality principles for a long Covid service include ensuring access to care, reducing burden of illness, taking clinical responsibility and providing continuity of care, multi-disciplinary rehabilitation, evidence-based investigation and management, and further development of the knowledge base and clinical services.)

Covid-19 Insight: issue 6.
Care Quality Commission (CQC); 2020.
(In this month’s report, we share regional data on the designated settings that allow people with a COVID-positive test result to be discharged safely from hospital, and also the latest data on registered care home provision. We also look at how providers have collaborated to provide urgent and emergency care during the pandemic.)

Coronavirus data dashboard
UK Government; 2020.
(The official UK Government website for data and insights on Coronavirus (COVID-19))

Covid 19

Updates on the Covid 19 Pandemic

Update on COVID-19 pandemic.
BMJ Best Practice; 2020.

(Epidemiology: updated data on children and pregnant women; updated risk factors (solid organ transplant). Aetiology: updated data on viral shedding in immunocompromised people. Emerging: WHO Solidarity trial results published; NIH recommends against casirivimab/imdevimab as standard of care for patients with mild to moderate disease; UK trial starts investigating use of colchicine. Prevention: first vaccine authorised for use in the UK; WHO updates guidance on mask use in community settings.)

Mask use in the context of COVID-19.
World Health Organization (WHO); 2020.

(This document provides updated guidance on mask use in health care and community settings, and during home care for COVID-19 cases. It is intended for policy makers, public health and infection prevention and control professionals, health care managers and health workers. Updated 1 December 2020.)

COVID-19: vaccination programme guidance for healthcare practitioners.
Public Health England (PHE); 2020.

(Guidance for healthcare practitioners about the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination programme. 4 December 2020: Update report: details on page 3.)

COVID-19 vaccination: women of childbearing age, currently pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding.
Public Health England (PHE); 2020.

(Information for all women of childbearing age, those currently pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding on coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination.)

Covid-19 Insight: issue 5.
Care Quality Commission (CQC); 2020.

(In this month’s report, we build on the learning about good practice in infection prevention and control that we discussed in the last issue by focusing on care homes. We also present the key findings from a survey to understand the experience of inpatients who were discharged from hospital from April to May 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic was at its height.)

Community Mental Health

2020 Survey

Care Quality Commission (CQC); 2020.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/surveys/community-mental-health-survey-2020

Findings of this report include people consistently reporting poor experiences of NHS community mental health services, with few positive results. For example, poor experiences were reported for crisis care, accessing care, and involvement.

There are few results where the majority of people reported good experiences of mental health care. However, ‘organising care’ is an area where people were found to be more positive:

-97% of people who have been told who is in charge of organising their care and services said they knew how to contact this person if they had a concern

-91% said the person that organised their care did so ‘very well’ (58%) or ‘quite well’ (33%)

-73% reported that they were ‘always’ treated with dignity and respect (CQC)


Out of sight – who cares?

A review of restraint, seclusion and segregation for autistic people, and people with a learning disability and/or mental health condition

Source – Kings Fund Health Management and Policy Alert

This report tells the story of restrictive practices from the perspective of people who have experienced it first-hand and looks at how long-term segregation was used. The review finds that the environment of mental health hospitals was often not therapeutic. It also finds that some people were admitted without proper assessment and did not have an assessment of their needs while in hospital, resulting in the lack of a clear care and treatment plan.

CQC Report

Using machine learning in diagnostic services: a report with recommendations from CQC’s regulatory sandbox

This sandbox round focused on the use of machine learning applications for diagnostic purposes in healthcare services. The findings were used to identify and consider where the CQC needs to update their current regulatory methods, and the work required to get this right in order to regulate these services better. A regulatory sandbox is a way of testing how best to regulate new types of services by working collaboratively to find out about them.

Read the report here