NHS RightCare Pathway: Diabetes

NHS RightCare, in partnership with the Healthier You: NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme(NHS DPP) has published NHS RightCare Pathway: Diabetes.

NHS RightCare Pathway: Diabetes is a tool that aims to support local commissioners to review local diabetes pathways in order to identify where potential improvements could be delivered. The pathway has been developed in collaboration with the National Clinical Director for Diabetes and Obesity at NHS England and Associate National Director for Diabetes, the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, Public Health England, Diabetes UK and patient groups.

NHS RightCare Pathway: Diabetes has two key elements:

1. It describes the core components that should be present in an optimal diabetes service; right from detection and diagnosis through to ongoing treatment, management and care of people with diabetes
2. It provides guidance for commissioners that will:
   1. Allow them to think through their existing diabetes service and compare it with an optimal diabetes service; and
   2. Provides guidance for commissioners about the scale of improvements that could be delivered through optimisation of local pathways.

Full resource: NHS RightCare Pathway: Diabetes

See also: Appendix 1: Examples of good practice

This resource outlines examples of models of integrated care between primary and secondary care, and contains useful links and resources.

 

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Framework to help CCGs deliver more personalised health care

NHS England has published a guide for CCGs and local authorities on the use of integrated personalised commissioning and personal health budgets.

These are designed to enable a more personalised approach to people’s health and social care. NHS England has made a commitment to ensure that 300,000 people benefit from personalised health and care through integrated personal commissioning by 2018/19, which includes 40,000 people with a personal health budget.

The guide can be viewed here

Sustainability and Transformation Plans: What, why and where next?

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has published Sustainability and transformation plans (STPs): what, why and where next? 

The NHS is facing one of the most challenging periods in its history, with a funding gap of more than £22 billion over the coming years. And the pressure on the social care system is more acute than ever, with many councils raising eligibility thresholds and making cuts to social care budgets.

Image source: http://www.ippr.org

Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) – which are local health and care reform plans, authored jointly by NHS and local government leaders to improve outcomes and drive greater efficiency in their local area – are one of the government’s main responses to this problem. These plans rightly focus on decentralising power within the NHS, investing in leadership and relationships to drive improvements, and on local health and care organisations coming together to overcome the silos created by the 2012 Health and Care Act.

This report looks at the most promising reform solutions that have been identified by STPs, and also sets out the range of challenges that stand in the way of them realising their vision for improved health and efficiency.

Download summary here or full report here

 

Nearly six in ten CCGs missing talking therapies targets

Almost six in ten clinical commissioning groups are missing targets on access to talking therapies, according to official figures | OnMedica

Mental health charity Mind said this morning that the “unacceptable” figures reflect years of mental health services being “woefully underfunded”, and insisted that it is vital that quality, timely services must be in place to meet increasing demand.

Mind said the new data, from NHS England’s mental health dashboard on how CCGs are performing with regard to delivering talking therapies, highlight the proportion of CCGs meeting and missing their targets. These most recent available data, which are for Q3 (October-December) 2016, showed that 120 out of 209 CCGs in England (57%) are failing to meet the target for the proportion of people in their area that should be accessing talking therapies – currently set at 15.8% of the local population who have been identified as being able to benefit from talking therapies. By 2021, this target is set to rise to 25%.

The figures also revealed that barely half (52%) of CCGs met the recovery rate target for talking therapies – 101 out of 209 CCGs missed the current recovery target, which is set at 50%.

Mind pointed out that these data specifically focus on therapies available through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, which is supposed to increase accessibility of talking treatments to those identified as potentially benefitting from receiving them (typically, people with common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety disorder).

• Overview via OnMedica
• Statistics

Missing data has risked GPs’ patient care

Missing patient data that was mistakenly held in storage for years has led to around 1,700 cases of potential harm caused to GPs’ patients, according to a report published today by the National Audit Office (NAO) | OnMedica

The NAO’s Investigation: clinical correspondence handling at NHS Shared Business Services report details the watchdog’s investigation into how NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) – an agency contracted by the government to run some back-office operations in the NHS – handled unprocessed clinical correspondence.

Significant amounts of important data on patients including test results and diagnoses were delayed mistakenly between 2011 and 2016 by the NHS Shared Business Services agency before they were delivered to hospitals and GP surgeries.

This data, which included copies of test or screening results, and communications about planned treatment following appointments with other healthcare providers, was sent by hospitals and other GPs to practices where the patient had moved away or was unknown, so needed to be redirected.

• Overview via OnMedica
• Report

Patient and service-provider perspectives for treating primary care complaints in urgent care settings

An investigation into why patients chose to attend two, nurse-led, minor injury units (MIUs) to access primary healthcare services rather than attend their GP practice | International Emergency Nursing

Highlights:

• Patients with non-urgent conditions are increasingly attending urgent care providers in the UK.
• Consumerist notions of choice and expediency influence healthcare decision making.
• Patients seem to be acting rationally in response to healthcare policy promises.
• Providing treatment establishes precedent and expectation for future care.
• Co-located primary care, working alongside ENP services, offer benefits for local communities.

Full reference: Sturgeon, D. (2017) Convenience, quality and choice: Patient and service-provider perspectives for treating primary care complaints in urgent care settings. International Emergency Nursing. Published online: 26 June 2017

Checklist For Recruiting CCG Lay Members

This checklist aims to support CCGs with recruiting lay members and provides a series of questions that can be asked to start conversations about both recruitment and succession planning | NHS Clinical Commissioners

Image course: NHSCC

Lay members bring an essential independent perspective to the clinical commissioning group (CCG) governing body – being separate to the day-to-day running of the organisation means that they can see it as it is seen from the outside. This checklist from the NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC) Lay Members Network is the first in a series looking at different aspects of the lay member role. Aimed at CCG chairs, members of the CCG governing body and lay members, it provides a series of questions that can be asked to start conversations about recruitment and succession planning.

• Checklist
• Press release