NAPC News 9 March 2010

DH Publishes List Of Top NHS Leaders And Roles

A list of the most important NHS leaders and management posts has been published by the Department of Health.

The Top Leaders programme has named 827 people who are either already working in the most complex leadership roles or have been identified as having the potential to do so. The aim is to ensure the NHS is spoilt for choice recruiting leaders and to move away from chief executive vacancies often attracting just one candidate.

NHS East Midlands chief executive, Dame Barbara Hakin, has championed the programme in her role on the National Leadership Council. Dame Barbara said the development had been contentious because it was the first time that the NHS had not offered the same level of development to everyone. Private companies, in fact, had used this approach for a long time.

There are 134 chief executives or chief executive officers on the list and 90 people with the word ‘finance' in their title, 69 medical managers, 56 nurses, 29 communication specialists and 26 people whose titles include ‘public health'.

Individuals will received tailored career plan and benefits from secondments, placements, support to find new posts and access to executive education.

Blairite Policy Champion Joins Tories As Adviser

A former Labourite, doctor and defender of services reconfiguration has become a Conservative Party adviser.

Cancer research specialist, David Kerr, was introduced by shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, as a ‘key architects of the Blairite health reforms' at the Conservative Party spring forum.

Professor Kerr is on a five year leave of absence from Oxford University, where he is professor of cancer medicine, to work as a chief research adviser at Sidra Medical and Research Center in Qatar.

In 2001 he carried out a review of cancer research for former health secretary, Alan Milburn, and from 2004 he chaired a group that produced a 20 year blueprint for NHS services in Scotland.

Two years later he expressed his frustration at the ‘wrong, confusing and puzzling' opposition by politicians to reconfigure services by separating planned and emergency care and creating specialist cancer services. He said we needed hospitals built fit for purpose, not some halfway house of mediocrity.

Professor Kerr, who is working in a part time, paid role for the Tories, is also said to be disillusioned by the target culture and what he sees as failed attempts to publsh useful performance data.

Professor Kerr wants to empower patients and sees choice and competition as important drivers of quality.

Vaccine Baby Given Ten Times TB Dose

A baby is fighting for his life after a junior doctor gave him ten times the normal dose of a TB vaccine. The boy was injected with 0.5mg of the BCG vaccine instead of the usual 0.05mg dose. The child, who has not been identified, is now being treated for tuberculosis by specialists at Sheffield Children's Hospital.

Scunthorpe General Hospital has launched an investigation amid reports that other babies may also have been overdosed.

Patients Treated In Mop Cupboards

A shortage of space in NHS hospitals means that patients are routinely treated in TV rooms, mop cupboards and corridors, according to a poll of more than 900 nurses for Nursing Times. The survey found that 63 per cent were aware of patients being placed in areas not designed for clinical care. Nearly 80 per cent of them said they believed this put patient safety at risk.

A Department of Health spokesman said that the vast majority of NHS patients experienced good quality, safe care. The Department acknowledged there was more to do and it strove to make services even safer.

Managers

Andy Burnham has pledged to develop a system to stop failing managers being re-employed in the NHS, as a result of the failings of NHS Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust. It is one of eighteen recommendations accepted by the government after an inquiry into 400 unnecessary death at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008.

Arthritis

Knowledge about rheumatoid arthritis (RA) among the public and health professionals needed to be improved MPs argued.

A House of Commons committee of public accounts reports concluded that people's low awareness of the disease and its symptoms caused delays in seeking medical help. Prompt diagnosis of RA was crucial to prevent its irreversible damage, the committee said.

Cancer

Significant genetic features are shared across several cancer types, according to research. Cancer cell DNA included regions that have been copied one or more times. The number of copies of a single gene in the genome (the copy number) is altered, driving the development of cancer.

Boston researchers said the significant copy number alterations within any single cancer type were also present in other cancer types.

Department Of Health Report Calls For QOF Targets Rethinks

The upper thresholds on QOF indicators should be scrapped to incentivise practices to offer all patients best quality care, a Department of Health review of health inequalities argued.

NICE said its QOF review committee would consider calls in Professor Sir Michael Marmot's Fair Society, Healthy Lives review for indicator thresholds to be raised to provide ‘100 per cent coverage' and reduce health inequalities.

NICE's QOF review committee examined upper indicator thresholds last summer and suggested that raises could increase health inequalities. Practices in deprived areas would struggle to reach higher achievement levels and may lose funding it said. The committee decided that threshold decisions were best decided in negotiations between NHS Employers and the BMA's GP Committee, given the financial implications for practices.

The Marmot review estimated that 200,000 premature deaths each year could be prevented by reducing social inequalities. Authors said the disparities cost the NHS more than £5.5 billion per year.

Department Of Health Push To Provide More Care At Home

Home dialysis and community chemotherapy services are to expand as part of a DoH push to provide more care at home.

The announcement follows an Audit Commission report showing that older people are happier and cost less to care for if they can be looked after in their own homes.

Alongside wider provision of home dialysis and chemotherapy services in the community, more home-based services will be provided for children and young people with a disability or palliative care needs. More people will also be given the option to die at home if they wish, the DoH said.

Health secretary, Andy Burnham, said the time had come for the NHS to shift more care out of hospitals and into the community and patients' homes.

NHS Tourism Under Review

Plans to deter health tourists from coming to England for NHS treatment have been outlined in a consultation launched by the Department of Health.

Its review into foreign nationals' access to the NHS in England includes proposals for a health insurance system to deter health tourists entering the country for treatment and to raise the payments the NHS gets from treating overseas visitors.

It also suggested that failed asylum seekers who cooperated formally with the UK Border Agency should remain entitled to free healthcare, but those who did not should be charged.

Health minister Mike O'Brien said that while the NHS had a duty to any person whose life or long term health was at immediate risk, we could not afford to be an international health services, providing free treatment for all.

The consultation is also looking at extending the time UK residents can stay outside the country before losing their entitlement to NHS treatment.

Health Trusts Snatch Millions Meant To Help Family Carers

Charities have revealed millions of pounds meant to provide respite breaks for voluntary carers have been diverted to plug NHS deficits. In an ‘historic announcement' it was promised that £150 million would be spent in England over the two years to April 2011 to give carers the recognition and status they deserved. But Crossroads Care and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers revealed that just 23 per cent of the money for the first year was going into respite care.

Under Freedom of Information requests, they found the money was simply added to existing budgets instead of being reserved for carers.