Hepatitis E: symptoms, transmission, prevention, treatment

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This document explains hepatitis E, describing the:

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From Public Health England

New Health Foundation programme selects 12 projects to improve analytical capability in health and care services

The Health Foundation has selected 12 projects from across the UK to take part in the first round of its new £1.2 million Advancing Applied Analytics programme.

The programme aims to improve analytical capability in support of health and care services. It supports analysts who are working on local innovative and ambitious projects, to help them demonstrate improvements to analytical capability in health and care services and provide lessons for the wider care system.

Lintern's Risk Register: We need better workforce data

Everything you need to stay up to date on patient safety and workforce, plus my take on the most important under the radar stories. Contact me in confidence. Shaun Lintern, patient safety senior correspondent.

Seeing the bigger picture

It is extremely encouraging to see organisations like the Health Foundation, Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund focusing their big brains on the issues affecting the NHS workforce.
NHS Providers will be joining the party soon with a new report, and its chief executive Chris Hopson has already done a laudable amount of drum banging over what is now widely regarded as the biggest pressure facing the service and the one keeping managers up at night.


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NHS pressures – future trends

This BMA analysis of NHS admissions and waiting times data estimates that emergency department attendances could increase to 24 million between October 2017 and September 2018. During this period, the analysis also projects that the number of patients failing to be treated within four hours of arrival at hospital could rise by 370,000.

The non-executive director’s guide to NHS data – Part one: Hospital activity, data sets and performance

A ‘data revolution’ across health and care services in England is vital if local areas are to transform the way care is delivered, the NHS Confederation has said.

Encouraging organisations to ‘get to the heart of their data’, the NHS Confederation has launched a new series of guides to help board members to better understand data across the healthcare system and its role in transforming care.

The Commissioner: Winter, deaths and inequality

What NHS England isn’t telling you, and more indispensable insight for commissioners, by Dave West.

Covering unexpected wobbles in life expectancy a couple of years ago, it struck me that the phrase “life expectancy” is a bit misleading.

It is often treated as an unquestionable statistic based on some incredible insight into the future – perhaps from an algorithm so powerful it has developed the necessary foresight, or handed down from a mysterious external presence.
In fact, “period life expectancy” – the figure that is often discussed and was the basis of recent analysis by Sir Michael Marmot’s team – does not even involve any expert prediction or debate.

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NHS hospital bed numbers: past, present, future

Briefing from the King's Fund on NHS hospital bed numbers:

• The total number of NHS hospital beds in England, including general and acute, mental illness, learning disability, maternity and day-only beds, has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 to 142,000, while the number of patients treated has increased significantly.
• Most other advanced health care systems have also reduced bed numbers in recent years. However, the UK currently has fewer acute beds relative to its population than almost any other comparable health system.

Pathology networks

NHS Improvement has identified 29 potential pathology networks, allowing for the transformation of pathology services into a series of networks across the country.

They have been working with providers since the end of last year, to validate pathology data. These data collections have enabled the NHS to construct its most comprehensive picture of pathology services across the country, through which it is able to compare overall, regional and local performance year-on-year. By bringing together clinical expertise, pathology services will become more efficient, in order to deliver better value, high quality care for patients.

The north-south NHS divide: how where you are not what you need dictates your care

This report, from the Medical Technology Group, outlines the findings of an examination of data from 209 CCGs to assess patient access to medical technology. It finds wide variation in access between the north and south of England and argues that CCG performance against access indicators should be made clearer to patients.

e-referrals have halved DNAs

Electronic referrals have reduced the number of missed appointments or DNAs (did not attends) in England’s NHS by 50 per cent

Rob Shaw, the interim chief executive of NHS Digital, said this meant NHS organisations had 50 per cent more appointments available for other patients.

‘If secondary care starts to fully take up e-referrals we will end up saving over £50 million a year,’ he said. ‘That money can be put back into the NHS.’

Mr Shaw spoke about e-prescriptions, saying GPs and pharmacists could not believe how much time and effort they saved when compared to using the old FB10 prescription forms.

But he said it taken the health service too long to embed new technologies and called for far faster adoption.

Funding available to improve analytical capability in health and care services

The Health Foundation has launched a programme to support analysts working on healthcare projects to improve analytical capability.

£400,000 of funding is available to support up to six projects across the UK over 15 months. The deadline for applications is midnight, Tuesday 25 July 2017.

To find out more and to apply, visit: www.health.org.uk/advancing-applied-analytics

Tackling variations in clinical care: Assessing the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme from the King's Fund aims to bring about higher-quality care in hospitals, at lower cost, by reducing unwanted variations in services and practices.

It uses national data to identify the variations and outcomes, shares that data with all those concerned with a service – not only clinicians, but also clinical and medical directors, managers and chief executives – and monitors the changes that are implemented.

The programme began with orthopaedics and is now being rolled out to 32 different surgical and medical specialisms across the English NHS. Through an informal assessment of the programme, this paper sets out what the programme is, why it is needed, what is different about it, what it has achieved, what challenges it faces and what potential it has. It also contains vignettes illustrating hospitals’ experiences of the programme.

Using data to retain staff webinar

In this webinar from NHS Employers, you'll hear how one NHS organisation set up a dashboard which intuitively forecasts trends in workforce data, allowing teams to manage retention hotspots before they occur. You'll also learn how another trust saw a return rate of over 50 per cent of exit questionnaires when they included an online option. This has allowed staff in the organisation to raise concerns and the trust to address them promptly and efficiently.

Medicines optimisation dashboard update

The quarterly refresh of the Medicines Optimisation dashboard has now been completed. Data from the dashboard can be used to help develop plans to ensure that all patients achieve the best possible outcomes from their treatment.

The Medicines Optimisation dashboard page of NHS England’s website contains more information about how medicines optimisation is aligned to NHS RightCare.

Information and Digital Technologies Clinical Requirements 2020

This AoMRC report looks at the use of data and technology in healthcare and concludes that uptake has been slow. It finds that there is now an increasing focus on learning how to use technologies to improve delivery of care for patients. This document aims to ensure that clinical priorities are met and reflected at a national level.

Funding available for innovations to improve health care

The Health Foundation has £1.5 million available for up to 20 teams to test and develop innovative ideas to improve health care delivery in the UK.

The Health Foundation is particularly interested in applications from teams who will be applying an innovative use of data. The deadline for applications is 28 March 2017.

Improving patient care by improving data visualistation and safety support mechanisms: interim assessment.

Published by West Midlands Health Informatics Network

Poor patient safety significantly affects the patient experience and can be life changing for those involved. Safety measurement has been slow to deliver demonstrable improvements in patient safety since the extent of fatal adverse events was established in the 1999 report ‘To err is human’.1 The QUESTT tool supports more effective safety performance measurement that rewards success and supports underperformance to deliver improvements.

UHCW Research: Judith Smith and Sarahjane Jones

Understanding analytical capability in health care

Analysis has a crucial role to play in shaping care for individual patients as well as across organisations and health systems. It also has a role in helping to improve quality and safety by identifying areas for improvement and monitoring service delivery.

There is a widely acknowledged problem that health services often cannot access the right level of skilled analysts. This can lead to decisions being made on based on limited or inappropriate evidence.

In this paper, Martin Bardsley explores issues around both supply and demand that need to be addressed to ensure good quality analysis is able to improve care.