What Do Kids in The Hospital Really Want?

What matters most to children staying in the hospital? A new study finds that the two strongest desires of hospitalized kids are feeling safe and being able to get to sleep at night. read PsychCentral article here

Dementia in Hospital

For a person with dementia a hospital stay is often confusing and frightening. Not knowing where you are, nothing familiar to hold on, lost & alone.
For the nurse, a patient with dementia means extra workload in a schedule that is already packed.
What to do and where to find the time? Click here for tips from FabNHSstuff

In and out of hospital

This report from the British Red Cross proposes introducing automatic home assessments and other simple interventions for elderly and vulnerable people who are often admitted to hospital to reduce avoidable hospital admissions in vulnerable patients. The report contains analysis of first-hand accounts of frontline health and care workers who argue that there are too many missed opportunities to prevent many of these avoidable admissions.

5 years on: responses to Francis: changes in board leadership and governance in acute hospitals in England since 2013

This report, written by the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham in partnership with the University of Manchester and the Nuffield Trust, reveals that hospital boards report that they are placing a high priority on care quality and safety, and many invested significantly in nurse and medical staffing in the wake of the Francis Report. However, some hospital boards reported feeling that quality assurance as a pressure, as the demands of multiple external regulators was reported to sometimes feel burdensome, threatening to distract from a focus on the actual work of service improvements.

High impact change model: managing transfers of care

This change model, developed by the Local Government Association with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, outlines a practical approach to managing patient flow and hospital discharge. It identifies eight system changes that will have the greatest impact on reducing delayed discharge. The resource supplements the model by bringing together examples of work being undertaken across the country, for each of the eight system changes.

Drugs and pharmaceutical electronic market information tool (eMIT)

This tool gives background information on the pharmaceuticals that hospitals might buy.

The data provided includes an estimate of NHS hospital-sector annual usage from English trusts for the product selected, the average price paid for that product over the last 4 months of the period, and a measure of how much that average changed.

Handbook - Hospital Pharmacy Standards

The standards handbook from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is a supporting resource which has been updated and published online alongside the RPS professional standards for hospital pharmacy services.

Leaving hospital: briefing on discharge from mental health inpatient services

This briefing summarises results from a survey of peoples’ experiences of leaving mental health hospitals. Click here to read further.

Children and young people's survey 2016

The CQC has published what it claims is the largest survey of the quality of care for under-16s. More than 34,000 patients and their parents and carers took part in the research.

Overall, experiences were mostly positive – 81% of parents and carers rated care at 8 out of 10 or better - but findings also identified a number of areas for improvement. These were around involving children more in decision-making, being treated on age appropriate wards and having enough things to do while in hospital

Older people living with frailty in hospitals

This NIHR review brings together research on what can be done to identify and manage the needs of frail older people living in hospital. It covers four key aspects of caring for this group of people: assessment, identifying and managing symptoms associated with frailty in hospital, discharge planning and caring environments.

Nutritional care tool report 2017

The BAPEN nutritional care tool report provides organisational-level data on how nutritional care is organised and patient-level data on the quality of nutrition in hospitals, care homes and community organisations.

Performance Tracker: Autumn 2017

This report from the Institute for Government is the first in a series of data-driven analyses on the performance of government. The report uses government data to examine five key public services: hospitals, adult social care, police, prisons and schools. It finds that until recently the government managed to maintain the quality of public services while controlling spending however it warns that now the UK faces a combination of failing public services and breached spending controls.

See Spring's Performance Tracker Report

NHS targets super-sized chocolate bars in battle against obesity, diabetes and tooth-decay

Hospitals have been ordered to take super-size chocolate bars and “grab bags” of sugary snacks off the shelves in the latest step of the NHS plan to fight obesity, diabetes and tooth-decay.

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has announced a 250 calorie limit on confectionery sold in hospital canteens, stores, vending machines and other outlets.

Hospital chiefs will have to ensure that four out of five items purchased on their premises do not bust the limit, which is an eighth of a woman’s and a tenth of a man’s recommended daily intake, or lose out on funding ring-fenced for improving the health of staff, patients and their visitors.

Unhealthy sandwiches and drinks are also being targeted as the NHS, Europe’s largest employer, takes a lead in tackling the availability of unhealthy food and drinks that are fuelling an obesity crisis.

Reviewing ‘stranded’ patients in hospital – what are patients waiting for?

These resources will help NHS Organisations undertake a stranded patient review in any setting, from the acute trust to reablement services. These should be multi-agency in approach. The result should support the patient along their journey, providing data and evidence to inform system change discussions.

When the price isn't right: how cuts in hospital payments added up to the NHS deficit

NHS hospitals and other services ended the financial year 2016/17 with an underlying deficit of £3.7 billion. That is to say: they had £3.7 billion less reliable cash coming in than they had going out.

The answer, in this briefing from the Nuffield Trust, is surprisingly simple: hospitals are paid for each patient they treat, and the price they receive is set by a national tariff listing thousands of common procedures or types of care. But the prices on this list have been cut in real terms every year since 2009/10, and most years in cash terms too.

This means that a hospital will be given just £937 in cash this year to treat a patient they would have received £1,000 in cash to care for in 2009/10 – the green line on our graph. Factor in eight years of inflation, and that £937 is more like £760 (the blue line).

People share their experiences of being discharged from hospital

In What happens when people leave hospital and other care settings?, Healthwatch share what over 2,000 people told local Healthwatch about their experiences of being discharged.

Hospital admissions report published

A report providing details of all hospital inpatient, day case and adult critical care episodes in England for the 2016/17 financial year has been published by NHS Digital.

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.

Hospital-community partnerships to build a culture of health: a compendium of case studies

This compendium, published by the American Hospital Association, brings together case studies from across the U.S. that describe how community partnerships have made improvements in addressing priority health needs within the local area.

A playbook for fostering hospital-community partnerships to build a culture of health

This guidance, from the American Hospital Association, outlines a range of methods, tools and strategies to help create and sustain partnerships between hospitals and communities in order to create a culture of health. The guidance also uses insights from cohorts of a pilot programme on how to manage, strengthen and accelerate collaborations effectively.