1:30pm In answer to a Parliamentary question a health minister confirms the bill for the special administrator at South London Healthcare Trust is now likely to hit £5m. Original tender notice was for £2m.
1.02pm: NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson has given an update on the NHS transition in his latest The Month publication. It says there are now more jobs in the new system than there are “at risk” staff in existing organisations. However, there will still be further redundancies due to them being different posts and in different areas.
12.48pm: Proposals for new rules on local authority health scrutiny have been published by the Department of Health. The rules will be made as regulations under the Health Act shortly. They include “extending scrutiny to all providers of NHS care, whether they are from a hospital, a charity or an independent provider”, “requiring organisations proposing substantial service changes and the local authorities scrutinising those proposals to publish clear timescales for decision-making”, and “requiring local authorities to take account of the financial sustainability of services when considering whether to make any changes”.
12.34pm National media are reporting five A&E and ambulance staff have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by gross negligence and misconduct at a Walsall Healthcare Trust.
12.32pm NHS London are going to review the governance of Croydon Health Services Trust, after the resignation of the chair yesterday takes to the capital to two chairs lost in a week.
11.54am One story you may have missed earlier: a study shows the NHS consultant contract has failed to increase productivity since its 2003 introduction.
11:00am HSJ EXCLUSIVE The Department of Health could face a fresh probe by a government spending watchdog after its latest attempt to dismantle the National Programme for IT sparked allegations of anti-competitive behaviour.
HSJ has learned Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge is considering a new probe into the NPfIT after concerns were raised over the nature of the DH’s recent deal with IT provider CSC.
10.58am A new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine concludes that the consultant contract did not increase productivity as the government expected and may even have caused a decline.
7.31am: Innovative use of technology, is essential if the NHS is to transform services, writes Michael Thick. The wider health service cannot afford to wait for the NHS Commissioning Board to introduce a framework for national IT standards he says. “An increasing number of hospitals find themselves on the “at risk” list as the realities of economic failure bite”.
7.15am: Good morning, commissioners and clinicians can improve the value yielded by their respiratory programme budget by rebalancing investment in non-medical and medical interventions according to findings from the clinical network IMPRESS. In 2010/11, the NHS in England spent more than £4bn on respiratory illness, £720 million of it on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
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