HSJ Live will today cover talks at two London conferences by Don Berwick, the Boston-based international expert on patient safety, who is carrying out a review of the NHS, in the wake of the Francis review, and the rest of today’s news. NHS England medical director Sir Bruce Keogh is also due to speak.

HSJ live logo

HSJ live logo

5.25pm: Some non-Berwick related news - Blair Mcpherson has written on Mid Stafforshire being the first foundation trust to be declared bankrupt.

‘Does this mean that some trusts either stay within budget and people die or provide excellent care and go bust?’ he asks.

4.25pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin covering Berwick’s speech tweets:

4.23pm: @DonaldsonLiam tweets:

4.14pm: Berwick: “Fear poisons improvement”

4.09pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

4.06pm: @PeterWalshAvMA tweets:

4.05pm: Berwick: “You will never achieve improvement through quality control alone”

4.03pm: @SuzetteWoodward tweets:

3.58pm: Berwick says NHS must remember ‘we are guests in our patients lives, not hosts in our organisations’.

3.56pm: @celecko tweets:

3.54pm: @SuzetteWoodward tweets:

3.52pm: Berwick: Safety is a matter of fighting entropy all the time; it is never, ever, ever on automatic

3.51pm: Hunt: Berwick paid a high price in the US for his support of the NHS, he knows NHS not the US caricature of socialised medicine

3.47pm: @THFstephen tweets:

#NHSSafety Tory loves socialised medicine - Jeremy Hunt extols NHS and condemns its negative image in USA in introducing Don Berwick

#NHSSafety “Without constancy there will be no improvement”, says on Berwick

3.45pm: Jeremy Hunt says zero harm approach will not eliminate harm completely but should make it exceptional

3.42pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

Jeremy Hunt introduces himself at #NHSSafety as the ‘warm-up act’ for Don Berwick

3.18pm: NHS England has responded to the 2012 inpatients survey. Jane Cummings, NHS England’s chief nursing officer said: “The findings of the Francis report into the care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust raised really serious challenges for the NHS. We must now all act quickly and effectively to make a difference by ensuring everything we do places the patient at the heart of the NHS.”

She adds: “The NHS must get it right every time for every patient. This survey is, on the whole, encouraging and demonstrates progress in key areas. However, there remains too much variation in the quality of care provided and hospitals need to look closely at what they need to do to improve.”

2.33pm: @GPRandom tweets on the National Health and IT conference today:

#hc2013 NHS Technology Strategy to be ready at end if year. Alex Abbot calls for industry to get involved now!

2.09pm: The BBC reports that a senior doctor at the centre of the row over children’s heart surgery has resigned.

Professor Sir Roger Boyle’s decision to step down as director of the National Institute of Clinical Outcomes Research comes after he raised concerns about the unit at Leeds General Infirmary.

Last week Sir Roger said he would not want his daughter treated at the hospital. His comments led to him being taken off the review team overseeing changes to NHS child heart surgery. Sir Roger’s resignation has been confirmed, but a spokeswoman for the institute said there would be no further comment.

1.48pm: And a roundup of Sir Bruce Keogh’s speech:

Bruce Keogh: We need to be intolerant of the conditions that lead to patient safety failures, finding effective, rapid solutions but tolerant of those willing to speak up

Bruce Keogh: The solution lies with the workforce not the government.

Bruce Keogh: We should not feel complacent that most feel experience is good. We need to listen to the 10% and learn from them.

@BeverleySlaterBruce tweets:

Keogh saying (confirming?) that there will be 15 Academic Health Science Networks #AHSN | #NHSSafety

@DonaldsonLiam tweets:

Bruce Keogh: “Patients should never have to accept treatment that affects the course of their disease for the worse.”

SuzetteWoodward tweets:

Bruce Keogh at #NHSSafety - “patients come for help” “patients accept risks” “should never accept how our delivery can affect outcome”

@HeidiDW tweets:

Every organisation should be able to describe what it does and define how it is doing - measurement is important says Bruce Keogh

1.18pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

Berwick says his group will not be afraid to disagree with government or NHS leadership #NHSSafety

1.16pm: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

Berwick: NHS can make change when it puts its mind to it, look at ‘tremendous progress’ on access #NHSSafety

12.40pm: Incomplete diagnostic investigation and failure to get the best treatment is likely reasons why survival for bowel cancer patients is lower in the UK compared to other countries.

A new study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, compared Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK. 67% of colon cancer patients in the UK survived for at least one year, compared with 80% in Sweden. 75% of rectal cancer patients in the UK survived for one year or more, compared with 84% in Sweden.

“Improvements are urgently needed in the quality and thoroughness of the medical tests that are used to assess the stage at diagnosis for each patient. The data collected by cancer registries on stage at diagnosis also need to be more accurate and complete, said Camille Maringe, lead author at the Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

12.07pm: @kiranstacey tweets:

Jeremy Hunt says he would oppose charging in the NHS. Comes after NHS boss told the FT patients might have to pay in the future.

11.40am: The chief executive of Healthwatch England has admitted some local branches are not yet established but said it will help resolve problems as “quickly as possible”.

Katherine Rake’s comments follow reports that some local Healthwatch organisations have not been set up, or are not running properly. 

11.26am: The Department of Health has published a summary of the inpatient survey results here:   https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/patient-experience-overall-measure-2012-inpatient-survey-update

11.25am: Don Berwick will also be giving his keynote speech at 3pm.

11.11am: @SuzetteWoodward tweeted:

Don Berwick starts at #NHSSafety reminding us about #francis inquiry - a patient story on a massive scale

11.03am: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

“Berwick leaves the stage to big applause. Next up a patient story #NHSSafety”

11.01am: @SuzetteWoodward tweets:

“What is wonderful about safety, says Don at #NHSSafety how easy it is to understand - (me: not sure that it is understood though)”

11.00am: Berwick: although the topic today is safety its part of something bigger - excellence - 6 dimensions includes safety, reliability, patient centred, timeliness

10.59am: HSJ reporter Sarah Calkin @sjcalkin tweets:

“We’re here today to harvest your ideas from your own experience Berwick tells delegates at #NHSSafety

10.56am: Berwick says he was given free reign to choose the best people in the world to form his committee.

10.54am: Don Berwick on mortality data from Mid Staffs. It was the ‘normalisation of deviance’, the alarm was turned off.

10.52am: Andy Cowper@HPIAndyCowper tweets:

“Berwick asks delegates at today’s @NHSEngland safety event to stand for a moment’s silence to honour people who suffered healthcare errors.”

10.51am: Berwick sharing details of American patient safety tragedies. One woman given cleaning fluid instead of medicine

10.49am: Don Berwick says “the norm at Mid Staffs was not unity but fragmentation. Professionals felt isolated. However, not unique.

10.45am: @sjcalkin tweets:

“Berwick says he must acknowledge this meeting begins in tragedy of #midstaffs.#NHSSafety”

10.15am: The Financial Times leader column today calls for a “serious debate about co-payment and the NHS”.

It follows an FT interview with Malcolm Grant yesterday, in which the NHS England chair said the government would need to consider user  charges for the NHS.

9.56am: One in 11 hospital admissions for liver disease ends in a hospital deathaccording to today’s figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre. This is higher than the overall percentage of hospital admissions that result in hospital death they say.

However while there has been a 1.6 per cent (560) increase in admissions with a primary diagnosis of liver diseases, the rate of death has remained the same since 2011.

9.50am: Page four of The Times carries a brief report headlined “Scandal-hit NHS trust is placed in administration”.

The report is a fairly straight-forward account of the Monitor press release on Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust released yesterday afternoon.

Martin Barrow, the paper’s health editor, writes: “Finances at the trust are in a dire state. Last year the Department of Health was forced to give an additional £20m to maintain services.”

9.44am: The CQC has today published results of the 2012 acute inpatients survey (www.cqc.org.uk/Inpatientsurvey2012). It has said there “have been improvements in the results for many questions this year including issues such as cleanliness and relationships with doctors and nurses. However scope for continued improvement remains in some of these areas.” An HSJ analysis is soon to follow

9.24am: The Guardian has covered research at Bath university which found “an annual 5% fall in number of asthma sufferers admitted since smoking was banned in public places in 2007. The smoking ban in public places has been linked to 1,900 fewer emergency hospital admissions for asthma patients every year. The ban, which came into force in England in July 2007, has been associated with an annual 5% drop in adult admissions, they said.”

9.22am: HSJ Live will today cover talks at two London conferences by Don Berwick, the Boston-based international expert on patient safety, who is carrying out a review of the NHS, in the wake of the Francis review, and the rest of today’s news. Mr Berwick is due to speak at the King’s Fund and at a conference on quality at the Excel Centre, along with other big figures including NHS England medical director Sir Bruce Keogh.

8.16am Good morning, we are seeing the boundary between work and private life becoming blurred on social media websites. Employees may not appreciate that their activity can amount to misconduct and employers will need to take disciplinary action for that misconduct.  Martin Cheyne and Laura Newcombe consider the importance for employers and employees alike in having a clear, unambiguous social media policy.