5.24pm The all party parliamentary group on primary care and public health has issued a call for NHS workers to give evidence to an inquiry into whether health should still be free at the point of delivery.
Group co-chair, the Enfield North MP Nick de Bois, said: “Bevan’s vision of a publicly funded health system, based on clinical need and not ability to pay was set up to protect people when they were sick and unable to afford healthcare. More than sixty years later, the services and treatments that are now available on the NHS have expanded beyond belief, together with people’s expectations of the service.”
3.35pm @NrthLondonNews tweets: “Demonstrators to march through Enfield tomorrow in protest at proposed Chase Farm A&E and maternity closure http://bit.ly/XNwzMJ.”
3.33pm @Jamesillman tweets: “Sod Lincoln & Zero Dark Thirty. This is the real ppl’s fave for 2013: @DHgovuk’s film about Any Qualified Provider. http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/aqp-film.”
1.56pm @ShaunLintern tweets: “CQC says it will use experts and more patients in inspections. That’d be like the inspection team that Cynthia Bower scrapped then? #Francis.”
1.39pm The Department of Health has launched a 12 week consultation to establish a full set of National Institute for Health and Social Care quality standards and guidance for social care. Potential NICE standards for discussion in the consultation include: falls, deprivation of liberty safeguards and medicines management in home-based settings.
12.39pm The campaign group Action against medical accidents (AvMA) have written to health secretary Jeremy Hunt calling on him to commit to implementing the recommendations of the Francis report in full.
Chief executive Peter Walsh writes: “If the Government does not implement the recommendations from the inquiry in full the inquiry itself would not only be a massive waste of public money and wasted opportunity, but would be a betrayal of patients and the NHS.”
The letter (attached right) also criticises the government for pressing ahead with relevant policy changes, such as introducing a contractual duty of candour, without waiting for the recommendations.
12.33pm HSJ brings news of a radical shake-up of community pathology services which will see NHS trusts compete with private firms for contracts worth £500m has taken a major step forward after commissioners started a procurement process. The contracts cover two NHS regions.
12.31pm The Care Quality Commission is to assess the leadership, culture and governance of acute services in the NHS and the corporate governance of private sector care providers, HSJ has learned. In an email sent to staff earlier, chief executive David Behan and chair David Prior set out their “early thinking” ahead of next week’s publication of the Francis report.
11.55am There’s a note of pity for the health secretary in The Times’ colour piece on the parliamentary row over Lewisham’s accident and emergency department. “Jeremy Hunt was once again Jeremy Hunted yesterday,” writes Ann Treneman. “I always think that the Health Secretary, when under fire, looks like a startled deer, eyes outraged, thin legs splayed.”
11.24am The Care Quality Commission is to place a restriction on the number of patients that can be treated at an east London emergency department. The regulator plans to cap the number of patients who can be admitted to the “majors” part of the Queen’s Hospital emergency department at times when people already admitted have been waiting too long to be transferred.
11.19am Doctors will be able to provide medical records to patients who want them to travel abroad for an assisted suicide without being struck off, new guidelines make clear for the first time, reports the Daily Telegraph.
11.17am Huge improvements in treating and testing for HIV have failed to curb infections in gay and bisexual men in England and Wales, a study reported by the BBC suggests.
10.29am Meanwhile, around 70 Unison members, clerical and administration staff, protested outside Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust’s headquarters in Wakefield against proposed cuts to job losses and pay cuts. The demonstration came on the fourth day of a five-day strike over the trust’s attempts to make cuts of £24m by April at Dewsbury Hospital, Pinderfields and Pontefract General Infirmary.
10.20am In case you missed this story yesterday, it’s quit an intriguing one. Troubled Furness General Hospital’s consultant-led maternity services are to be temporarily moved to a neighbouring county in a bid to avert potentially dangerous levels of understaffing. Staff absence has increased while police investigate the unit.
7.59am: Good morning, now is the time for organisations to ask whether they have enough improvement experts to bring about transformational change, writes Olivia Shaw. Organisations have been delivering improvements in services and local systems for many years, but many of these have been in response to identified problems such as high infection rates, patient falls and prescribing errors.
“We tend to become obsessed with process and produce data in a way which fits with how we like to present it. This is a flawed concept but it is hard for people to switch to new ways of doing things even if the new ways mean we can do more and better”.
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