Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI)
Commissioned by Public Health England in partnership with Health Education England and the Department of Health, this report aims to build a clearer understanding of the location, number, functions, skills and competences of the infection prevention and control (IPC) nursing workforce.
Health Education England (HEE)
The Secretary of State for Health commissioned Health Education England to establish the Independent Primary Care Workforce Commission. Through a literature review, call for evidence, site visits and panel meetings, the Commission wanted to identify and highlight innovative models of primary care that will meet the future needs of patients and the NHS. The accompanying literature review, carried out by RAND Europe, presents a brief overview of reports from professional bodies and policy-focused organisations – from England and internationally – that describe new models for delivering primary care. In addition, this review presents some examples of communication/information technology used in primary care and discuss recruitment and retention challenges facing health professionals in general practice.
A new guide from NHS Employers aims to improve the support managers give to staff experiencing mental health issues.
The guide includes tips such as keeping in touch, opening up the conversation and making reasonable adjustments
When East Staffordshire Commissioning Group awarded a £280m contract for care of people with long term conditions to Virgin Healthcare, it was determined to listen to the people who will use the service.
The seven year contract was a fusion of ideas from the commissioner, the provider and patients and carers, says East Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group accountable officer Tony Bruce.
Virgin Healthcare will being delivering services for people with long term conditions and the frail elderly next spring.
During the final stages of the competitive dialogue procurement process, says Bruce, the CCG worked with the two potential bidders to define measures for outcomes that patients and carers said would improve their health and wider lives.
“We had the dilemma of ensuring that the outcomes for a multi-million pound contract could be measured and that they reflected what our patients and carers had told us. We were mixing our creativity and ideas with theirs to achieve that.”
The bidders were asked to include possible key performance indicators and explain how they would evaluate progress against each of the indicators.
Bruce notes that from the earliest days of the CCG, improving the care for those with long term conditions and older people with frailty has been the top priority.
He points to grim indicators that, along with financial challenges, highlighted the need for dramatic change. These include above average hospital admission rates for people with long term conditions and poorer clinical outcomes (such as above average amputations for people with diabetes).
“We recognised that we had a big problem around integration of these services. We asked ‘what would good look like?’ and decided that outcomes based commissioning would be the best route.”
While the CCG’s GP leadership held workshops with their colleagues to develop clinical outcomes, there was a determination that the final outcomes framework would be based on input from the community.
“We wanted to get to the bottom of what matters to the patients, families and carers – we wanted to know about their perceptions and what would improve their quality of life. We worked with the (Midlands and Lancashire) commissioning support unit to get deep and meaningful information. We wanted to talk to real patients and carers as well as their representatives.”
The CCG commissioned consultants to lead the engagement work at scale. The 500 hours of engagement included:
•Structured interviews in both conventional health consultation settings (such as health centre waiting rooms) and in less-visited targets, such as workplaces
•Focus groups
•Events that captured the words used most frequently by patients and carers when talking about how their lives, health and wellbeing could be improved.
“While that was underway we were carrying on talking to our MP, the overview and scrutiny committee and patient representatives as usual,” Bruce says.
As the project management board set about drafting the outcomes framework, the CCG appointed to it a patient and a carer representative. Bruce explains they followed a normal recruitment process rather than turn to voluntary groups because these people had a very specific brief.
“Their job was not to represent carers and patients as such but to make sure that what they had told us was incorporated in the outcomes. We effectively appointed an internal regulator to make sure we had listened.”
Both are now continuing their roles, working with CCG officials and Virgin Healthcare clinicians and managers on the joint mobilisation board planning for next April.
The carer member, John Bentley, says: “There was a general understanding that we need to look at different and creative ways of providing healthcare and that the service user and carer need to be at the front of that.”
A new single set of standards promoting excellence and patient safety has been launched by the General Medical Council. The standards cover both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and are designed to put patient safety, quality of care, and fairness at the heart of the training received by both medical students and doctors.
The Centre for Workforce Intelligence and the Royal Society for Public Health have published Understanding the Wider Public Health Workforce.
Commissioned by Public Health England, Health Education England and the Department of Health, this review of the wider public health workforce in England, identifies the size and scope of this workforce, provides examples of its work and considers possible professional development needs for strengthening this important service. The report has found that at least 15 million people contribute to the public health agenda in England – ranging from police and fire personnel, to opticians and housing officers.
The Royal Society for Public Health has also published Rethinking the public health workforce which identifies a number of occupations, who have already started to support public health work.
Healthwatch has published Safely home: what happens when people leave hospital and care settings. This report highlights the importance of transfers of care across all settings acute, mental health, community and ambulance and to and from social care and care home settings. The information comes from patients and service users with direct experience of when transfers or discharge from care has gone wrong.
NHS Confederation has published The art of the possible: what role for community health services in reshaping care? This discussion paper is aimed at commissioners and providers developing new care models in response to NHS England’s Five Year Forward View. It offers early thinking on how community health services can add value to emerging new models, aiming to stimulate further debate about their role at the heart of integrated, community-based care
Public Health England’s Dementia intelligence network has published Reasons why people with dementia are admitted to a general hospital in an emergency. This document shows key national data related to people with dementia and their use of inpatient general hospital services during the financial year 2012/13. It includes information about why people are admitted, short stay emergency admissions, increases in hospital admissions and preventing avoidable emergency admissions. The dataset shows the clinical commissioning group and local authority data used in the report.
The Health Foundation and The King’s Fund have jointly published Making change possible: a Transformation Fund for the NHS. This research paper draws on analysis conducted by the two organisations, in particular six case studies of funding transformation, in the health sector and beyond, along with examples of local NHS initiatives. It also highlights the experience of NHS leaders and some of those organisations across the NHS that have been at the forefront of efforts to implement changes in the delivery of care.
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