Health Management and Policy Alert

Friends and Family Test resources

Picker Institute -

This set of online resources aims to support healthcare staff in using results from the Friends and Family test. The resources include accessible, impartial guidance and interactive calculators to help professionals to understand how to use and interpret data.

• Resources
• Picker Institute - news

Does it pay to care?: under-payment of the National Minimum Wage in the social care sector

Resolution Foundation -

This report highlights evidence that of the estimated 2 million care workers in the UK, up to 220,000 may be paid less than the minimum wage. Last year HMRC, which is responsible for enforcing the minimum wage, served notices on 879 employers (in all sectors) advising them of underpayments to staff.

• Report
• Resolution Foundation - publications

Reducing health inequalities: the challenge of public health

Innovation Unit -

This think piece suggests that a solution to tackling inequalities in public health lies with creating co-produced services which utilise the assets within people. It draws from findings of the People Powered Health project, as well as horizon scans from around the world to explore the capacity within people and communities to help themselves and each other.

• Think piece
• People Powered Health project
• Innovation Unit - publications

Personal health budgets: challenges for commissioners and policy-makers

The Nuffield Trust -

From 2014, personal health budgets will be offered to people in receipt of continuing care. This report looks at what they are, how they will work in practice, and the issues they raise.

• Report
• Related blog
• The Nuffield Trust - publications

Autism: the management and support of children and young people on the autism spectrum

NICE -

The guideline isthe final part of a series of three. NICE has already published recommendations on diagnosing autism in children and diagnosing and managing the condition in adults. This guideline aims to ensure that children and young people with possible autism, as well as their parents or carers, get the appropriate care and support.

• Guideline
• Autism pathway
• NICE - press release

Smoking cessation: supporting people to stop smoking

NICE -

This quality standard on smoking cessation includes five statements designed to help improve the support offered to people who want to stop smoking. It recommends that primary care professionals ask patients whether they smoke, and that those who smoke are offered advice on how to stop. It also recommends that people who smoke are offered a referral to an evidence-based smoking cessation service.

• Quality standard
• Smoking pathway
• NICE - press release

Acute kidney injury: prevention, detection and management of acute kidney injury up to the point of renal replacement therapy

NICE -

This guideline aims to raise awareness and recommends that Acute Kidney Disease (AKI) is tackled by people working in health across all specialties, not just renal units. It states that early detection of AKI is a key priority and will prevent the patient's condition becoming critical, as well as saving money that would otherwise be spent on treating AKI.

• Guideline 
• AKI pathway
• NICE - press release

Choosing a model to predict hospital admission: an observational study of new variants of predictive models for case finding

BMJ Open -

This study aimed to test the performance of new variants of models to identify people at risk of an emergency hospital admission. It compared the impact of using alternative data sources (hospital inpatient, A&E, outpatient and GP electronic medical records; the effects of local calibration on the performance of the models; and the choice of population denominators. It found that the addition of more detailed data sets led to moderate improvement in the number of patients identified; the use of general practitioner registry data for the denominator proved to be of significant importance; and that models calibrated to local data sets did not show consistent improvement over models built on pooled data.

• Study

Private healthcare market investigation

Competition Commission -

These provisional findings on privately-funded healthcare services show that many private hospitals face little competition in local areas across the UK, leading to higher private medical insurance premiums and charges for private patients. It also highlights incentive schemes, which encourage consultants to choose particular private providers for diagnosis and treatment, and the lack of available information on the performance of hospitals and consultants as further restrictions on competition.

• Summary of provisional findings
• Related documents and further information

care.data

NHS England -

NHS England is introducing an information service on behalf of the NHS called care.data. The service aims to use information from a patients’ medical record to improve the way that healthcare is delivered for all. A thorough process must be followed before any information can be shared and strict rules about how information is stored and used are followed.

• Further information for patients and healthcare staff
• NHS England - news