Health Management and Policy Alert

Quality patient referrals: right service, right time

Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) - 
This report argues that referral management centres must demonstrate their safety for patients and cost-effective to the whole NHS. It cites a dearth of evidence on referral management centres and argues that  they are ultimately more expensive to run than other systems designed to improve and maintain the quality of GP referrals.

• Report
• Press release

Technical guidance for 'Refreshing NHS plans for 2018/19'

NHS England - 
This document details the operational planning technical guidance annexes that support the submission of commissioner and provider templates. It should be read in conjunction with the guidance which sets out the expectations for commissioners and providers in updating their operational plans for 2018/19.

• Technical guidance
• Planning guidance

Links between NHS staff experience and patient satisfaction: analysis of surveys from 2015 and 2015

NHS England - 
Using NHS staff and inpatient survey data, this report identifies the most important aspects of staff experience in predicting inpatient satisfaction. It also examines the experiences of staff and patients from a black and minority ethnic background, examining the extent to which treatment of these staff are linked with patient experience.

• Report

Choice in mental health care

NHS England - 
This guidance provides advice for commissioners, GPs and providers on how to implement patients’ legal rights to choose their care provider and the team they see for their mental health care.

• Guidance

Facing the facts, shaping the future: adult social care workforce consultation

Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) - 
This joint consultation, run in partnership with Skills for Care, seeks views and evidence on what actions could be taken to address a number of workforce challenges specific to the adult social care sector. The consultation will close on 9 April 2018.

• Consultation

The report of the Short Life Working Group on reducing medication-related harm

Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) - 
This report sets out recommendations for a programme of work to tackle medication error and improve medicine safety. It highlights the use of technology and cultural change as key to improving medication safety and the prevention of avoidable harm.

• Report
• More information

Prevalence and economic burden of medication errors in the NHS in England

Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health & Care Interventions (EEPRU) - 
This study has revealed an estimated 237 million medication errors occur in the NHS in England every year, and avoidable adverse drug reactions cause hundreds of deaths. The study estimates that economic burden of adverse drug reactions is £98.5 million but that it could be significantly higher. It calls for more work to be done on finding cost-effective ways of preventing medication errors and their potential harm to patients. 

• Report
• Press release

Government response to Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report: commissioning impact on drug treatment services

Department of Health & Social Care - 
In September 2017, the ACMD's independent report examined the impact of trends in commissioning of drug and alcohol treatment services on user outcomes. It found that these services were facing a disproportionate decrease in resources and concluded that this was likely to negatively impact on the quality of treatment in England. This document outlines the government response to the ACMD report.

• Response
• ACMD report
• More information

Challenges can fuel change

VODG - 
This report outlines what social care providers believe are the future hopes for the sector as well as the barriers that block progress. It argues that social care providers must adopt new approaches if they are to survive the challenges of funding cuts and policy changes.

• Report
• Press release

Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector: quarter 3 2017/18

NHS Improvement - 
This report finds that providers coped well with the extra pressures and halted the year-on-year decline in A&E performance seen during the same period over the previous four years. Included in the report for the first time is workforce data from providers which shows that vacancies have reduced slightly over the past quarter, but the high vacancy rates continue to have an impact on performance.

• Report
• Summary