Health Management and Policy Alert

Learning disabilities and behaviour that challenges: service design and delivery

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence -
This guideline covers services for children, young people and adults with a learning disability (or autism and a learning disability) and behaviour that challenges. It aims to promote a lifelong approach to supporting people and their families and carers, focusing on prevention and early intervention and minimising inpatient admissions.

• Guidance
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - news

Stop smoking interventions and services

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence -
This guideline covers stop smoking interventions and services delivered in primary care and community settings for everyone over the age of twelve. It aims to ensure that everyone who smokes is advised and encouraged to stop and given the support they need. It emphasises the importance of targeting vulnerable groups who find smoking cessation hard or who smoke a lot.

• Guidance
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - news

How commissioners use research evidence

National Institute for Health Research -
This group of resources contains studies in the past five years on the use of evidence by commissioners. It includes studies into the behaviour of individual managers and the way in which commissioning organisations make sense of and use research information when making decisions. The findings aim to provide practical pointers for researchers to make their work more accessible and relevant to commissioners and managers.

• Resources

Brexit: reciprocal healthcare

House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee -
This report says that in the absence of an agreement on reciprocal healthcare, the rights of UK citizens to hold an EHIC card for treatment in the EU will cease after Brexit.

• Report
• House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee - news

NHS Cervical Screening Programme: the role of the cervical screening provider lead

Public Health England -
This guidance includes information for cervical screening provider leads on requirements of the role, accountability, working relationships, and roles and responsibilities.

• Guidance
• Public Health England - publications

NHS public health functions agreement 2018-19: public health functions to be exercised by NHS England

Department of Health and Social Care -
This agreement sets out the arrangements under which the Secretary of State delegates responsibility to NHS England for certain public health services. The services currently commissioned in this way are: national immunisation programmes; national cancer and non-cancer screening programmes; Child Health Information Services; public health services for adults and children in secure and detained settings in England; and sexual assault services.

• Agreement
• Department of Health and Social Care - publications

Sustainability and transformation in the NHS

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee -
This report concludes that the Department of Health and Social Care’s system for funding and financially supporting the NHS focuses too much on short-term survival and limits the NHS’s ability to transform services to achieve sustainability in the long term.

• Report
• House of Commons Public Accounts Committee - news

The state of care in independent online primary health services

Care Quality Commission (CQC) - 
This report finds that the quality of online primary care services, such as those that provide GP consultations and prescriptions through independent websites and apps, has improved over the last 12 months but further action from providers and the wider system is needed to ensure they are as safe as general practice in physical premises.

• Report
• Press release

Service specification: integrated mental health service for prisons in England

NHS England - 
This service specification describes a prison based integrated mental health service and replaces the earlier specification published in 2013.

• Guidance

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) pathway for people with long-term physical health conditions and medically unexplained symptoms

NHS England - 
From April 2018 all CCGs are expected to expand Improving Access to Psychological Therapies by commissioning (IAPT) services integrated into physical healthcare pathways.  This document supports this expansion by setting out the treatment pathway that underpins the access and waiting time standards, which all services should seek to measure themselves against.

• Guidance