Health Management and Policy Alert

Role of general practice teams in supporting patient access to treatments for Covid-19

NHS England - 

To help GP teams and reception staff deal with queries from patients on treatments for Covid-19, this fact sheet explains the pathway. It can be shared and printed for reception staff and is designed to help ensure that potentially eligible patients receive an urgent triage call or review with the practice clinical team and, where appropriate, a referral to a Covid-19 Medicine Delivery Unit.

• Fact sheet
• More detail

Growing occupational health and wellbeing together: our roadmap for the future

NHS England - 

This document sets out NHS England's five-year strategy to improve the health and wellbeing services for the NHS workforce. This strategy now forms a mandate for action for integrated care systems and NHS organisations as part of whole system workforce planning, having been included as part of 2023-24 NHS priorities and operational planning guidance.

• Guidance
• More detail

Our support for adult social care this winter

Department of Health and Social Care - 

This document sets out how the Department of Health and Social Care is supporting the adult social care sector during winter 2022 to 2023. It is aimed at care providers, local authorities, integrated care systems, carers and social care staff.

• Policy paper
• Press release

Consultation on 2023/25 NHS payment scheme and standard contract

NHS Providers - 

This briefing summarising the key points from NHS England's formal consultation on changes to the NHS payment scheme and standard contract.

• Briefing
• More detail

The health policy year in review 2022

The King's Fund - 

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger, 2022 happened. Here's The King’s Fund’s Chief Analyst, Siva Anandaciva's, annual look at what the health policy year had in store.

• Blog

Digital apps and reducing ethnic health inequalities : driving progress through digital, design, and organisational transformation

NHS Race & Health Observatory -
This report reviews how information gleaned from users of online health tools is used by health providers to analyse and improve patient health. An analysis of NHS data finds that digital and apps teams, employed by the NHS, face a number of barriers and limitations preventing insight and the linking of gaps across health services, conditions, digital usage and wider ethnic health inequalities. It calls for an explicit reform in how the NHS and NHS Blood and Transplant rebuild, collect and use data to guide policy decisions, particularly around ethnicity coding and health inequalities.

• Report
• NHS Race & Health Observatory - press release

Get in on the Act: Mental Health Act 2022

Local Government Association -
In June 2022 the government published the draft Mental Health Bill. The Bill is currently going through parliament and is at the Joint Committee Inquiry stage. Councils have several existing statutory duties under the Mental Health Act 1983 and will continue to have responsibilities under the new Act. This briefing examines the role and responsibilities of Councils under the new Act.

• Local Government Association - publications

Hard times: the latest chapter in the story of local government public health spending

The King's Fund - 

How much did local government spend on public health in 2021/22, and what did they spend it on? David Buck, Senior Fellow in Public Health and Inequalities at The King's Fund, explores.

• Blog

2023/24 priorities and operational planning guidance

NHS England - 

The 2023/24 priorities and operational planning guidance reconfirms the ongoing need to recover our core services and improve productivity, making progress in delivering the key NHS Long Term Plan ambitions and continuing to transform the NHS for the future.

• Guidance
• More detail

Guidance on developing the joint forward plan

NHS England - 

This guidance supports integrated care boards (ICBs) and their partner NHS trusts and foundation trusts (referred to collectively in this guidance as partner trusts) to develop their first 5-year joint forward plans (JFPs) with system partners.

• Guidance
• More detail