Health Management and Policy Alert

Leading as a junior doctor

Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management -
This toolkit is designed to help junior doctors build, sustain and run their own local leadership and engagement structures. It includes a number of case studies which showcase good practice from across the country as well as some practical guides to help with the day-to-day management of these groups. It also summarises the relevant academic literature and explains how different local leadership structures relate to existing contractual requirements.

• Toolkit
• Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management - press release

The Department of Health and Social Care remit to NHS Digital for 2018/19

Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) - 
This report sets out the context in which NHS Digital operates and the objectives that the Department of Health and Social Care expects to see in NHS Digital's business plan.

• Report

Leadership in today's NHS: delivering the impossible

The King's Fund -
Leaders in today's NHS operate in a climate of extreme pressure. Staffing vacancies are rife, there are widespread challenges in meeting financial and performance targets and demands on services continue to increase. This report, written with NHS Providers, asks what can be done to support current leaders and encourage future ones.

• Report
• The King's Fund - press release

Freedom to Speak Up: guidance for NHS trust and NHS foundation trust boards

NHS Improvement - 
Effective speaking up arrangements protect patients and improve the experience of NHS workers. This guidance contributes to the need, set out by Sir Robert Francis in his Freedom to Speak Up review, to develop a more open and supportive culture that encourages staff to speak up about any issues of patient care, quality or safety. The accompanying self-review tool supports the standards laid out in the guidance. It supports trusts' review around the eight key lines of enquiry set out in the well-led framework.

• Guidance and tool

5 years on: responses to Francis: changes in board leadership and governance in acute hospitals in England since 2013

Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham - 
This report, written in partnership with the University of Manchester and the Nuffield Trust, reveals that hospital boards report that they are placing a high priority on care quality and safety, and many invested significantly in nurse and medical staffing in the wake of the Francis Report. However, some hospital boards reported feeling that quality assurance as a pressure, as the demands of multiple external regulators was reported to sometimes feel burdensome, threatening to distract from a focus on the actual work of service improvement.

• Report
• Summary

Against the odds: successfully scaling innovation in the NHS

Innovation Unit - 
This report, written in partnership with The Health Foundation, shares insights about how to scale innovation in the NHS. It examines ten case studies of innovation in the NHS that have successfully scaled and it identifies the factors that enable success.

• Report
• Summary

 

Sustainability and transformation in the NHS

National Audit Office (NAO) - 
This report finds that additional funding, aimed to help the NHS get on a financially sustainable footing, has instead been spent on coping with existing pressures. The report makes a number of recommendations to the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement, which includes moving further and faster towards aligning nationwide incentives, regulation and processes, as well as reassessing how best to allocate the sustainability and transformation funding.

• Report
• Summary
• Press release

High impact change model: managing transfers of care

Local Government Association (LGA) - 
This change model, developed with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, outlines a practical approach to managing patient flow and hospital discharge. It identifies eight system changes that will have the greatest impact on reducing delayed discharge. The resource supplements the model by bringing together examples of work being undertaken across the country, for each of the eight system changes.

• Guidance
• Summary

Making strategic commissioning work: lessons from home and away

NHS Clinical Commissioners - 
With the move towards accountable care, clinical commissioners are starting to take on a more strategic role. This report aims to support commissioners in these new functions by outlining best practice from health systems around the world which are developing policy around new care models and place-based systems of care.

• Report
• Press release

Some assembly required: implementing new models of care

The Health Foundation - 
This report sets out ten lessons for local leaders seeking to systematically make changes across services in their area. These are based on first-hand accounts of clinicians and managers from NHS England’s new care models programme vanguard sites, who have developed and tested new ways of joining up health and social care services.

• Report
• Press release