Need information on patient experience? Try the Healthwatch national reports library

Healthwatch National Reports Library Tool

Healthwatch have created a library of reports produced by every local Heathwatch in every part of the country.

Although it is still in development, the library features a wealth of patient experience information in over 2000 reports, covering Primary Care, Secondary Care, Urgent and Emergency Care, Social Care, Mental Health and Community Services.

The reports are searchable by title or keyword, you can specify what NHS sector you are interested in, and limit by date. You can also look for specific types of report, evidence of impact and and you can even browse by locality (you can find all the reports for Northamptonshire here).

Healthwatch have created a really useful tool and if you need information on patient experience it is a great way to see what is happening up and down the country.

Web site of the month: the Journal of Compassionate Care and BioMed Central

JoCC

BioMed Central have launched a new open access (i.e. free) on-line title - the Journal of Compassionate Care featuring research and perspectives in this newly evolving field.

There is evidence to suggest that compassion, kindness, empathy and attention to basic needs and dignity have an impact on the speed of recovery from acute illness and the long term management of chronic conditions. The goal of the journal is to promote research and evidence on compassion to improve clinical effectiveness and the quality of health care and it is multidisciplinary in approach and draws on international material.

The journal is one of a suite of open access titles available via BioMed Central including the BMC Series which cover medicine, biology, research and related field.

if you want to stay up to date with a particular title, you can also sign up with your email address to get alerts send directly to you when new articles are published, or with news about the journal.

In total they published 270 peer-reviewed titles and you can can find a complete list of all the journals available here.

Web site of the month: My NHS

My NHS

The Department of Health have just launched the My NHS service aiming to improve the transparency of health care related data by providing easy access to information about health and care providers. The site has quality indicators for:

• NHS (acute) hospitals 
• Social care data from local authorities
• Public health services delivered by NHS services in local authority areas
• Public health outcomes from local authorities

The data on hospitals gives a dashboard showing CQC rating, Friends & Family test score, A&E performance, mortality rating and more. You can also review trust efficiency, safety and food data (you can see the results for Northamptonshire's acute trusts here).

The social care data reviews quality of life. use of care homes and user/carer satisfaction (Northamptonshire data here)

The public health services section lists indicators for breast feeding, uptake of the NHS health checks, screening and vaccination rates (Northamptonshire data here).

Public health outcomes data includes preventable mortality, smoking rates, obesity and physical activity (Northamptonshire data here).

Much of the data can be downloaded in a CSV / Excel format for further comparison.

The site is very new and there are plans to further develop it based on user feedback and to add more information over time.

My NHS is a useful tool collating statistical health and care quality indicators data from a number of different areas and placing it together in a easy to access form.

Northampton General Hospital CQC report

www.cqc.org.uk

The Care Quality Commission have published their inspection report of Northampton General Hospital (carried out under the new acute hospital inspection model).

• Inspection report overview
• Full inspection report (.PDF)

Patient Safety Resource Centre

New, from The Health Foundation, the Patient Safety Resource Centre aims to provide practitioners at all levels with access to high quality information to support patient safety.

Resources available include key research, projects, national standards, implementation guidelines and case studies. All the information has been through the Health Foundation's quality assurance process to ensure it is of a robust standard. Where there are gaps in knowledge there are also plans to commission experts to produce new resources.

New areas of care are in development, but intially the PSRC has launched with three main areas of information:

• Safety management
  This area explores structures and systems required to implement and monitor safety related changes, as well as developing a comprehensive patient safety culture.

• Diabetes / Frail Elderly
  These sections address specific safety issues in relation to the pathways of care and provide tailored information and case studies about how to apply patient safety principles in practice.

CQC Adult Inpatient Survey 2012

www.cqc.org.uk

The CQC have now published the results of the survey of inpatients in England that ran between September 2012 and January 2013.

The survey had over 64,500 participants who had at least one overnight stay (there were some exclusions including psychiatric and maternity admissions).

Results

• National summary of results
• Full comparison with the 2011 survey
• A-Z List of participating trusts and their results
• Technical details of how trusts were scored

Local Trusts

• Northampton General Hospital Results
• Northampton General Hospital Benchmark Report (comparing local results with national data)

• Kettering General Hospital Results
• Kettering General Hospital Benchmark Report 

Updated study shows the value of medical libraries

A study published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association shows the impact medical libraries can have on patient care. 

"The value of library and information services in patient care"* reported that 3/4s of 16,122 survey respondents (a variety of clinicians) said that as a result of using information from a library they had definitely or probably changed aspects of patient care as a result.

The changes reported included patient advice (48%), diagnosis (25%), choices of drugs or other treatment (33% and 31%). 95% said the information resulted in a better clinical decision.

The survey also showed that the use of libraries allowed clinicians to avoid adverse events including additional tests (19%), misdiagnosis (13%), adverse drug reactions or medication errors (13% and 12%) and patient mortality (6%).

Clinicians also commented on the value of having access to professional librarians who can assist with patient  care, either through the provision of evidence based literature searches, or through training in the most effective use of information resources.

* Marshall, J.G. Sollenberger,  S. Easterby-Gannett, L.K. et al, (2013) The Value of Library and Information Services in Patient Care: Results from a Multisite Study, Journal of the Medical Library Association 101(1) 38-46.  Available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543128/

Mid Staffs report published

The final report of the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (the Francis Report) has now been published:

• Executive Summary
• Volume 1: Analysis of evidence and lessons learned (part 1)
• Volume 2: Analysis of evidence and lessons learned (part 2)
• Volume 3: Present and future, annexes
• Key facts and figures

You can also find more information on the Inquiry's web site.

Further reading

• The King's Fund - The Francis Inquiry: creating the right culture of care
• The Francis Inquiry - Storify

Reactions and responses

• Academy of Medical Royal Colleges
• Action Against Medical Accidents
• Age UK
• Alzheimer's Society
• British Medical Association
• British Prime Minister's Office
• Care Quality Commission
• Carers UK
• Centre for Innovation in Health Management
• Department of Health
• Foundation Trust Network
• General Medical Council
• General Pharmaceutical Council
• The Health Foundation
• Health Service Ombudsman
• Help the Hospices
• House of Commons Health Select Committee
• Institute of Healthcare Management
• The King's Fund
• Local Government Association
• Macmillan Cancer Care
• Marie Curie Cancer Care
• Monitor
• National Council for Palliative Care
• Nursing & Midwifery Council
• National Voices
• NAVCA
• NHS Alliance
• NHS Commissioning Board
• NHS Confederation
• The Nuffield Trust
• The Patients Association
• Reform
• Royal College of General Practioners
• Royal College of Midwives
• Royal College of Nursing
• Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
• Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
• Royal College of Physicians
• Royal College of Surgeons
• Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• Queen's Nursing Institute
• Skills for Care
• TUC
• UK Faculty of Public Health
• Unite

The NHS Change Model Twitter Club

NHS Change Model

The NHS Change Model is a framework for change to help NHS commissioners and providers improve how they go about improvement and deliver NHS goals for quality and value through a common language for change. There is a video on the site that offers an introduction to the model.

The Twitter Club is a regular fortnightly conversation for anyone interested in the Change Model and will be used to help further develop it.

The Twitter Club operates on Wednesdays between 4 and 5 pm and uses the hashtag #NHSchange.

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, the club page provides an overview on how to set up an account and get started, as well as how to join in the conversation. You can also take the Twitter Tour!

The next event is on Wednesday the 16th of January and the discussion will be on "How can we use and share information to drive change and transformation"

Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter too!

Dr Foster Hospital Guide 2012

The Dr Foster 2012 Hospital Guide is now available, showing how all the acute trusts in England are rated.

Efficiency & Mortality scores for all acute trusts

 

Here are the reports on the trusts in Northamptonshire:

• Kettering General Hospital
• Northampton General Hospital
• BMI Three Shires (private)

You can read or download the whole report which covers the current state of the NHS, or just the My Hospital Guide Efficiency & Mortality 2012 

You can also search by trust, individual hospital or surgical procedure, and use your own postcode to identify organisations nearest to you.

NHS Midlands and East Pressure Ulcers Resource

NHS Midlands and East are running a campaign called Stop the Pressure, aimed at eliminating grade 2-4 pressure ulcers by December 2012, improving care for vulnerable patients.

Pressure ulcers are a preventable problem that cause patients distress and treating them costs the NHS £3.8 million every day.

Stop the Pressure

On the site you will find:

• A short video about the Stop the Pressure campaign
• The pressure ulcer pathway
• A simple guide to preventing and treating pressure ulcers
• The Under the Skin e-bulletin with monthly progress updates for the campaign

New report on chronic kidney disease in England

Kidney disease costs the NHS more than breast, lung, colon and skin cancer combined, yet too many cases remain undiagnosed and untreated, according to a report published by NHS Kidney Care.

The report, which is summarised in in the medical journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation has found that chronic kidney disease (CKD) costs the NHS in England more than £1.4bn each year.

This is more than the combined NHS spend on breast, lung, colon and skin cancer (£1.37 billion), according to the full-length study Chronic Kidney Disease in England: The Human and Financial Cost.
Treating kidney disease, including complications such as heart disease and stroke, swallows up £1 in every £77 spent by the NHS in England. 

As well as the report, NHS Kidney Care have published a number of resources to support the care of patients with Chronic disease, including an e-learning module (in conjunction with the RCGP) and a QOF toolkit.

GMC launches new online resource for doctors on treating patients with learning disabilities

Most doctors believe that patients with a learning disability receive poorer care than rest of the population, according to a poll commissioned by the General Medical Council.

The poll also showed that doctors would like a source of good quality practical advice on treating people with learning disabilities and as a result of that the GMC has launched an extensive new online resource. The site aims to help doctors provide better care for people with learning disabilities by providing interactive learning and:

• identifying the key issue in providing better quality care
• highlighting patient perspectives on the care they want to receive
• showing how to put GMC guidance into practice. 

 You can find the site here: http://www.gmc-uk.org/learningdisabilities

Dr Foster Hospital Guide 2011

The latest Hospital Guide has now been published by Dr Foster and you can find the detail on the NHS Choices web site. The guide reviews hospital mortality figures, and patient comments, and focuses on hospital admissions at the weekend.

One of our local Trusts, Northampton General Hospital, features in the list of hospitals with higher than expected death rates. This is questioned by the Trust's Medical Director who argued  the actual numbers of deaths at NGH were among the lowest in the East Midlands and the Trust did not understand why Dr Foster had set the number of expected deaths so low in relation to other similar hospitals. In response the Trust has also set up a group to review every patient death  that occurs in the hospital.

The full guide is available on the Dr Foster web site.

New Quality & Productivity Specialist Collection at NHS Evidence

The new specialist collection is the central resource of evidence on how to improve quality and productivity in the NHS. Evidence is organised around care pathway groups.

The examples of improvements range from one-off studies in single organisations to robustly tested large scale changes that have been replicated in multiple organisations and have had results published in academic journals. A selection of the examples have been highly recommended as potential high impact changes, these can be found under the Recommended section.

The collection launched in December 2009, and will evolve and expand overtime to build a comprehensive library of quality and productivity evidence. The aim of the collection is to provoke thoughts, ideas and discussions about changes that can be made locally in the NHS.

To access the collection go to: www.library.nhs.uk/qualityandproductivity