Blogs

In May we held a social prescribing networking event for professionals in the health and care and voluntary sectors, who wanted to know more about social prescribing and hear from others who are delivering or thinking of delivering initiatives.

Every year after a lengthy period of consultation with various stakeholders, NHS England and NHS Improvement publish something known as ‘national tariffs’. NHS England defines the national tariff as ‘a set of prices and rules used by providers of NHS care and commissioners to deliver the most efficient, cost effective care to patients’.

A simple way to understand the tariff system is to look at them as a set of statutory pricing structures, essentially a pricing list, which commissioners (buyers of the health services) use to determine the cost of services they would like to buy (mostly acute care) for its populations. For providers (deliverers of services) the tariffs determine how much they will get paid.

Mental health is now recognised as a key priority within health and care, and with unavoidable statistics on the prevalence of mental health conditions it’s easy to understand why:

• One in four adults experience at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any given year
• The cost of mental health to the economy is estimated at £105 billion a year
• One in eight children and young people aged 5-19 have at least one mental disorder

In my experience, Human Factors as a term sometimes prompts a vague look from people. If that is the case, I mention ergonomics instead because this may be more familiar to some.

The word ergonomics is derived from the Greek words, ergon (work) and nomis (law) and is often used in relation to the physical aspects of the environment, such as workstations, while ‘human factors’ is often used in relation to the wider system in which people work but both terms can be used interchangeably.

I was fortunate to have a long train journey this month to thoroughly read my recent Pharmaceutical Journal (Feb 2019 Vol 302 (7922)). The journal was a special with a focus on Medicines Safety. As a Non-Executive Director for the EMAHSN, two articles resonated with me. ‘GP pharmacists leading the way’ – with a spotlight on PINCER and ‘Train not Blame’, giving background to EPIFFANY. You can read the Journal article here.

Here in our region we are fortunate to have been early adopters of these two innovations.

Social prescribing is becoming an increasingly popular term but what does it mean, what are the benefits and just how are we going to make this widespread in the healthcare system?

The King’s Fund put it succinctly when they describe social prescribing as ‘enabling GPs, nurses and other primary care professionals to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services’.

So what’s new? Most people who have worked around the NHS for a number of years have a feeling that if you wait a while all things come back to where they used to be.

Remember Strategic Health Authorities? Part of the structure of the NHS in England between 2002 and 2013 responsible for enacting the directives and implementing fiscal policy as dictated by the Department of Health at a regional level. So are the new Integrated Care Systems (ICS) just a reinvention of these?

Following on from the recent EMAHSN Nottinghamshire Patient, Service User, Carer and Citizen Networking Event, Patient Leader Derek Stewart gives his personal perspective on the event, the value of networking and what’s next in Nottinghamshire. You can find out more about our Patient and Public Involvement and future events here.

Streamlining the assessment and delivery process for Continuing Healthcare, and the package of ongoing care that it may be deemed an individual is entitled to, is of growing importance with an increasing demand from an ageing population.

In a report published in January 2018 by the NHS Clinical Commissioners titled NHS continuing healthcare: Effective commissioning approaches, three key reasons are put forward as to why Continuing Healthcare (CHC) is a priority area for CCGs and the NHS.

As the national AHSN lead for economic growth, I very much welcome the focus in the NHS Long-term Plan on fast-tracking the development and spread of health innovation.

AHSNs have a crucial role in supporting the sustainability of health and care services as demand increases due to longer life expectancy and population growth. Ensuring that new technology is developed, demonstrated, evaluated and embedded in care pathways is key to speeding up diagnosis, making effective new treatments accessible and improving information flow between patients and services.