News / News review June 2015

So, the election is over and, in defiance of the opinion polls, David Cameron’s Conservatives have formed a majority government. At health – the subject of so much debate during the election campaign – Mr Cameron decided to reinstall Jeremy Hunt as health secretary. However, there were changes in the junior ministerial line-up as Lib Dems – no longer in coalition – stepped down and former Conservative ministers were moved on.

 Mr Hunt has been joined at the Department by Alistair Burt as minister of state for community and social care. Care Quality Commission chair David Prior has stepped down from this role to become a Lord and junior health minister for NHS productivity. Ben Gummer is junior minister for care quality and George Freeman is the junior minister for life sciences. Jane Ellison (pictured) continues as junior minister responsible for public health.

 There is a new face in health in Northern Ireland, where Simon Hamilton has been appointed the Assembly government health, social services and public safety minister. He promised to maintain the momentum of change across health and social care. Mr Hamilton, who joins the department following the resignation of Jim Wells, said there was much good work in the sector, but a number of areas could be improved.

 Back in England, with the ministerial team in place, thoughts quickly moved to what the new government meant for the NHS. David Cameron (pictured) moved swiftly to highlight plans for seven-day operation (see page 5), while Jeremy Hunt said the transformation of care outside hospitals was top of his agenda. He wants older and vulnerable people to be treated to the highest standards in primary, community and social care.

 The agenda facing the new government was on the minds of healthcare leaders immediately before and after the election. In the final week of the campaign, Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund chief executives Nigel Edwards and Chris Ham penned a joint open letter focusing on finance and efficiency. It said the £8bn of additional funding called for in the Five-year forward view was the minimum amount needed. And they insisted the scale of the other element of the equation – the £22bn in efficiencies – would be unprecedented.

 Their views were echoed after the election in a letter from 50 NHS Confederation members outlining pressing issues. They said the £8bn must be accompanied by funding for transformation and social care. ‘If we are to bridge the funding gap of at least £30bn and meet the £22bn efficiency challenge, then we will need this extra investment this year and across the new parliament,’ they added.

 Service transformation will include moving care out of hospital and into community and primary settings. In May,?Wales health minister Mark Drakeford announced a £20m a year fund to support patients in their own homes and out of hospital. He said £17.5m from this intermediate care fund would be used to continue established projects that have successfully kept people out of hospital. The remaining £2.5m would be allocated to identifying and spreading good practice. ?He added that the NHS and social services in Wales would benefit from a £6.7m IT system. The new system – the community care information system – would allow health and social care bodies to share information on patients and clients. This would facilitate better planning and case management, Mr Drakeford said. The funding would pay for the hardware and licences and was part of the recently announced £14.9m NHS Wales capital funding package.

 Clinical staffing is set to remain a major topic for the NHS over the coming years. A new spin was put on the debate by an article in the British Medical Journal. John Dean, a consultant doctor at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, said private practice detracted from a doctor’s NHS work and did not necessarily lead to better care. The main function of going private was to jump NHS queues, he said. The British Medical Association insisted there should be no conflict of interest in performing private and NHS work. It pointed out that under the consultant contract in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, consultants wishing to take on private work must tell their clinical manager, who can request they work additional NHS hours before doing the private work.

 Staying with staffing, the King’s Fund said workforce trends are at odds with health service strategic goals. Using national statistics, publications and stakeholder interviews, the fund looked into the workforce in mental health, general practice and community nursing. It found the greater priority given to mental health in recent years has not translated into higher staff numbers. Its report, Workforce planning in the NHS, also said that the increase in GP numbers had been outstripped by rises in secondary care doctors. Key community staff groups had not grown and there were large gaps in the data needed to plan the workforce locally. ?

 NHS staff sickness absence was 4.5% from October to December 2014, according to Health and Social Care Information Centre. The North West had the highest absence rate (5.3%) and South London had the lowest (3.7%). Ambulance trusts had the highest organisational absence rate, averaging 6.65%.

GPs in Scotland will receive a 1% pay rise in 2015/16. The Scottish government said this would cost £3m and a further £4.6m would be allocated towards the cost of running their practices. The government is also allocating £2.2m to fund the cost of population growth. Health secretary Shona Robison (pictured) said the 1% rise met the doctors’ review body recommendation.

 The Scottish government also announced that it would double the funding available for the new medicines fund in 2015/16. The fund will swell to £80m – the second year in a row the funding has been doubled. The money is used to help health boards pay for treatments for people with rarer or end-of-life conditions. ?

 Bradford District Care NHS Trust has been granted foundation trust status from 1 May. The community and mental health provider is the 152nd foundation trust.