Correspondence

Independent provider bulletin: September 2015

Published 28 September 2015

Applies to England

1. For action

1.1 Mental health service providers: tell us about your progress in developing new payment approaches so we can understand patient needs

Alongside NHS England, we’re asking mental health service providers to take part in a survey to help us understand what progress has been made in developing new payment approaches, and in collecting and using data.

We’re committed to the national ambition for mental health to achieve parity of esteem with physical health services by 2020 - as set out in No Health Without Mental Health and the Five Year Forward View.

The information that you supply will help to promote better understanding of patient needs, as well as informing the development of transparent payment approaches for mental health services.

You have until midday on Friday 2 October to complete the survey.

Please contact pricing@monitor.gov.uk for further information.

2. For information

2.1 Providing evidence on improving patient flow

This autumn we’re publishing 3 reports which should help local NHS decision-makers evaluate options for improving patient flow. We’ve outlined the first 2 below which are already available and we’ll be publishing the final report, on improving productivity in elective care, shortly.

A&E delays: why did patients wait longer last winter?

Our recent analysis has found that the main cause of longer national A&E waiting times last winter was delays in admitting patients to other hospital departments from the emergency department.

This highlights that reducing A&E waiting times is a shared responsibility of a whole local health and care system, not just the emergency department. The solution lies in smoothing the flow of patients through inpatient wards, to the point of discharge and beyond.

Our infographic provides a summary of our findings as well as the leading theories we tested on the causes of A&E delays.

Moving healthcare closer to home

The second of our reports focuses on the potential of moving healthcare closer to patients’ homes to reduce the need for admissions and enable faster discharge from acute hospitals.

This work shows that such schemes, when well-designed and implemented, could best be used to create capacity for expected increases in demand for acute care over the longer term.

Some of these innovative approaches could offer equivalent or better care for patients through diverting considerable numbers of patients away from acute hospitals. This may also provide better satisfaction for patients who wish to be treated closer to home and has the potential to cost less than creating new acute hospital facilities.

Hear from NHS staff who have implemented schemes in our case studies and discussion of common challenges for practical information and insights that could help you to deliver change.

2.2 Safer Faster Better: A guide for local health and social care communities

We’re just one of the organisations endorsing this new guidance from NHS England which has been designed to help frontline providers and commissioners deliver safer, faster and better urgent and emergency care to patients of all ages, collaborating with urgent and emergency care networks to show best practice.

2.3 Annual patient choice survey - are enough patients being offered choice?

The results of our joint survey with NHS England revealed that too few NHS patients say that they are being offered a choice about where they receive care.

The survey, which asked more than 2,700 NHS patients about the options they were offered by their GP when being referred for an outpatient appointment, revealed that more work needs to be done to promote patient choice across the NHS.

The findings also showed that those who are given a choice are much more likely to be able to go to the hospital or clinic they want.

Using these findings we will endeavour to support the sector to ensure that the number of patients exercising their right to choose providers of healthcare continues to increase.

Read the full report and findings.

In a report we published earlier this year, we also found that only 10% of people are offered a choice of adult hearing services.

Our latest NHS choice and competition blog post looks at the way commissioners can fix this so that more people get the choice of provider they are entitled to.

3. Webinars

Alongside NHS Clinical Commissioners, we’re hosting webinars on different payment approaches to shape local healthcare and co-commissioning in primary care. These are primarily for commissioners but you may find some of the topics discussed of interest.

3.1 Using different payment approaches to shape local healthcare

Tuesday 6 October

11:30am to 12:30pm

Why join?

To find out more about how different payment approaches can support local innovation and a shift to new care models.

We will:

• outline the long-term strategy for a payment system to support the Five Year Forward View
• explain how using different payment approaches can support a shift to new care models
• highlight resources available to support you, such as our local payment examples

Register now for this webinar.

3.2 Co-commissioning primary care: how the rules can support you in improving local services

Thursday 15 October

12:30pm to 1:30pm

Why join?

To find out more about how commissioners can commission the best services for your patients, through assessing local need and using flexible contracting approaches, while remaining within the rules on procurement, patient choice and competition.

We will:

• highlight specific findings relevant to commissioners from Monitor’s report on improving GP services
• hear from a commissioner who is undertaking co-commissioning about the challenges faced, and plans for the future
• explore how the commissioning rules can help clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) achieve their primary care improvement plans

You can email any challenges or issues you would like us to discuss to events@monitor.gov.uk until 5pm on Friday 9 October; all submissions will remain anonymous.

Register now for this webinar.

3.3 A&E delays: method, findings and next steps

Thursday 22 October

1pm to 2pm

Who it for?

Anyone interested in and/or working in the healthcare sector and the following roles:

• clinicians
• NHS analysts
• strategy, operations and business development directors/equivalent
• think tank healthcare researchers
• academics

Why join?

To hear an outline of the method, key findings and next steps being explored by us and the wider sector to prevent A&E delays. This follows our recently published report and recommendations looking at reasons why the 4 hour A&E standard was missed during Q3 2014/15, reaching its lowest level for more than 10 years.

Register for this webinar to:

• find out how we analysed A&E performance and developed evidence based policy
• gain an understanding of our key findings
• find out what Monitor and other arm’s length bodies are doing to support much challenged emergency care systems through the Emergency Care Improvement Programme (ECIP)
• ask questions about the report during our Q&A

Register for this webinar now.

4. External updates

4.1 Have you had your flu vaccination?

Please remember to have your flu vaccination to protect yourself, your families, and vulnerable patients and residents from the virus. Being protected against flu and minimising transmission can also reduce pressure on the health and social care system and minimise staff absenteeism.

Last year just 54.9% of frontline health and social care workers had the flu vaccination and coverage in NHS providers ranged from 8% to over 85% so there is still room for improvement.

The NHS Employers website provides good practice guidance on developing your strategy to prevent flu.

4.2 Future-Focused Finance: ‘Best possible value’ events

The Future-Focused Finance initiative is holding a number of regional learning lab events this autumn that will look at value and value-oriented approaches to decision-making.

These free, interactive all day workshops are for anyone in a finance role and will introduce materials to help approach value and better decision-making in a practical hands-on way.

The events are being hosted by The Chartered Institute of Public Finance (CIPFA), on a number of dates at various venues around the country.

Please email jacqueline.durban@cipfa.org to register.

5. Getting in touch

5.1 Questions or feedback

If you have any questions about the information in this bulletin, please email licensing@monitor.gov.uk.

5.2 News alerts

You can subscribe to Monitor’s news update service which is a convenient way for you to receive relevant information direct to your inbox.

5.3 Publications

All of our publications for independent providers are available to download from our website.

5.4 Our latest job opportunities

For more information or to apply, please visit our recruitment website joinmonitor.com.