HSJ Health Check

An HSJ Investigation has revealed trusts are denying staff employed by their wholly owned subsidiary companies the pay and conditions offered to other staff. We discuss more about how and why this forgotten group of the workforce are missing out. Also this week – the trust that sacked a whistleblower who warned them about potential patient harm has been told to pay out more than £200,000. We talk in more detail about this case and the questions it raises about whistleblowing in the NHS.

Bids are open for NHS England’s new £480m national data platform – will it make the NHS better connected and more efficient, or is it a national vanity project? We also discuss who the successful bidders might be. And in recent weeks the NHS has been given its marching orders for the next financial year, in the form of the planning guidance and integrated care systems’ financial allocations. We discuss what this tells us about ministerial ambitions for the health service and how the guidance connects with the ongoing Hewitt Review. Featuring Nick Carding, Dave West and Annabelle Collins.

NHS trusts have been given 20 days by NHS England to book in all patients who have been waiting longer than 78 weeks for their elective appointment. We discuss the thinking behind this and how trusts might tackle this new challenge without any more money or resources. Also we unpack the latest performance data, which confirmed December was the worst on record for multiple key measures.

The HSJ team make their predictions for what the New Year could bring for the health service, including a return to deficits, tough times for the hospital building programme and a big year for mental health reform. Thanks for listening to the Health Check podcast this year and Happy Holidays from all at HSJ.What 2023 has in store for the NHS

On this episode our team brings you the very latest news and analysis of the strike action hitting the NHS this week. We cover how we got to this point, what NHS leaders are doing to mitigate patient harm and why some are even more worried about next week’s ambulance strike. Send views, questions, and confidential tips about the strikes to our journalists via annabelle.collins@hsj.co.uk.

This week we bring you the latest on the hospital building programme, including confirmation that all new buildings must have single patient rooms. We discuss the staffing and safety challenges this will bring for trusts. Also this week, more on NHS England’s plans to cut £1bn from maternity, cancer and primary care funds, plus Steve Barclay’s latest “attack” on NHS managers in the form of organograms.

“Rubbish” communications have been blamed by senior NHS leaders for causing a flood of people going to A&E with Group Strep A concerns, with calls to NHS 111 hitting record levels so far this winter. We discuss the impact this is having on access to treatment and medicines and what should have been done to stop it. Also we talk more about the creation of an elective recovery taskforce and a bigger role for the private sector in taking NHS patients. Plus, the latest on nursing and ambulance staff strikes due to start next week. Hosted by Annabelle Collins and featuring Ben Clover and Nick Kituno. Got a question for our expert team? Let us know on Twitter @HSJAnnabelle and we’ll answer it next week.

NHS England’s protracted bid to scrap the four-hour A&E target has finally been shelved by ministers, as we exclusively revealed last week. Now the dust has settled, we unpick what happened, why it matters and whether there is still hope for reform in the future. Also - why ICSs will have to wait until 2024 to receive commissioning budgets worth billions of pounds, amid concerns about financial risk.

Former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt has been charged with reviewing the role of integrated care systems by Jeremy Hunt. Alastair McLellan predicts what changes the Hewitt review could bring and why its so important. Also this week, Jack Serle explains how the NHS supply chain is failing staff and patients, a problem that has escalated this week with a joint letter sent from procurement chiefs to NHS England.

This week we bring you our reaction to Steve Barclay’s first major speech since returning as health and social care secretary, during which HSJ questioned him about his view on NHS funding.  Mr Barclay struck a more conciliatory tone than in the past, but he dismissed the health unions’ pay asks as “not realistic”. We also discuss the difficult decisions some trusts leaders could face in the coming weeks if staff go on strike, and two important appointments for NHS England’s leadership team.