HSJ Health Check

In this week’s podcast we discuss how the government’s health and social care legislation plans are changing — both in substance and in context. That includes government concessions on some crucial legal details, ministers’ new priorities for the service, getting to grips with implementation, and what the change in NHS England’s chief executive might mean. Featuring Sharon Brennan, Dave West and Annabelle Collins.

Sir Simon Stevens will step down from running the NHS at the end of July, and so the countdown begins; 12 weeks to find a successor. This week Alastair, Dave and Annabelle discuss the recruitment process, who’s involved and why we could end up with an interim instead. We discuss the front-runners in more detail and whether someone with a narrower, more operational focus than Sir Simon might be the preference of government.

The NHS – and in indeed the World – has been watching the catastrophic covid surge in India, with almost 400,000 cases recorded in a single day. This week we are joined by a member of our India office who describes the impact this has had on her family and how “disease and death has become so much a part of the everyday conversation”. We hear how social media has become an important tool for families desperately searching for a hospital bed. We also take the discussion closer to home and cover the creeping pressure on primary and secondary care, with some GPs shutting down patient self-referral systems for fear of becoming swamped over the weekend.

At the start of the pandemic, financial services company Greensill launched ‘Earnd’, an advanced payment system, for NHS staff. Some trusts signed up for it and it was given backing from senior figures in the health service. A year later, both have gone bust, former PM David Cameron is implicated in a lobbying scandal involving Greensill and serious questions are being asked about what exactly happened to the payroll data of the staff who used the app. We dig into this along with recent revelations that the health secretary omitted to declare his connection to Topwood, a company owned by his close family. We ask how these governance shortcomings managed to slip through the net and whether public trust has been sorely damaged – or if the successful vaccination scheme is too good a shield for this government? Featuring Ben Clover, Annabelle Collins and Alison Moore.

Eating disorder services in the NHS are at crisis point, with lockdown making an already pressurised situation even worse. With both adults’ and children’s admissions rocketing, the number of specialist beds has not kept pace, leaving patients stranded without the care they need on general medical wards. This week we are joined by two experts in this field who warn unless leaders and managers treat this area as a priority, lives will be at risk. They argue for ringfenced funding, investment in workforce and proper targets for both adult and child services. Featuring Annabelle Collins, Rebecca Thomas, Dr Agnes Ayton and Dr Ashish Kumar from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

A tale of three regions – what happened next? After the first covid wave we took a deep dive into three regions in England – now as the third wave ebbs away we have returned once more. We ask, how did things pan out for them over the rest of last year? And what are the main challenges the health systems will be grappling with over the coming months? Featuring Rebecca Thomas, Jack Serle, Lawrence Dunhill and Annabelle Collins.

Boris Johnson has appointed a new health adviser, well known to NHS health policy circles. Samantha Jones – former NHS England director and hospital chief – is to leave the private sector and move into the civil service. We discuss what this could mean for the NHS and whether this is a precursor to an even bigger job. Along with this we cover more significant people moves in the health service this week and an update on the government’s ‘40 new hospitals’ building plan; with two new builds accelerated we ask what this could mean for the original projects. Can we expect a bun fight for the money? Featuring Nick Carding, Annabelle Collins, Alison Moore and Dave West.

The NHS has been given its planning guidance for the first half of this year 2020-21 – and it strikes a markedly different tone to previous years. But what else would you expect from 2021? We break down why it is more about systems than trusts, why activity rather than output is king, and provide some more insight on what its means for the NHS’s finances and workforce. We also discuss NHS England’s latest intriguing appointment – Timothy Ferris, a primary care physician who leads a non-for-profit medical group in the US. He will soon start in his new position as head of service innovation and transformation, but could an even bigger job be on the cards for him in the not-to-distant future? Featuring Alastair McLellan, James Illman and Annabelle Collins.

For the first time ever the leader of a mental health trust has been named HSJ’s top chief executive for 2021, and in a surprising turn of events, three former top-table leaders have fallen out of the top 50 altogether. Why their fall from grace? And was it an act of utter hubris or just plain posturing? We discuss the health secretary’s suggestion the new NHS bill would give him the power to veto senior NHS board appointments. It turns out, this was not quite the case. We also touch on the swinging pendulum of power between the DHSC and the NHS and why the Chorley reconfiguration row is a red herring. Also discussed: the ‘lumpy’ vaccine supply and Dominic Cummings turning on the DHSC. Featuring Sharon Brennan, Annabelle Collins, Alastair McLellan and Dave West.

This week has seen the publication of not one but two huge sets of data – the biggest workforce survey in the world and the latest NHS performance stats – and we’ve crunched them both. We go beyond the headlines and discuss the mixed picture presented in the NHS staff survey data – it might come as a surprise that more staff are recommending their place of work despite being in the middle of a pandemic. We also discuss the top – and bottom – NHS trusts and why the experience of minority ethnic staff continues to be concerning. And we dig into the latest NHS performance stats, which revealed a huge rise in the number of patients waiting over a year. Featuring James Illman, Dave West, Nick Kituno and Annabelle Collins.