HSJ Health Check

A controversial new care model has come under fire from trust leaders, who have warned patients and clinicians are coming to harm.    We discuss the concerns surrounding the national roll-out of Right Care, Right Person, and why the emergency services have ended up playing a “high stakes game of chicken”.   Also this week, we discuss NHS England’s ambitions to digitise one in three patient interactions with the NHS and bold new plans for the NHS app. 

We talk more about the decimation of England’s national public health unit less than three years after it was created. We cover the motivations behind this, the impact it could have on integrated care systems’ plans and whether Labour will reverse it. Also, the latest on the planning guidance and how its become entangled with the Budget negotiations.  With Dave West, James Illman and Annabelle Collins.

This week we discuss a major obstacle in the planning guidance negotiations  –  how high to set the A&E four-hour target. The government is pushing for a new target set at over 80%, while NHS England lobbies for one just one percentage point higher than the current target.  Also this week more on how the risk in emergency care has shifted from ambulances to acute hospitals and the thinking behind controversial regional guidance to prioritise patients in A&E who are less unwell to improve flow. 

Two of the most successful NHS hospital chief executives – one current, Glen Burley, and one former, Dame Alwen Williams – join the HSJ Health Check podcast, arguing that the sometimes-contentious spread of the ‘group model’ and joint leadership will keep on spreading. The Foundation Group CEO and former boss of Barts Health Trust – one of the mothers of the hospital group model in the NHS – also talk about how to make it work, managing exec time, staying in touch with the front line, and what it means for accountability. And NHS management trainee Brigid McMorrow speaks about her analysis for HSJ which found one in three trusts now have a joint chair and/or CEO, often as part of a group model or a move towards merger. You can read that analysis here: https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/one-in-three-trusts-now-share-ceo-or-chair/7036353.article Hosted by deputy editor Dave West.  

This week for the first time a study has revealed the number of patients on PIFU pathways has not translated into a significant reduction in follow up appointments.  Also, a governance row across some of the biggest trusts in east London, while a major teaching hospital on the other side of the Thames sees its finances explode. With Ben Clover, Annabelle Collins and James Illman

Dental budgets are being raided by ICSs to fund other services in the middle of an unprecedented access crisis. We cover a broken financial system, a discredited contract and increasing political pressure to fix NHS dentistry. Also we review how NHS England is faring on its pledge to increase overall primary care investment. 

HSJ recently revealed the dramatic differences in access to specialist medical treatments around the country.    We discuss what’s driving this inequality, who is missing out and what big-city trusts are doing to improve access.   Also, an update on how the NHS coped during the longest ever junior doctor strikes over Christmas and the New Year and why the planning guidance for 2024 is still yet to be published. 

In our final episode of the year we make our predictions for what 2024 could hold for the NHS, including the first integrated care system merger, how the strikes will pan out and manager regulation.    Thanks for listening and we’ll be back in January! 

Three years ago the NHS was the first healthcare system in the world to set an ambition to become net zero, but it struggles to prioritise this in the face of daily operational and financial pressures. This week we discuss in depth the green targets, progress already made and why, despite competing priorities, they should still be high up leaders’ agenda.  Also, an update on what systems are being told to do to cope this winter.

This week we’re joined by Thea Stein, who recently moved into think tank world after nine years running an NHS trust.   We cover her reflections on her time at Leeds Community Healthcare Trust, why she is fed up of “visions” of integrated care and much more interested in the tricky detail, and the radical policies needed to recruit and retain more staff.