NHS patients will be able to book GP appointments online and get test results online within three years from a new health direct website.The moves are part of a new Information Strategy designed to “take the hassle out of the health service”.

Online communications between patients and their doctors is already happening in some places.

But the strategy sets out plans to ensure there is universal adoption of digital technologies.

The Department of Health is also encouraging the NHS and private companies to develop new health apps for smart phones and tablet computers.

Repeat prescriptions will also be available from 2015 too.

The deadline mirrors the goal of giving patients access to electronic medical records – something thatwas part of tony bliar’s vision for the NHS in his NPfIT £12 billion dream.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “Our NHS reforms are about making life easier for patients.

“By allowing people to access the NHS online, we will put an end to the 8am rush to phone your GP to try and book an appointment. Reforms like this will take the hassle out of the health service.”

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee, said: “There are GP surgeries which have been pioneering online booking and repeat prescriptions for a while now so we would support the wider implementation of this, as long as it doesn’t impact on patients without IT access who can continue to book appointments in the usual way.

“However, we would caution against the potential use of email for consultations, because compared to a telephone or face-to-face consultation it is difficult for GPs to assess someone quickly and safely this way.

“When it comes to patients being able to view their records online, we believe patients should have access to their health records but we’d want to be satisfied that their records would remain secure before this was implemented – for example it would be important to be certain that it couldn’t be an abusive partner or a parent trying to access their teenager’s records. All patients need to be confident that their records are held safely otherwise they may not feel comfortable talking to their GP about confidential issues.”

Given that the government has an appalling record on leaking and losing your records from everything from DVLA to the tax office we caution against rushing out and signing up for similar treatments.

NHS hospitals had to be bailed out to the tune of almost £415 million last year after running out of cash according to Department of Health figures.In total 31 hospitals had to be given extra emergency funding to keep them going in 2011-12, up from 21 the previous year.

The payments have risen dramatically since 2009-10, when the department started collating full figures.

That year, they were £187.1 million, while in 2010-11 they rose slightly to £223.0 million, before jumping to £414.2 million.

The big rise coincided with a tighter budget settlement for the NHS as a whole,which has resulted in drops in referrals to hospitals and tighter restrictions on surgery for operations like hip and knee replacements.

Andrew Lansley said: “Labour left us a dismal legacy of challenged hospitals, burdening some of them with PFI deals they could not afford, huge debts, and poor financial governance.

“Even with the Government’s decision to protect NHS spending, the challenges of an ageing population and rising costs mean that these problems cannot be swept under the carpet any longer.

“For some hospital trusts, the challenges they face may be too great for them to take on alone.  That is why we are helping them overcome their problems, with short-term support if necessary, so that they become sustainable in the long-term.”

The largest single bailout was for South London Healthcare Trust, which received £79.2 million last year. Over three years it has been handed £168.7 million. Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust was the second biggest recipient in 2011-12, taking £57.7 million in total.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Hospital-bailouts-top-400m

The campaign to improve hand hygiene in hospitals in England and Wales is contributing to a significant fall in the rates of superbug infections, according to a report.The study published on the BMJ website showed the amount of soap and hand gel being used tripled during the campaign.

At the same time, levels of MRSA and C. difficile infections in hospitals fell.

The government has since dropped the campaign, but said its ambition was to “wipe out” such infections.

Hospital superbugs were once a real fear for many patients. In response the Clean Your Hands campaign, funded by the Department of Health, was introduced in all hospitals by June 2005.

Alcohol gels were put by bedsides, posters reminded staff to wash their hands and there were regular checks to ensure hands were kept clean.

By 2008, the total amount of soap and alcohol gel being purchased by hospitals trebled, going from 22ml per patient per day to 60ml per patient per day.

Rates of MRSA more than halved in the same time period and C. diff infections fell by more than 40%.

One of the report’s authors, Dr Sheldon Stone from the Royal Free University College London Medical School, estimated that around 10,000 lives were saved because of the campaign.

He told the BBC: “It’s been a real British success story, we’ve gone from being the dirty man of Europe to being world leaders.

“What we need to do is keep up the momentum and stay at the forefront of world hand hygiene.”

A spokesman from the Department of Health said: “The Clean Your Hands campaign was successful in its aim to highlight the importance of good hand hygiene practice across the NHS. We know this has been successful.

“The challenge now is to ensure the NHS embeds the good practice highlighted in the campaign to achieve our ambition to wipe out avoidable healthcare-associated infection.

“We know real progress has been made in this area as MRSA bloodstream infections have dropped by 41% and C. difficile by 30% across the NHS in England since 2009/10.”

From:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17942182

Ministers have agreed to give the American company responsible for the “unworkable” NHS database NPfIT almost £1 billion in health contracts, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The National Audit Office criticised the NPfIT NHS database project for being poor value for money, patchy and long overdue.

Computer Sciences Corporation, (CSC) an American IT firm, previously had a £1.9 billion contract for the national NHS system which was scrapped by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, last year.

The firm is understood to have threatened legal action against the Government and is now thought to have agreed to continue with up to £900 million of NHS work in return for dropping any legal action.

It will run computer systems for the NHS across the north, midlands and eastern England under the deal which is expected to be agreed in the coming days.

Ministers are expected to herald the “compromise deal” as a success which will save the taxpayer about £1 billion. However, it underlines the difficulties faced by the Coalition in extricating itself from previous contracts agreed by the last Government.

It will also add to growing allegations that despite the high profile announcement that the beleaguered national NHS database is being scrapped – it is simply being replaced by a series of similar regional systems which will perform the same function.The NHS database attracted widespread criticism following a series of damning official reports. Last year, the House of Commons Public Accounts committee described the programme as “unworkable”.

When he announced the “acceleration” of the dismantling of the system last year, the Health Secretary said: “Labour’s IT programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers’ money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn’t fit their needs.

“We will be moving to an innovative new system driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money from IT systems that better meet the needs of a modernised NHS.”

Computer Sciences Corporation had previously largely written off the value of the NHS contract in its accounts, leading to a reduction in the company’s share price. Last May, David Cameron said the Government would not sign any new contracts with the firm until a review of its work on the NHS IT programme was complete.

However, the firm announced yesterday that it had entered into a non-binding letter of intent with the British Government. The letter “defines a way forward for CSC to deliver healthcare solutions and services, primarily across the North, the Midlands and east of England.”

The company’s share price rose yesterday after falling by more than a third over the past year.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The Department of Health has secured agreement to an approach which will involve a hugely improved settlement for the NHS with CSC, the company responsible for introducing Lorenzo software in the North, Midlands and East.

“A Letter of Intent has been negotiated which makes clear that a new contract, to be signed this Spring, will ensure that the local NHS has control over whether to introduce Lorenzo. The agreement we have negotiated gives choice to Trusts about taking this software, rather than imposing the decision on NHS organisations.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/IT-firm-behind-unworkable-NHS-database-keeps-IT-deal

Seven English NHS hospital trusts with debts caused by Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debts are to have access to a £1.5 billion government bailout fund.The subsidy will be available over the course of 25 year long contracts.

Trusts will have to show they have improved efficiency and provide good care in order to access the money.

The seven trusts are: Barking, Havering and Redbridge, St Helens and Knowsley, South London, Peterborough and Stamford, North Cumbria, Dartford and Gravesham and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.

There are 100 plus PFI schemes, where private firms pay to build hospitals, leaving the NHS to pay an annual fee or “mortgage”.

Coalition ministers have attacked Labour over its deals, but the National Audit Office recently reported that for most trusts with financial difficulties PFI was just part of the problem.

The Department of Health says without the funding, services at the hospitals would be put at risk.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “We need to balance the accountability of the NHS at local level to live within its means on one hand, with recognising that there is a legacy of debt for some trusts with PFI schemes.”

A US company contracted to provide IT technology for the National Health Service is set to receive a £2 billion extension despite the failed project being abandoned.Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has reportedly informed Wall Street that it expects its contract to provide electronic patient records across the NHS to be extended.

Taxpayers are now facing an estimated £2 billion bill, despite the company already failing to deliver a fully functional version of its software, The Times reported.

The £11.4 billion National Programme for IT, set up in 2002 by bliar, was at the time spun as the world’s biggest civilian computerisation project.

It aimed to give doctors instant access to patient records wherever they were being treated and CSC had signed a deal to computerise records in most of England.

Digitising the medical records of the country’s 62 million people was the core objective of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, accounting for £7 billion of the total estimated cost.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced in September that he was abandoning the scheme to create a national patient database because it had “let down” the health service.

He made the decision to “urgently dismantle” the failed project after criticism it was not value for taxpayers’ money.

Yet the company stated in official US papers that it was in talks with the British Government for its contract to be extended until 2017, at a cost of up to £2 billion.

Computer applications installed as part of the scheme have also failed or been scrapped.

However, £250,000 in bonuses has been paid by the DoH to 80 people involved in the scheme as a reward for “an exceptional contribution to delivery”.

CSC, one of the world’s biggest IT providers, had been contracted to provide patient record software, known as the Lorenzo system, to 166 NHS hospitals. But it has delivered on 10 projects. None of those systems is fully functional.

CSC has signed deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Royal Mail, Identity and Passport Service and UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The Coalition’s Major Projects Authority, established to review Labour’s financial commitments, found the scheme was not fit to provide services to the NHS.

A cross-party committee of MPs concluded the programme had proved “beyond the capacity of the DoH to deliver”.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said it was “shameful” to pour more money into a failed initiative.

The number of people being admitted to hospital after drinking too much alcohol has more than doubled in less than a decade, new research show.Some 1,173,386 people in England were admitted to casualty for injuries or illnesses caused by drinking in 2010/11, compared with just 510,780 in 2002/3, according to the research.

The figures for last year represent an 11 per cent increase on the previous 12 months, when alcohol-related admissions stood at 1,056,962.

Separate information published by Anne Milton, the public health minister, showed that since January an estimated 7,074 under-18s have been admitted to hospital due to alcohol abuse.

A recent report predicted that binge drinking will cost the NHS £3.8 billion by 2015, with 1.5 million A&E admissions a year.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, blamed Labour’s 24-hour drinking policy and accused the last government of “taking their eye of the ball” on the issue of binge drinking.

He said: “These figures are disturbing evidence that, despite total consumption of alcohol not increasing recently, we have serious problems with both binge-drinking and long-term excessive alcohol abuse in a minority of people.

“Our alcohol strategy, which we will set out in the new year, will outline what further steps we are taking to tackle this growing problem.”

Recent Local Alcohol Profiles for England figures also show that the number of hospital admissions for conditions attributable to alcohol are rising at a similar rate.

The number of admissions has more than doubled since 2002/03 and increased by nine per cent last year.

In 2002/03 there were 926 admissions per 100,000 people for conditions caused by alcohol, rising to 1,743 per 100,000 in 2009/10 and 1,898 last year.

The biggest increase over the past 12 months was in London, with a jump in admissions of 14 per cent, followed by the East of England with 10 per cent.

The number of NHS patients who have to undergo emergency readmission to hospital within a month of being discharged has increased by more than three quarters over the last decade, the Daily Telegraph has disclosed.Hospitals have been accused by ministers of treating patients “like parts on a production line” after official figures suggested that hundreds of thousands of people every year are being sent home before they are well enough.

More than 660,000 people were brought back to hospital last year within 28 days of leaving, statistics show, sparking allegations that patients are being “hurried through the system” so the NHS can meet waiting-list targets.

The official figures show that some NHS trusts have seen their emergency readmission rate rise more than threefold over the past decade – while some hospitals have seen only a modest increase.

Last night, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said that the “hugely distressing” trend must stop.

“Patients have a right to expect that when they go in for treatment that they are looked after properly and that the treatment they are given helps them to recover,” he said.

“Having to be readmitted and treated all over again is hugely distressing. These figures show how Labour’s obsession with waiting time targets meant that patients were treated like parts on a production line to be hurried through the system rather than like people who need to be properly cared for.”

The Department of Health has released detailed information on the number of emergency readmissions in every area across Britain.

The figures show that 620,054 patients had to be readmitted in 2009-10 – compared to just 348,996 a decade before, a 78 per cent increase. Over the past five years, there has been a 31 per cent rise and a five per cent increase on the previous 12 months.

The data also highlights the widespread regional variations. The rate of readmission in the Kensington & Chelsea PCT area has risen by 287 per cent over the past decade to 1,582 people.

However, North Lincolnshire PCT has only experienced a 3.37 per cent rise over the same period.

Hospitals within the Hampshire PCT area readmitted 13,239 people last year. The nearby area covered by the Isle of Wight PCT only had to readmit 1,098 people.

The figures, do not include patients suffering from cancer or mental health problems or maternity patients.

Most of the areas with the highest increases in readmission numbers are in London and the south east, where pressure is greatest on the NHS. The Department of Health has analysed the social make-up of each area and concludes that the so-called “thriving London periphery” – the relatively wealthy commuter hinterland around the capital has suffered the biggest recent deterioration.

About 10 million people are admitted to hospital wards each year. Critics claim that government targets, such as the demand that patients be admitted to hospital for treatment within 18 weeks of seeing their GP, mean hospital managers are pressured into releasing patients early to make beds available.

Earlier this month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that the Government is moving from a system of targets for hospitals based on waiting and treatment times – to a system of so-called “outcomes” which measures the success of treatment.

In a criticism of previous targets which he blames for the increase in emergency readmissions, Mr Lansley said: “Instead of focusing on the results which actually matter for patients, they focused on narrow processes to the detriment of patient care. That is why we have taken action to address these increases in emergency readmissions.

“One of the new goals we are setting the NHS is reducing emergency readmissions. In order to help achieve this we have created a re-ablement fund of £300 million and we have taken action to stop hospitals being paid when they readmit a patient after discharging them too early. These steps will turn Labour’s poor performance around.”

Under the Government scheme, hospitals will effectively be responsible for people’s care in the weeks after they return home and will be financially penalised for discharging patients too soon.

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Scandal-of-NHS-production-line-as-readmissions-soar

The majority of women having IVF treatment still have two embryos implanted in the womb despite clinics being warned of the risks of multiple pregnancies and having targets to reduce them.Two thirds of women having IVF treatment have two embyos placed in the womb, increasing the likelihood of them having twins, figures from the regulator have shown.

It comes after the Daily Telegraph revealed that 100 feotuses were aborted last year because they were part of a multiple pregnancy which carries greater risks of birth defects and complications.

The latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority have shown that multiple pregnancies are reducing and are down from over one quarter in 2008 to one fifth last year.

Clinics have been told that women under 37 should be advised that it is normally best for them to have one embryo put back into the womb at a time.

However the HFEA data show that 64 per cent of women had two embryos put back in the womb last year.

Only one in six opted for a single embryo and a similar proportion had no choice because only one embryo was produced.

In 2010, 45,264 women had a total of 57,652 cycles, an increase of almost six per cent on the previous year.

This year clinics were set a target that no more than 15 per cent of their births be twins or triplets.

Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said the multiple pregnancy rate has dropped significantly as the number of single embryo transfers has increased from nine per cent to almost one in four now.

But he added: “There has been significant improvements but it is nowhere near enough to reach the 10 per cent multiple pregnancy rate target set by the HFEA in 2007.

“The targets are achievable, the philospohy behind it is absolutely correct and by doing so we will protect the health of mothers and their babies following IVF.”

Mr Rutherford said in Sweden the single embryo transfer rate was 70 per cent and the multiple pregnancy rate was five per cent.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/IVF-women-still-receiving-two-embryos-despite-twin-risk

Home healthacre checks ‘fell significantly’ under the Care Quality Commission (CQC) quango warns NAO.Work on checking standards in English care home fell “significantly” after a new watchdog was introduced, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned in a new report.

It has accused the Care Quality Commission for failing to follow up a whistle blower’s warnings of alleged abuse of patients at the Winterbourne View care home near Bristol, of failing to “provide value for money”.

The CQC was established by Labour and cam into being in April 2009, bringing together three predecessor organisations – the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission.

But the NAO report said work on inspecting health and social care organisations “fell significantly” after April 2009, “due to the Commission’s decision to prioritise registration over compliance”.

Besides checking institutions, the CQC also has responsibility for registering them.

The report found the CQC “diverted resources in a bid to meet the statutory timetable for registration”.

As a result, it completed just 47 per cent of its target number of compliance reviews of standards of care between October 2010 and April 2011.

Government recruitment restrictions meant 14 per cent of staff positions were vacant last September, with serious shortages of registration assessors and compliance inspectors.

The CQC was established with a budget six per cent lower than the money given to the organisations it replaced, the NAO noted.

Amyas Morse, the Auditor General, said the CQC has had “an uphill struggle to carry out its work effectively and has experienced serious difficulties”.

Margaret Hodge, chairman of the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, said of the CQC: “This report raises serious concerns about whether it is up to scratch.”

Cynthia Bower, the CQC’s chief executive, said it was now “firmly on the right track”.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Care-home-checks-fell-significantly-under-CQC-warns-NAO