OECD Health Policy Studies Waiting Times for Health Services Next in Line


Book Description

The report reviews a range of policies that countries have used to tackle waiting times for different services, including elective surgery and primary care consultations, but also cancer care and mental health services, with a focus on identifying the most successful ones.




NHS Waiting Times for Elective Care in England - HC 1002


Book Description

NHS patients have the right to receive elective pre-planned consultant-led care within 18 weeks of being referred for treatment. In 2012-13, there were 19.1 million referrals to hospitals in England, with hospital-related costs of around £16 billion. The standards are that 90% of patients admitted to hospital, and 95% of other patients, should have started treatment within 18 weeks of being referred. In April 2013, NHS England introduced zero tolerance of any patient waiting more than 52 weeks. The Department of Health cannot be sure that the waiting time data NHS England publishes, based on information from NHS trust, is accurate. Trusts are struggling with a hotchpotch of IT and paper based systems that are not easily pulled together, which makes it difficult for them to track and collate the patient information needed to manage and record patients' waiting time. The National Audit Office (NAO) found that waiting times for nearly a third of cases it reviewed at seven trusts were not supported by documented evidence, and that a further 26% were simply wrong. Multiple organisations have a quality assurance role. However the external audit provided in the past by the Audit Commission has yet to be replaced and the Department acknowledged the need to do so, with regular spot checks being undertaken to ensure accuracy. But responsibilities have not been clearly defined.




OECD Health Policy Studies Waiting Time Policies in the Health Sector What Works?


Book Description

This book provides a framework to understand why there are waiting lists for elective surgery in some OECD countries and not in others. It also describes how waiting times are measured in OECD countries and reviews different policy approaches to tackling excessive waiting times.




Equity and excellence:


Book Description

Equity and Excellence : Liberating the NHS: Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health by Command of Her Majesty




Practical Operating Theatre Management


Book Description

Distilling the ideas central to managing operating theatres, this book provides a practical and easy to use toolkit to improve theatre efficiency and patient outcomes. It advocates using time as the key measurement and proposes a new norm of operating theatre management based on rational, data-driven principles. Notions of 'efficiency' and 'scheduling' are clearly defined, and a scheduling toolkit available to download accompanies the work. The book's easy to use format supports managers in list planning, performance monitoring and demand-capacity matching while considering limited budgets and resources. It includes contributions from around the world, demonstrating the global application of its core approach. Aimed primarily at operating theatre managers, this book will also interest consultants, senior trainees, nurses and administrators who are involved in the daily running of the operating theatre and/or want to develop their leadership/managerial skills.




Improving Healthcare Quality in Europe Characteristics, Effectiveness and Implementation of Different Strategies


Book Description

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.




National Audit Office (NAO) - Department of Health: Emergency Admissions to Hospital: Managing the Demand - HC 739


Book Description

Many emergency admissions to hospital are avoidable and many patients stay in hospital longer than is necessary. Improving the flow of patients through the system will be critical to the NHS's ability to cope with future winter pressures on urgent and emergency care services. At a time when NHS budgets are under significant pressure, the number of emergency admissions to hospitals is continuing to rise, albeit at a slower rate than in the past. More patients attending major A&E departments are now being admitted to hospital. In 2012-13, over a quarter of all patients attending major A&E departments were admitted, up from 19 per cent in 2003-04. The rise in emergency admissions is dominated by patients who stay less than two days (short-stay) in hospital. The main factors behind the increase in emergency admissions include the slowness with which the NHS has developed effective alternatives to admission to hospital. There are many local initiatives to prevent avoidable emergency admissions but limited evidence on what works. A lack of alignment between hospitals and community and local services in the hours they are open compromises efforts to avoid out-of- hours hospital admissions and prolongs the length of stay of inpatients. Among the NAO's recommendations is the need for both short-and long-term strategies to address staffing shortages in A&E. The Department and NHS England should also address barriers to seven-day working in hospitals, such as the consultants' contract, which gives consultants the right to refuse to work outside 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday




High Quality Care for All


Book Description

This review incorporates the views and visions of 2,000 clinicians and other health and social care professionals from every NHS region in England, and has been developed in discussion with patients, carers and the general public. The changes proposed are locally-led, patient-centred and clinically driven. Chapter 2 identifies the challenges facing the NHS in the 21st century: ever higher expectations; demand driven by demographics as people live longer; health in an age of information and connectivity; the changing nature of disease; advances in treatment; a changing health workplace. Chapter 3 outlines the proposals to deliver high quality care for patients and the public, with an emphasis on helping people to stay healthy, empowering patients, providing the most effective treatments, and keeping patients as safe as possible in healthcare environments. The importance of quality in all aspects of the NHS is reinforced in chapter 4, and must be understood from the perspective of the patient's safety, experience in care received and the effectiveness of that care. Best practice will be widely promoted, with a central role for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in expanding national standards. This will bring clarity to the high standards expected and quality performance will be measured and published. The review outlines the need to put frontline staff in control of this drive for quality (chapter 5), with greater freedom to use their expertise and skill and decision-making to find innovative ways to improve care for patients. Clinical and managerial leadership skills at the local level need further development, and all levels of staff will receive support through education and training (chapter 6). The review recommends the introduction of an NHS Constitution (chapter 7). The final chapter sets out the means of implementation.







Life Support


Book Description

"A truly insightful tour d'horizon" – Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health, 2012–18 "Insightful and thought-provoking" – Rt Hon. Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health, 2018–21 "Brilliant" – Sir Stephen Bubb, director of Charity Futures and the Oxford Institute of Charity "A tour de force" – Niall Dickson CBE, former chief executive of The King's Fund, the General Medical Council and the NHS Confederation *** How good is the NHS, really? That is the question this book seeks to answer, as the health service emerges from the gravest crisis in its history with more money – but greater challenges – than ever before. During the pandemic, voters made extraordinary sacrifices to save the NHS from collapse. Thanks to these efforts and the dedication and bravery of the NHS workforce, hospitals were able to treat patients with coronavirus, but millions of others lost out. Now an exhausted and depleted NHS workforce faces a huge backlog. The gap between supply and demand for publicly funded healthcare has never been so wide. With record numbers waiting for treatment, the politicians' answer has been to spend ever more taxpayers' money. The question is whether throwing cash at the problem will work. Every day, millions of patients receive care that is fair, good or outstanding. In keeping with Nye Bevan's founding principles, the same treatment is available to rich and poor, free at the point of need. Public support for the concept remains overwhelming. Yet for every positive NHS experience there are negatives: care that is substandard, disjointed and arrives too late. A cult of secrecy surrounds errors and failings. Politicians on all sides dissemble and lie. This book seeks to strip away the spin and uncover the true state of the NHS: the good, the bad and the ugly. It explores an increasingly urgent question: in an era of pandemics, can the NHS provide the quality of service patients deserve?