Department of Health News
Health Secretary outlines measures for greater patient power
From next year, new ‘Ofsted style’ ratings will show patients how their local area’s health service is performing in crucial areas, including:
- Cancer
- Dementia
- Diabetes
- Mental health
- Learning disabilities
- Maternity care
The new ratings, broken down by Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), will not only be based on local data but will also be verified by experts in each field, including:
- The Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Harpal Kumar, who will verify cancer ratings
- The government’s Mental Health Taskforce Chairman Paul Farmer, who will lead on mental health ratings
Initial ratings, based on the current CCG assessments, will be published in June 2016. As part of the government’s transparency agenda, this will both spread best practice and help bring about improvement where services are underperforming. This will create a complete picture of care quality in the NHS.
By giving patients access to performance data, healthcare services in local towns and cities will be much more accountable to their local population than previously.
Patients and clinicians will also benefit from a range of new measures to cut bureaucracy across the health system, saving valuable time and money. Up to 27% of GP appointments could potentially be avoided if there was more co-ordinated working between GPs and hospitals, wider use of primary care staff and better use of technology. New measures will include immediately stopping pointless referrals from hospitals back to GPs – a waste of time which accounts for around 2.5% of appointments. By giving 2 hours a week back to each GP, there could be a 5% increase in workforce capacity - equivalent to 15 million appointments a year.
Other measures to save valuable resources which can be given over to patient care include:
- Introducing a single payment system that covers all transactions to stop GP practices chasing different organisations for payment
- Making surgeries paperless by 2018, ending the use of fax machine communications between hospitals and surgeries
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said:
This government believes in the NHS and its values – and we’re investing an extra £10 billion to transform services during this Parliament. A key part of that transformation is building a more patient-focused culture.
We’ve made progress in creating a stronger partnership between doctor and patient, but we still put too many obstacles in the way of doctors and nurses wanting to do the right thing.
By being more transparent than ever before about crucial services and freeing up more time for GPs to care, we really can make NHS patients the most powerful in the world.
As part of this vision to empower patients there will also be action to take forward the findings from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ report on clinical accountability. The government will ensure that a named, responsible clinician for individual patients will be incorporated into planning guidance from next year.
NHS England will also provide plans to increase the choice in maternity, end of life care, and the roll-out of personal budgets and there will be a focus on removing barriers to putting patients first. Additionally, a world expert on the pitfalls of new IT systems, Professor Bob Wachter, will conduct a review for the NHS on lessons we need to learn to ensure a smooth move towards a digital future.
FGM: mandatory reporting in healthcare
From 31 October 2015, healthcare professionals must report to the police any cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) in girls under 18 that they come across in their work.
These documents support the introduction of the duty. They include:
- A poster explaining what the duty means for healthcare professionals
- Guidance on what healthcare professionals should do if they think a child has had or is at risk of FGM
- A training package to introduce the duty to healthcare professionals
- A leaflet explaining the duty to patients
This guidance and training package can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/472691/FGM_guidance.pdf
Improving children and young people’s mental health care
The Right Honourable MP, Alistair Burt recently gace a speech at the King's Fund outlining plans to improve children and young people’s mental health including a national anti-stigma campaign for teenagers.
It was only 6 months ago that Norman Lamb stood where I’m standing, announcing the way forward for children and young people’s mental health.
'Future in Mind' (http://tinyurl.com/lej6pej) established a clear and powerful consensus about improving children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Of course, we’ve had a change of government, but not a change in direction. Children and young people’s mental health is one of my priorities and I’m delighted to be the lead on this exciting work.
Today we’re talking about nothing short of the biggest transformation to young people’s mental health and one of the largest investments the sector has seen.
I want to place the emphasis on building young people’s resilience, promoting good mental health and wellbeing and intervening early. We need to build care around the needs of young people and their families. I want to deliver a clear joined-up approach to mental health care, so children and young people can navigate through the system to get the care they need.
And I want there to be a culture of continuous improvement, built off the back of the very best and latest evidence. There is a powerful local consensus to do exactly this; people want to transform the local offer made to young people and their families.
And it was this consensus which I heard when I met several of you at a Youth Access event in July. Then, I spoke of three things that were needed – collaboration, leadership and participation. These three things I still think are crucial, and let me address each in turn.
Collaboration
Thank you to those of you here who were involved in developing your local transformation plans, which have been the result of much collaboration. This will change lives. If we want to improve care for children, young people and their families and, not only that, but secure sustainable change, then collaboration is essential.
The plans show how you’ll work closer together, become more transparent, transform the service, invest in your workforce and make sure that quality improves.
This collaboration is being mirrored nationally, too. I’m pleased to be able to share the stage today with Sam Gyimah who will talk soon about what’s been happening in the school sector. But wider than this – NHS England, supported by Public Health England, are assuring the plans and will provide support to those areas who need it. My colleagues at NHS England will pick this up later this afternoon.
We are in this for long game and this is the start of a journey. We want a system that is built to last, that has sustainability throughout. But we can’t do this from Whitehall alone – so your work at local level is crucial and greatly appreciated.
Leadership
This brings me on to my second point: leadership. There are, of course, somethings which are best placed for us to lead on at a national level, working with our partners.
For example – data. I find it astonishing that you are able to do the good work you do with mental health prevalence data from a time before Facebook. So much in our society has changed since 2004. The irony being that the technology that’s come about – made to multiply the way we communicate – has often made young people more withdrawn.
With the Health and Social Care Information Centre, we are commissioning the first national survey of children and young people’s mental health since 2004. And I’m pleased to announce today that a consortium of NatCen and the Office for National Statistics has been selected to conduct the survey, and will start work immediately.
The new survey will be much wider in scope than in previous years – involving 9,500 children, their parents, carers and teachers. And for the first time ever, the survey will gather information from the under 5s and from older adolescents, greatly improving our understanding of the needs of these groups.
From this, we will be able to estimate how many children in the population are living with a mental disorder. It will also examine the issues that lead to mental ill health, like bullying or other social pressures.
And of course with these social pressures comes stigma.
Stigma prevents young people seeking help in the first place. A recent survey suggested that more than 1 in 4 young people with a mental health illness want to give up on life. I will do everything in my power to make sure that does not happen.
I’m pleased to announce that the largest ever national anti-stigma campaign for teenagers and parents will launch next month. We will be working alongside Time to Change on a social marketing campaign specifically targeted on the places where young people spend their time online.
This will take place alongside in-school activity to boost the support available there, and targeted marketing and information for parents. The Department of Health has provided the funding for the campaign to run this year and I look forward to seeing its impact.
This is something that young people have asked for – better information about mental health, tailored specifically for them, online.
And I am pleased to say that we will be doing exactly that. Today we are launching a new section of NHS Choices which specifically focuses on youth mental health.
Participation
This brings me on to my third point: participation.
This new section of the website hasn’t been designed by a bunch of middle-aged civil servants around an old wooden table. This has been designed directly with young people – their fingerprints are everywhere, and they need to be if we want this site to have any cut-through with them.
We know that there is much more digital expertise in mental health matters out there than we can deliver centrally.
Last month we announced a £650,000 innovation fund to accelerate the development of high quality, evidence-based and safe products like apps or websites to improve mental health. I am pleased to announce today that £500,000 of this has been ring-fenced for products focussing on young people’s mental health.
Young people also wanted health professionals to have a better understanding about online risks, so that they could understand the world that they are growing up in. On average, young people spend 27 hours a week online – so they are as much a part of their digital world as they are the physical one.
Many of the digital tools supported by the new fund will be targeted at professionals, but we are also working in partnership with MindEd and Xenzone to develop a special module about online risk. This will give health professionals a trusted and accessible way to better understand and respond to the digital risks facing young people today.
It is vital that we improve the digital literacy of the workforce. They need to be able to better recognise and support young people who have suffered from online victimisation. Only by doing this do we stand a chance at helping prevent young people from developing mental health complications as a result of an adverse online experience.
Conclusion
What this work has shown is that you need to involve young people in decisions about them if you want to offer them the best care.
When I gave evidence to the Youth Select Committee on young people’s mental health, it was inspiring to see how involved and passionate they were about the subject. I look forward to their report next month.
Young people themselves and their experiences – both good and bad - will be the ultimate measure of whether we have been successful in our endeavours.