Today’s report on operational and financial performance shows that providers coped well with the extra pressures and halted the year-on-year decline in A&E performance seen during the same period over the previous four years. Performance against the four-hour A&E standard was 89.5% at the end of December, similar to performance for the same period last year which was 89.6%. This is testament to better operational planning ahead of winter by the NHS and to the hard work of NHS staff.

We have published individual reference cost benchmarking tools using the latest reference cost data.

The tool, which is available on your planning portal, includes analysis with national and peer comparisons, and average and upper quartile comparisons to help you find potential financial efficiency opportunities and to improve costing in future collections.

We’ve issued a reminder about your reporting requirements for estates-related incidents affecting the safety of patients and the continuity of services, as well as defects and failures involving engineering plant, infrastructure and non-medical devices.

Monday 26 February, 1pm – 2pm

This webinar will give insight into the national audit from the NHS Benchmarking Network  and what will be expected from your trust. It is for all directors of nursing, board leads and those working in palliative and end of life care.

Tuesday 13 March 2018, 10am – 4pm, London

Chief executives are invited to join our Chair Dido Harding and Chief Executive Ian Dalton to:

• hear their vision for NHS Improvement and how we will be working together with our national partners
• consider how we can best support you to continue to drive improvement and transformation
• feed back on how we can improve and better work with and alongside you

Tuesday 24 April 2018, 10am – 4pm, Manchester

This conference brings together three components of elective care: referral to treatment (RTT), cancer and diagnostics.

This is an opportunity to hear from those working nationally within trusts to tackle the range of elective care challenges we face in 2018 and to support the improvement of patient experience.

115 trusts have already signed up to the Dementia-Friendly Hospital Charter, which provides high-level principles of what a dementia-friendly hospital looks like and actions that hospitals can take to fulfil them.

Limited places are now available for the May 2018 intake of HFMA Masters-level qualifications,  with up to 50% of the study fees covered.

• Provider bulletin: 14 February 2018