News

On 5 November, we issued an alert on the risk of depleted batteries in intraosseous (IO) injectors. These are typically used in emergency situations, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation in ambulance services and acute hospitals for adults and children.

The alert asks you to replace any IO devices without a battery power indicator light with ones with a display that shows how much power is remaining. If you use IO devices with a battery power indicator, the alert also asks you to take steps to embed regular checks of these devices to make sure they have sufficient battery power.

The Whistleblowers’ Support Scheme provides confidential, practical support and advice for NHS workers – current and former – who can demonstrate they are having difficulty finding suitable employment in the NHS as a result of raising a concern in the public interest. Applications close midnight Sunday 5 January 2020.

We would like your support to:

• develop awareness of the scheme as part of your organisation’s approach to Freedom to Speak Up
• bring the scheme to the attention of potential applicants
• host a work placement or facilitate a shadowing opportunity if we have a scheme participant in your area

Last week we published our national strategy, Transforming imaging services in England: a national strategy for imaging networks. This sets out our proposal for implementing collaborative imaging networks across the country to deliver better quality care and better value services for patients. It also provides NHS staff further opportunities to develop their career and increase their productivity.

We’ve published guidance to support you with the 2018/19 data collection process — to help improve ESR data quality and help boards better understand their medical productivity.

Trust 2018/19 data will now be automatically extracted from ESR, with no manual data collection using Excel spreadsheets, and published on the Model Hospital this month. It will then be refreshed in March 2020 enabling you to dive deeper into your data and look for improvement opportunities.

Tuesday 26 November, 1-2pm

The Healthy New Towns programme worked with ten demonstrator sites across England to explore how the development of new places could create healthier and connected communities with integrated and high-quality services. In July we published Putting Health into Place, a series of four publications with learning and innovation from across the programme.

Join this webinar to hear more about Putting Health into Place from those who produced it — including practical insights, tools and learning from the 10 demonstrator sites.

A new learning tool, ActNow, has been developed to help you prevent delayed transfers of care. It can be used by nurses, allied health professionals and care staff to ensure patients have the best outcomes possible following care received in hospital.

These resources will help you and your teams take prompt, practical actions and use every opportunity to improve patient flow and make sure patients are cared for in the best place.

If you’re not already registered, use the register button top right of the page and follow the instructions.

The latest update highlighting cyber security progress across health and care has been published. The report outlines the actions taken by the Department of Health and Social Care and its delivery partners to build cyber resilience across the health and care system. It describes progress over the past 12 months and looks forward to 2020.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is asking NHS senior leaders about their organisations’ approach to complaint handling, and to gather examples of best practice — ensuring learning from complaints is captured, reported on and used to improve services.

The survey findings will help the Ombudsman to create a single set of standards for how NHS staff and organisations approach complaint handling.

The survey should take around five minutes to complete and closes on Friday 29 November.

• Provider bulletin: 7 November 2019