NHS England

So Amal, what did we do?

Well, what did we do? We did a bit of a discovery piece as to who's where, and for those who don't know, the PCLP Programme was building on an existing NHS England Culture and Leadership Programme.

So the senior leaders in each of our maternity and neonatal units had already gone through a bit of a journey through the NHS England's Culture and Leadership Programme.

So when the patient safety collaboratives were asked to kind of offer a, you know, a follow on additional support for those, we discovered that some of our trusts, so in the East Midlands, we have got eight organisations that had been on various phases of the original programme.

So we had some sites who were three years post having completed that programme and others that were still very much in the completion of that.

There was, you know, from pentagrams to, you know, other different dynamics in those teams as well.

So they weren't quite as neatly cut as that.

But yeah, so we set about convening colleagues to meet together on a regional footprint to kind of bring shared learning, objectives, understanding what were their common challenges that they were working through had colleagues learned and share you know sharing some of of their experiences there we also set out about a bespoke offer so each of our organizations had an offer to to meet with them to do pieces of work that would help them move forward on their improvement programs as having completed that first journey with nhs england um they were all challenged with an improvement program and a plan of addressing the culture issues in their organizations so we had a bespoke offer for each of our organisations.

So the aim was always to reduce unwarranted variation, improve outcomes, and give people better access to high-cost therapies.

We did that by standardizing the pathway measuring time that people spent in each part of the pathway before they came through to the MDT and the MDT was really the biggest bottleneck because there was a real constraint to how many people we could discuss and In the absence of nationally directed commissioning, the clinicians had mirrored the NHS England system, which is that no one could be started on a biologic without being discussed at an MDT.

And we know a lot more now about that.

who to give biologics to and which biologic to give than we did when that system was set up.

So we adopted that same model in Wales so that simple cases can now be initiated on a biologic through filling in some data, which allows the space for the more complex cases to be brought to the MDT, where you really do need your colleagues on their best game because the patients are so complex.

So the final bit of the jigsaw there was identifying a data capture platform.

And we ended up using Bluetech, which colleagues in England will be very familiar with, But we looked at the severe asthma forms used, and they've been designed for a very particular reason in NHS England, which is to support regional pharmacists policing responsible use of biologics.

We don't have that set up in Wales.

Sometimes people come and ask, definitely.

I think the, the other thing that I've been able to do as well is, um, I've sat on the radiotherapy clinical reference group at NHS England for quite a long time.

Um, so that, that's been really helpful in, um, sort of understanding.

I had some idea of how policy decisions were made having spent time at, at the Department of Health years ago, but it's been really helpful to know, you know, how things are changing in the NHS as well.

We had Sarah Siror and Rachel Hosey speaking to us on the issues and the differences between France and the UK.

We did approach NHS England about this specifically.

They said improving maternity care remains a national priority.

The NHS has invested in continuity of care for women with the greatest needs, strengthened postnatal support and expanded specialist perinatal pelvic health services across England, supporting women during pregnancy and at least 12 months after birth.

Setting aside modesty, [laughs] I certainly didn't, and I doubt you did either.

NHS England is being abolished.

Functions are being folded into the DH++.

Two headquarters will become one.

Oh, really? [laughs] Well, that was the announcement.

Then reality turned up.

The HSJ, and I linked to it this morning, reports that some NHS England staff may have to be parked outside the DHSC because NHS England employees are not civil servants.

Pay scales are different, pensions are different, contracts, redundancy arrangements, and continuity of service provisions are different, and some overseas nationals employed by the NHS may not satisfy civil service nationality rules.

We'll be looking at what these figures tell us about how much both salaried GPs and GP partners are being paid and differences in earnings across England and the UK more widely.

We'll also be talking about new neighbourhood contracts and how these might work as NHS England's consultation is set to close next week.

And the BMA published a briefing setting out what the GP committee thinks about some of those proposals.

And later on, Kimberly will be joining us to talk about a legal appeal that's arguing that the GMC has a duty of care to the doctors it is investigating.

So there's new data that was published last week that revealed how much GPs are earning.

What exactly is this data and what did it show about the general picture of what GPs are earning?

What we're talking about here is data on GP earnings and expenses published each year by NHS England.

The data is drawn from tax returns, so it doesn't actually show solely what GPs earn from working for the NHS.

So I went into management consulting.

I worked with banks, supermarkets, NHS England, pharma companies, healthcare companies, all sorts of different things, working on all sorts of different challenges.

And It was great in some respects, but I found it stressful.

Right.

I get to try and, um, take kind of that, um, local view that I've got about my area, and take it down to Westminster and, and bring that forwards.

There's, um- ... a debate we've, we've just had as part of that bill committee I was on, it was all about, um, healthcare and getting rid of NHS England.

And I was able to-

Mm

I'm your host Annabel Collins and this week I'm joined by Caitlin Tilley and James Illman.

Advice and guidance, which put simply is when a GP seeks expert input from a hospital specialist regarding a patient's care, has been ramped up by NHS England over recent months.

But HSJ has revealed this week the National Safety Watchdog has called for a pause in its rollout after its use has been linked to two patient deaths.

We're going to talk more about this really interesting intervention and more about advice and guidance, why the NHS has been so keen on it and what its future could look like.

Again, delayed diagnosis there.

A recurring concern that the report highlighted was that ANG was and is being mandated across the NHS.

NHS England has clarified that ANG was never meant to be mandated.

It was never meant to prevent GPs from being able to make referrals.