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Pathology

Pathology services underpin clinical care: most decisions on diagnosis or treatment involve pathology investigations and, often, expert interpretation of the results.  Services are developing to meet the challenges of rising demand, workforce pressures and technological developments, while maintaining their current high quality; and also to achieve greater cost effectiveness and improve their responsiveness to both patients and clinical service users.

The Pathology Programme has a number of key workstreams in place to deliver these aims, which are set out below.

What's new

18 December 2008

5 December 2008

We are delighted that two pathology services who worked with NHS Improvement as part of the National Pathology Service Improvement programme have had their achievements recognised at the Health Service Journal Awards on 1st December. Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust and St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust were both short listed in the category of clinical service redesign, with the team from St Helens and Knowsley highly commended for their achievements.

6 November 2008

Acting for change: transforming pathology services through action learning, the report of the recent phase of the Pathology Action Learning Programme, is published during National Pathology Week. Find out how 35 projects around the country used action learning techniques to improve their local services.

30 October 2008

A tool to help with pathology workforce planning is now available, free of charge to NHS pathology services.

Independent Review of NHS Pathology Services

Published: 18 December 2008

The report of the second phase of the independent review of NHS pathology services chaired by Lord Carter has been published, together with the Department of Health's response to the recommendations it contains.  An impact assessment will be published for consultation in 2009.

NHS Connecting for Health: electronic order communications in primary care

DH is working with NHS Connecting for Health on a project to develop electronic ordering of pathology tests, and reporting of test results, in primary care. This will be the first such system to use the Spine Messaging Service and the new pathology messaging standards.

The National Pathology Service Improvement Programme

DH has commissioned the National Pathology Service Improvement Team to work with NHS pathology services to implement service improvement techniques and Lean principles.

The Pathology Action Learning Programme

Action learning is learning from taking action for change on challenging issues. It has proved a successful technique for addressing problems with no obvious solution. In its second phase, the Pathology Action Learning Programme has supported around thirty action learning sets around the country, to tackle issues identified as priorities locally.

The report of their work has now been published.

The National Pathology Benchmarking Service

DH is supporting the development of the National Pathology Benchmarking Service for primary care. Benchmarking is an important tool to support demand management for pathology services, and an increased focus on appropriate testing for individual patients.

Workforce modernisation

Workforce re-profiling pilots were undertaken in three pathology services, and the report has been published.  A free tool is now being launched to support pathology workforce planning.  This is part of a wider DH programme of workforce modernisation.

Accreditation

DH is working with Clinical Pathology Accreditation (UK) Ltd (CPA) and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) on modernisation of pathology accreditation. A particular focus in 2007/2008 is on accreditation and point of care testing.

Good practice guidance for NHS mortuaries

In August 2006, DH published Care and Respect in Death: Good Practice Guidance for NHS Mortuary Staff. Mortuary staff have an important and challenging role, providing an efficient, safe, secure service while ensuring care and respect in death and treating bereaved families sensitively. This document sets out key principles of good practice for staff in NHS mortuaries and provides advice on how those principles can be put into practice.

Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR)

The National Service Framework for Renal Services recommends that kidney function should be assessed and monitored using an eGFR, rather than serum creatinine alone, in people identified as having an increased risk of chronic kidney disease.

Links are given below to the information sheets on eGFR (including information on how to order printed copies), produced for for laboratories and general practitioners, and a leaflet of frequently asked questions.

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Useful links.

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