Subject to the Health and Social Care Bill, from 2013-14, clinical commissioning groups will have access to public health advice, information and expertise in relation to the healthcare services that they commission, provided by local public health teams based in local authorities.

The intention is to make it a mandatory requirement for local authorities, from April 2013,  to provide this service to clinical commissioning groups, but the detail of the arrangements will need to be planned locally.

The core offer follows on from the Healthy Lives, Healthy People White Paper consultation on the funding and commissioning routes for public health.

The draft guidance has been sent to Directors of Public Health and Clinical Commisioning Group leads, together with a request for comments to be received by 30 March to help refine the guidance.

Improving patient experience is a key aim for the NHS. By asking, monitoring, and acting upon patient feedback, organisations are able to make improvements in the areas that patients say matter most to them.

This framework is significant for healthcare organisations because it provides a common evidence-based list of what matters to patients, and can be used to direct efforts to improve services. For example it can be used to help define what questions to ask patients in surveys and in real time feedback.

Download the patient experience framework

The Framework was agreed by the National Quality Board Patient Experience Sub Group and draws on research published from the King’s Fund and King’s College London. That research suggested it is possible to apply a single generic framework for patient experience to a wide range of health conditions and settings, and recommended that the DH adopts a common framework for this purpose.

This Framework agreed by NQB is based on a modified version of the Picker Institute Principles of Patient-Centred Care.

Applying the framework

Different areas of the framework will be more significant in particular settings for different groups of patients and therefore demographics, equality, and environment will need to be considered when applying the framework.

Healthcare organisations will also need to have regard to the Equality Act 2010 and the three aims of the public sector equality duty:

• the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
• advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do
• promote good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The new equality duty replaced three sets of equality duties – for race, disability and gender – and covers the following protected characteristics: age, disability;,gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

The NHS Standard Contract should be used by commissioners when commissioning acute, mental health and learning disability, community or ambulance Services.

These variations will bring these contracts in line with the requirements of the 2012/13 NHS Operating Framework.

Read the consultation documents and complete the response form. The consultation runs from 21 February until 15 May 2012.

In February 2011 the Government published the Command Paper Enabling Excellence: Autonomy and Accountability for Healthcare Workers, Social Workers and Social Care Workers.  The paper sets out the Government’s vision for the future of workforce regulation including increasing the independence and accountability of the regulatory bodies.  Following the publication of Enabling Excellence the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) was commissioned to look at whether there was a case for moving to smaller councils for regulatory bodies and the merits of appointing the chairs of the regulators’ governing councils’ rather than electing them from within the governing council.

The CHRE published an interim report, Board size and effectiveness: advice to the Department of Health regarding health professional regulators on these two issues in September 2011.  The advice was that ‘boards with a range of 8-12 members are associated with greater effectiveness’ and advised that ‘the chair should be independently recruited and appointed rather than elected from within the board membership’.

Following the CHRE’s recommendations the Department is proposing to change the legislation for the GMCand the GDC to reduce the size of their governing councils and to enable them to appoint their next chair and this consultation seeks your views on the proposals.  The consultation is largely aimed at the health professions regulatory bodies, their registrants and service users however we would, of course, welcome all views.

Guidance on  varying the 2012/13 NHS Standard Contract one year default contract duration

Download ‘the week’: issue 235, 10 – 16 February 2012

Below is an explanation of the documents that make up the payment system:

Pathway system slides

The pathway system slides summarise the context for bringing in the new payment system for maternity care in shadow form. It contains simple templates for the information required (antenatal and postnatal) to run the system and provides the shadow prices for 2012-13.

Business rules

The document, 2012-13 business rules contains the business rules and some questions and answers that commissioners and providers should use in commissioning maternity care.

Technical calculations

The technical calculations spreadsheet provides the technical data and the calculations used in developing the prices for each part of the system. Developing prices using the technical calculations spreadsheet document explains the methodology used to develop prices and should be used in conjunction with the spreadsheet.

Shadow year for maternity pathway pricing and template

The shadow year for maternity pathway pricing explains the rationale for the shadow year and why each maternity provider and commissioner need to implement this new system in shadow form during 2012-13.

A shadow year template is provided that may aid organisations to summarise and understand their case mix for each part of the pathway, compare their case mix with the national averages, translate their expected case mix into planned income, and evaluate the financial impact of this new system.

Antenatal pathway

The antenatal pathway document describes the specific characteristics and factors, based on the health and social care assessment undertaken at the booking appointment, that allocate women into a specific antenatal payment category based on expected resource use.

Postnatal pathway

Postnatal pathway describes the specific characteristics and factors, based on information gathered throughout the antenatal and birth periods, that allocate women into a specific postnatal payment category based on expected resource use.

Antenatal and postnatal simple data collection forms

The antenatal and postnatal input proformas are simple data collection forms for electronically recording each woman’s antenatal and postnatal data locally; it produces the relevant HRG for each woman, and appends each data record, in much the same way as a grouper on the databank sheet.

Alternatively, organisations may wish to develop their own local system, or adapt these further for their own use, or for use across a network.

View and download the documents for the PbR maternity pathway system 2012-13.

Read David Flory’s covering letter on the publication of the final 2012-13 Payment by Results package. Access the information and guidance in support of Payment by Results in 2012-13 see below:

PbR operational guidance and tariffs

The 2012-13 PbR guidance has been clarified and expanded in a number of areas, in response to feedback received at road-test which concluded on 20 January 2012.

• view the PbR Guidance, PbR Code of Conduct and the tariff information spreadsheet for 2012-13.

Technical Guidance

View the technical guidance which includes:

• step by step guide: calculating the 2012-13 National Tariff
• market forces factor technical paper.

Mental health clustering booklet for 2012-13

The mental health clustering booklet has been updated for 2012-13.

PbR Maternity Pathways

A suite of materials have been published to support the introduction of a maternity pathway system for payment, in shadow form, in 2012-13.

PbR maternity pathways package

Maternity pathway payment system in 2012-13

HRG4 2012-13 local payment grouper

The local payment grouper will be made available on the Information Centre’s website. A link will be added when it is available.

‘Building a People Transition Policy for Public Health England’ is a first step in setting out how the principles of the HR Transition Framework, which provides the guiding standards relating to employee movement from ‘sender’ organisations to ‘receiver’ organisations, will be used.

The detailed HR policies and processes required to transfer, redeploy and appoint staff to posts in the new organisation will be set out in the People Transition Policy (PTP), which will be published later this year.

See Building a People Transition Policy for Public Health England

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These proposed changes would in the first instance affect NHS acute, mental health and ambulance trusts. The Department of Health is currently exploring the feasibility of extending the proposed new reporting requirements to independent sector providers of NHS-funded care from 2014/15.

The letter also flags up that NHS acute and mental health trusts will be formally required to have their Quality Accounts externally audited from this year, 2011/12

See the joint Department of Health and Monitor letter Quality accounts: reporting requirements for 2011/12 and planned changes for 2012/13