2012 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council

2012 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215050885
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
This year's accountability hearings focused on three areas of particular interest: the arrangements for revalidation of doctors, which are to commence on 3 December 2012, and associated matters such as patient involvement and examination of the language competence of doctors; the professional leadership activity undertaken by the GMC in the last year; and the regulation activity undertaken by the GMC, including the establishment of the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service. The Council is performing effectively in its two roles of defining and applying standards for the medical profession and providing a focus of professional leadership. The outcome of the Law Commission's consultation on professional regulation in the health and care sector, which proposed a formal role for the Health Committee in the accountability structures, is still awaited. Specific concerns included that whilst there has been some progress on the amendment of domestic legislation which restricts the language testing of doctors this is no substitute for the revision of the European legislation which presently prohibits language testing of doctors on a national basis. There have also been continued upward trends in complaints against doctors received by the GMC, and the Committee expects to examine in 2013 the outcomes of further research the GMC has commissioned into these trends. The Committee feels that the present 15-month target for the GMC to complete 90% of its fitness to practise cases should be lowered to 12 months. The Committee also welcomes proposed legislation to enable the GMC's investigatory arm to appeal against decisions made by the MPTS where the outcome of a hearing is disputed

2012 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council

2012 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215050885
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Get Book Here

Book Description
This year's accountability hearings focused on three areas of particular interest: the arrangements for revalidation of doctors, which are to commence on 3 December 2012, and associated matters such as patient involvement and examination of the language competence of doctors; the professional leadership activity undertaken by the GMC in the last year; and the regulation activity undertaken by the GMC, including the establishment of the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service. The Council is performing effectively in its two roles of defining and applying standards for the medical profession and providing a focus of professional leadership. The outcome of the Law Commission's consultation on professional regulation in the health and care sector, which proposed a formal role for the Health Committee in the accountability structures, is still awaited. Specific concerns included that whilst there has been some progress on the amendment of domestic legislation which restricts the language testing of doctors this is no substitute for the revision of the European legislation which presently prohibits language testing of doctors on a national basis. There have also been continued upward trends in complaints against doctors received by the GMC, and the Committee expects to examine in 2013 the outcomes of further research the GMC has commissioned into these trends. The Committee feels that the present 15-month target for the GMC to complete 90% of its fitness to practise cases should be lowered to 12 months. The Committee also welcomes proposed legislation to enable the GMC's investigatory arm to appeal against decisions made by the MPTS where the outcome of a hearing is disputed

2012 Accountability Hearing with Monitor

2012 Accountability Hearing with Monitor PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215054593
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
This is the second annual accountability hearing with Monitor from the Health Committee. The parallel roles of Monitor and CQC were criticised in the Francis report on the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust (HC 898, session 2012-13, ISBN 9780102981469) because they created significant opportunities for confusion. The Health Committee concurs and stresses that it needs to be addressed urgently to avoid the twin dangers of gaps in regulation and duplication of regulation. This report concludes that the proposal to use a combination of transitional powers and licensing provisions (designed to apply to all providers of NHS care) to provide the framework for the long-term regulation of Foundation Trusts is profoundly unsatisfactory. The role of Monitor in relation to competition in the NHS remains unclear, and the respective roles of Monitor and the Competition Commission in the market for health and care services need urgent clarification. Monitor's positive approach towards the commissioning of integrated care pathways is welcome. Monitor should use its role in setting the tariff paid for certain NHS services (alongside the NHS Commissioning Board) to encourage system redesign and the integration of service provision, as well as to discourage "cherry-picking" of the most economically attractive patients. The establishment of a provider failure regime is welcome, but a number of important elements in that regime are not yet fully developed and further progress is needed over the coming months.

2012 Accountability Hearing with the Nursing and Midwifery Council

2012 Accountability Hearing with the Nursing and Midwifery Council PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215054609
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is a vital safeguard for care quality and patient safety, but "over a number of years the NMC has failed to understand its function and properly prioritise patient safety". The new management team in the NMC is committed to address its failings. However there continues to be a serious gap between current performance and acceptable standards. The NMC has proposed that fitness to practise cases should be decided on average within 18 months of a complaint being received; the Committee proposes that this should be reduced to 9 months, with a maximum of 12 months. The NMC also has had a poor track record of fitness to practise decisions being challenged and overturned. The CHRE has needed to almost routinely refer NMC decisions to the High Court. It is also unacceptable that the NMC underestimated the budget for its fitness to practise directorate by 30%. The Government's intervention to limit the effect of the fee increase on registrants is welcomed. However, nurses and midwives still face a 32% fee increase at a time of public sector pay restraint. A further fee increase can not be justified and the NMC should consider introducing a phased payment system for registrants. The language and communication skills of nurses and midwives remain a concern. MPs also question why the NMC has made such slow progress on a system of revalidation. Lastly, many of the NMC's problems stem from inadequate IT infrastructure where two key systems cannot communicate directly and deliver incomplete or inaccurate information

2013 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council - HC 897

2013 Accountability Hearing with the General Medical Council - HC 897 PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215070577
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
GMC's fitness to practise successfully produces outcomes that protect patients from sub-standard doctors but failures to communicate the reasons for decisions and poor investigative practices have undermined a small number on investigations. The GMC should review its fitness to practice procedures to prevent such mistake. The Committee also found that while it is still too early to judge whether revalidation has been effective there is a worrying approach to the oversight of revalidation. Each designated body has a responsible officer for revalidating their medical staff, but the degree to which the responsible officer will be held to account is unclear. It is imperative that the GMC clarifies the personal responsibility and accountability of responsible officers. There is also concern over the number of responsible officers available to oversee the revalidation of doctors working in primary care. GPs are revalidated not by their own employers but by one of the 27 NHS England local area teams that oversees Clinical Commissioning Groups in England. Just 27 responsible officers will be tasked with overseeing revalidation for approximately 45,0000 GPs in England. The Government's intention had been to give the GMC the power to allow it to appeal decisions made by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) in 2014 by using a mechanism in secondary legislation called a section 60 order. The Government now plans to introduce the reform in primary legislation as part of a proposed Law Commission Bill thus meeting with even further delay

HC 339 - 2014 Accountability Hearing with the Health and care Professions Council

HC 339 - 2014 Accountability Hearing with the Health and care Professions Council PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215073053
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
A draft Law Commission Bill on the regulation of health and social care professions sets out the framework for a negative register, but it was not included in the Queens' Speech either as a draft or a substantive Bill. The Government needs to set out what changes to the powers of regulators it is planning to make through secondary legislation instead. Following up themes in the Francis report, regulators need to be visible and accessible to registrants, and also to patients and members of the public who wish to raise concerns about patient safety. Since 2003, the HCPC has recommended that statutory regulation be extended to a further eleven professions from the current sixteen. Of these, the only groups to receive statutory regulation to date are operating department practitioners and practitioner psychologists [the other groups are Clinical Perfusion Scientists, Clinical Physiologists, Dance Movement Therapists, Clinical Technologists, Medical Illustrators, Maxillofacial Prosthetists & Technologists, Sports Therapists, Sonographers and Genetic Counsellors]. The HCPC should list any professional groups for which they feel there is a compelling patient safety case for statutory regulation so that this can be pursued with the Department of Health as a matter of urgency. There is also concern at the length of time it can take for professional groups to gain statutory regulation. Given that new groups can be added to the HCPC's register by means of secondary legislation, there should be no undue delay in extending statutory regulation to professional groups where there is a compelling patient safety case for doing so

HC 845 - Impact Of Physical Activity And Diet On Health

HC 845 - Impact Of Physical Activity And Diet On Health PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215084713
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Diet, obesity, and physical activity all have important impacts on health. For too long however, physical activity has been seen merely in the light of its benefits in tackling obesity. A core message from this inquiry is the compelling evidence that physical activity in its own right has huge health benefits totally independent of a person's weight. The importance of this - regardless of weight, age, gender or other factors - needs to be clearly communicated. Interventions focused on encouraging individuals to change their behaviour with regard to diet and physical activity need to be underpinned by broader, population-level measures. Whilst both are important, population-level interventions have the advantage of impacting on far greater numbers than could ever benefit from individual interventions. The Committee recommends that the next Government prioritises prevention, health promotion and early intervention to tackle the health inequalities and avoidable harm resulting from poor diet and physical inactivity. The Committee regards it as inexplicable and unacceptable that the NHS is now spending more on bariatric surgery for obesity than on a national roll-out of intensive lifestyle intervention programmes that were first shown to cut obesity and prevent diabetes over a decade ago. All tiers of weight management services should be universally available and individual clinicians should use every opportunity to help their patients to recognise and address the problems caused by obesity and poor diet, and to promote the benefits of physical activity.

HC 805 - End of Life Care

HC 805 - End of Life Care PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215084144
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 57

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Book Description
This report looks at the state of end of life care since the independent Review of the Liverpool Care Pathway, chaired by Baroness Neuberger. It finds great variation in quality and practice across both acute and community settings. It makes a number of recommendations for improvement, and in particular strongly recommends that social care should be free at the end of life. Other conclusions included that: all clinicians and providers who may care for people at the end of life should be aware of the Five Priorities of Care but in light of the variation in practice a senior named person in each NHS Trust be given responsibility for monitoring how end of life care is being delivered within their organisation; expertise should be more equitably available to people with a non-cancer diagnosis, older people and those with dementia; all staff who provide palliative and end of life care to people with life limiting conditions should receive training in advance care planning, including the different models and forms that are available and their legal status; most people who express a preference would like to die at home but that is made more difficult by the shortfall in community nurses and specialist outreach palliative care; sustainable, long term funding for the hospice sector also needs to be addressed as part of the Government's response to the Palliative Care Funding Review; and bereavement support for families should also be consistently included as part of end of life care

Public Expenditure on Health and Care Services

Public Expenditure on Health and Care Services PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215055279
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This report states that the values of the NHS will only be reflected in practice if NHS and social care services are 're-imagined'. The care provided by the health and social care system will break down if quicker progress is not made to develop more integrated health and social care services which focus on meeting the needs of individual patients. It is unlikely that public expenditure on health and social care services will increase significantly in the foreseeable future. This means that the only way to sustain or improve present service levels in the NHS will be to focus on a transformation of care through genuine and sustained service integration. There must be a much more joined up approach to commissioning health and care services. On other issues the Health Committee also concludes: measures currently being used to respond to the Nicholson Challenge too often represent short-term fixes rather than the sustainable long-term service transformations; changes in tariff payments within the NHS do not constitute ’efficiency savings' - they are simply internal transfers; under-spending against budget of money allocated to the NHS has attracted adverse comment and the MPs call for a general review of the operation of Treasury rules; the NHS will not be able to rely on the present rate of paybill savings once the present restraints on public sector pay are relaxed in April 2013

HC 401 - Managing the Care of People with Long-Term Conditions

HC 401 - Managing the Care of People with Long-Term Conditions PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215073274
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
15 million NHS patients in England with long-term conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and asthma account for 70% of the annual expenditure of the NHS in England. One projection estimating that the bill for treatment of long-term conditions will require the NHS to find £4 billion more each year by 2016. Increasingly, patients do not have a single long-term condition but live with two or more conditions, complicating treatment and adding to its cost. The Committee strongly supports the development of individual care planning for people with long-term conditions, based on the principles successfully demonstrated in the NHS House of Care programme. Care planning approaches will involve GPs, community health services and specialists sitting down with the patient to draw up a personalised plan for the care required, which includes the support needed to help the patient manage his or her own condition. The challenge, though, of introducing personalised care planning for 15 million people is substantial. The Committee looked at the prevailing view that services to treat long-term conditions should be moved out of hospitals and into primary and community care. To provide effective care for these conditions, services have to be maintained across all settings, from support in the home through to acute specialist care, and many conditions will continue to require specialist services delivered in hospital. Effective management of long-term conditions also requires collaboration with other government providers, such as housing and transport services.

House of Commons - Health Committee: Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the Mental Health Act 2007 - HC 584

House of Commons - Health Committee: Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the Mental Health Act 2007 - HC 584 PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215061485
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
According to the Health Committee, more needs to be done to protect the interests of patients who rely on mental health services. The Committee has undertaken a review of the 2007 Mental Health Act (ISBN 9780105412076). Many psychiatric wards are over capacity and there is huge pressure on beds, nevertheless, the Committee was shocked to learn that there is evidence that patients who need hospital treatment are being sectioned unnecessarily in order to access a bed. This represents a serious violation of patient's basic rights and it is never acceptable for patients to be subjected to compulsory detention unless it is clinically necessary. The 2007 Act contained important provisions which introduced Community Treatment Orders (CTOs). These orders allow for patients to be treated in the community whilst still being subject to recall to hospital if their condition deteriorates. The Committee is also concerned that pressure on hospital beds may be driving increased use of CTOs. MPs also examined the function of Independent Mental Health Advocates who help patients take advantage of their rights whilst in hospital. The Committee is in no doubt that a patient's primary advocate should be their clinician and independent advocates, ultimately, provide an important, but supplementary, service