Category: Healthcare

NHS Commissioning Board local area teams map: naming with LAT-itude

List and links to individual pages on local area teams

Other maps of the new NHS: clinical commissioning groups (CCGs); commissioning support units (CSUs); specialised commissioning hubs and clinical senates.

I’ve been looking at NHS local area teams as part of a forthcoming report for my employer EHI Intelligence, which will also cover CCGs and CSUs. LATs, the 27 local offices of the NHS Commissioning Board, are another part of the new structure of NHS that comes into force as of 1 April. Among other things, they will provide access to centrally-run ICT systems such as NHSmail.

And, this being the NHS, the local area teams map below based on a PDF from the commissioning board* features names that don’t exist on any current map of England, or at least not in the same shape. There are some names shared with CCGs and CSUs – although there are also LATs which break new ground. Continue reading “NHS Commissioning Board local area teams map: naming with LAT-itude”

NHS specialised commissioning hubs and clinical senates mapped

Following the Health and Social Care Act 2012, April 2013 saw the management of the NHS in England being extensively reorganised, under a new central organisation named NHS England (originally the NHS Commissioning Board). NHS England set up 27 area teams to act as its local offices: these are mapped here, along with links to pages on each of the teams including their contact details.

NHS specialised commissioning hubs

As well as the area teams, NHS England set up 10 specialised commissioning hubs, mapped below, which are responsible for leading the commissioning of specialised services in the NHS in England, including the direct commissioning of military and prison health services. There is more information on NHS England’s work on direct commissioning of services here.

The 10 areas are quite similar to the 10 strategic health authority areas that were abolished at the end of March 2013, but with a few differences: for example, Dorset migrated from the south-west into the area previously known as South Central and now called Thames Valley and Wessex. Continue reading “NHS specialised commissioning hubs and clinical senates mapped”

Yorkshire NHS jobs cut by 4% since election, East and NW also down

The Yorkshire and the Humber region has lost more than 4% of its NHS jobs since the election, more than double the national rate, according to data published last week by the NHS Information Centre. The East of England and North West regions lost more than 3% of their NHS jobs.

With a couple of exceptions, the poorer areas of England lost more NHS jobs than average while richer regions lost fewer, between May 2010 and October 2012. Two NHS regions actually gained NHS jobs over this period: South East Coast, up 0.75%, and the North East (which has the most NHS jobs per resident of any region, with more than 24 full-time equivalent (FTE) health service staff per 1,000 residents), rising 0.53%. London and South Central reduced FTE staff numbers by less than 1%. Continue reading “Yorkshire NHS jobs cut by 4% since election, East and NW also down”

Cornwall council’s privatisation compromise

The west country council came perilously close to outsourcing a wide range of services to BT. Why did it change its mind?

Based on a set of interviews with councillors, and a trip to Bodmin to take a look at the Beacon technology park courtesy of Ann Kerridge – some images in the gallery above – this is my first piece in my second run as a freelance journalist, for the Guardian’s Society pages. Cornwall council is taking a pragmatic approach to outsourcing, trying to create and protect local jobs, increase efficiency and involve its local NHS trusts.

Continue reading “Cornwall council’s privatisation compromise”

Local NHS news comes from local journalists, so let’s not go paperless

Last week, Sam Shead of ZDNet got in touch with EHI Intelligence to ask if we expect to see a paperless NHS by 2018, as Jeremy Hunt pledged in a speech (analysed sharply by my EHI colleague Lyn Whitfield – she quotes one of Hunt’s aides on whether there will be funding to go paperless as saying: “Oh God. Do you mean central money? No, not a thing”). Mr Shead quoted me as follows:

“The English NHS will not be paperless by 2018,” senior analyst at EHI Intelligence, SA Mathieson, told ZDNet. “It is made up of several hundred organisations with greatly differing IT capabilities, as well as thousands of independent GPs.” Continue reading “Local NHS news comes from local journalists, so let’s not go paperless”