NWL Hospitals Trust Board, 17 Dec 2008

A rather brief meeting of just over 1 hour, well out of normal sequence (as the Board usually meets on the last Wednesday of a month the ‘proper’ date would have been 31 December – avoided for fairly obvious reasons).

Healthcare Commission and the Care Quality Commission
The HC is being abolished, to be replaced by the CQC, a new regulator of health services. All NHS trusts that provide health services will have to register with the CQC. Applications for registration must be made on-line between 12 January and 6 February 2009. It seems that at this time not all the regulations are known in detail.

NHS London Medium Term Financial Strategy
This is the same item already reported on in the meeting of Harrow PCT last week. Viewed from the hospitals it is not necessarily the good thing that the PCTs think it is. The fear is that the hospitals will get a bad deal from the PCTs.

Performance
Some interesting points here. Attendance at A&E is up quite considerably, about 8% compared to last year, with the reasons unknown. Last Monday 795 patients attended A&E, about 200 more than the previous ‘record’, more than 100 of these requiring admission to hospital. This caused a big problem with the provision of beds. Incidentally, many of the London trusts have high A&E attendance on Mondays, but no one knows why this should be so.

For the first time the Trust is ahead of its MRSA target.

There is a diarrhoea problem apparently, principally among elderly patients. The medical opinion is that as many of the elderly are admitted with respiratory problems they are given antibiotics, which have unwanted side-effects. So, take care which antibiotics are used!


Paul