IT staff jobs at risk in cuts to NHS Blood Service
Staff who have been developing and implementing a new blood tracking systems for the NHS Blood Service designed to improve patient safety have told E-Health Insider they have been warned they could soon be out of a job. Two weeks ago, Peter Garwood, head of the NHS Blood Service, announced that the 14 existing centres are […]
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Telehealth must get smarter, says report
A new report calling for ‘more intelligence at the core of healthcare IT systems’ claims that while the current e-health model supports the collection of a limited range of vital signs data, they are not clever enough to carry out vital patient diagnosis. Wireless technology firm Wireless Healthcare claims telehealth devices lack the intelligence to […]
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Strike action threat over NHS Direct cuts
Unison and the Royal College of Nursing are warning they may consider strike action after a consultation into staff cuts at NHS Direct is complete. NHS Direct launched a three-month consultation in May 2006 on proposals to cut capacity due to the service picking up fewer GP Out of Hours contracts than it had […]
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Online clinical incident reporting cuts admin
A primary care trust has deployed a web-based reporting tool to log clinical incidents in real time. Last month 64% of incidents were logged online and the trust says deployment of the system is already significantly reducing the administrative and managerial burden of reporting clinical incidents and has led to closer working between the clinical governance […]
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Tower Hamlets PCT cuts down PBC reporting times
Data mining software has cut down the length of time that one PCT needs to prepare PBC reports from two days to under an hour. Tower Hamlets PCT installed the Monarch system in order to go through their reports and pull out the necessary data from 38 practices, such as outpatient appointments, non-elective admissions […]
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EHR opt-out debate “doesn’t matter to patients”
The question of whether patients opt into having their electronic records shared or have to specifically request to opt out of the system probably makes no difference to the patient either way, claims an editorial in today’s British Medical Journal. Patient representative Jan Wilkinson, responding to a point-counterpoint argument about whether it is better for […]
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Connecting for Health fails to lead on Contact
NHS Connecting for Health continues to run its own local version of Microsoft Exchange rather than migrating to NHS Contact, the web-based e-mail service it procured for the health service at a total cost of up to £90m. At Healthcare Computing 2006 last month CfH chief executive Richard Granger castigated NHS trusts for not fully […]
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Trusts make use of orthopaedic template software
Ferrania UK has announced that eight NHS trusts are now using its LifeWeb TraumaCad orthopaedic templating software. The TraumaCad solution is said to provide a quick, easy-to-use solution for routine pre-surgical templating, through importing and exporting of any PACS file (CT, X-ray etc.). JPEG scanner and digital camera pictures can also be imported. Ferrania say […]
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NHS Direct staff could face job cuts
Jobs at NHS Direct may be cut by up to a third, and nurses replaced by non-medical call centre operatives, according to press reports today. The Nursing Times will tomorrow report that a closed session of the NHS Direct board, held on 28 February, drafted proposals to cut the equivalent of 960 full-time post through […]
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NHS 24 cuts numbers of ‘call-backs’
Scotland’s health advice helpline NHS 24 has reduced the percentage of ‘call-backs’ to patients to less than 20% from a high of more than 50%, tackling a key area identified by an independent review of the service last year. The health advice and information service says figures for January show that ‘call backs’ to patients, […]
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