QoF income falls trigger survey row
GP practices’ achievement on the Quality and Outcomes Framework fell across the UK in the last financial year, costing the average practice in England about £1,800. Newly published figures show GPs in all four UK countries suffered a drop in performance, which has been largely attributed to changes to the patient experience indicators. The figures […]
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Research backs QRISK
The QRISK formula for identifying patients most at risk of developing cardiovascular disease should replace the Framingham risk score in the UK, researchers recommend today. A study published in the BMJ compares the performance of the QRISK and Framingham scores for predicting 10-year cardiovascular disease risk in more than 1m UK patients. It found that, on every […]
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NHS Choices to publish mortality rates
NHS Choices is to start publishing hospitals’ standardised mortality ratios on its website. The government’s flagship health site already publishes generalised mortality rates for heart surgery and operations such as hip and knee surgery. But within the next few weeks, doctors and patients will be able to access much more specific information. The HSMR figures will […]
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Doctors call for Google to change ad policies
Doctors are calling on internet search engine Google to change its advertising policies to prevent links to unproven remedies appearing when patients search for medical information.
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James Cook says C+B led to DNA rise
Another hospital department has reported an increase in its did-not-attend (DNA) rate for patients whose appointments were made through Choose and Book. Orthopaedic surgeons from James Cook University Hospital in Middlesborough say that they have logged a 39% increase in non-attendance rates since their department started to use Choose and Book in 2006. The doctors, […]
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Best Practice online
The BMJ is launching an online point-of-care decision support tool that aims to provide immediate access to expert opinion, guidelines and the latest evidence. Best Practice has been built for doctors and clinicians to use as they are working with patients. It aims to deliver information in “bite-size chunks” to people in settings such as […]
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Choose and Book increases DNAs
Attendance in outpatient clinics is worse for patients referred via Choose and Book than for those given an appointment after a traditional GP referral, according to a new study. Hospital doctors at University Hospital Lewisham compared 700 patients who had been referred via the electronic booking system with the same number of patients referred on […]
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OLPC has potential for health
Computers provided to children in developing countries as part of the One Laptop One Child initiative could also be used to deliver health education and healthcare, according to a new report. Researchers from the National Library of Medicine in the US looked at how the laptops could be used in medical settings and concluded that […]
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E-Health Insider’s industry round up 18.12.2008
This month’s E-Health Insider industry round covers system deployments, agreements, new products, appointments and other changes at leading healthcare IT suppliers. Data Transfer Service contract negotiations complete NHS Connecting for Health has announced that it has completed contract negotiations for the ongoing provision of the Data Transfer Service with BT. Existing contractual arrangements ended in […]
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DH chooses 40 bodies for information accreditation
A total of 40 organisations have been selected to test the Department of Health’s information accreditation scheme that will award quality marks to bodies producing health and social care information. The initiative will ‘kite mark’ information producers, accrediting the source of information rather than the information itself, to make it easier for people to be […]
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