Number of PCTs to be halved
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt this week announced the reorganisation of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England, almost halving the number from the current 303 to 152. The new Primary Care Trusts will be established from 1 October 2006. The DH said the announcement was the final part of the ‘Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS’ consultation, which […]
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Two new PCT reporting tools launched
Two new web-based reporting tools to help primary care trusts and GPs deliver practice–based commissioning have been launched. Medical data firm Dr Foster Intelligence says its PBC tool will provide GPs with activity and financial statements as well as benchmarking data with information for all trusts in England and many independent sector treatment centres. Another PBC […]
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SHA overwhelmed by public response to EHR consent
A senior member of a strategic health authority with a new interim electronic record system has told delegates at the Healthcare Computing 2006 conference that there was such an enormous public response to a mailshot detailing their rights to opt-out that they had to take on extra staff. Anne Reed, clinical data repository manager at […]
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Delays confirmed for PACS in NWWM
NHS Connecting for Health has acknowledged that the North West and West Midlands region will miss the March 2007 deadline for picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) to be fully implemented across England. The delay follows the abandonment of the original contractual arrangements for delivering PACS and Radiology Information Systems (RIS) in the region. Asked […]
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Northumbria goes outside NPfIT for PAS
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust has gone out to tender for a patient administration system as a result of delays in the availability of a suitable system that meets the trust’s requirements under the NHS national programme for IT. The acute hospital trust this week placed a procurement notice in the Official Journal of the European […]
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Authorities flag up problems ahead for C+B plans
Health authorities have until the middle of March to submit plans for meeting the government’s Choose and Book targets but some are already highlighting major threats to the achievement of the milestones. Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority has put its chances of achieving the Choose and Book targets at ‘red status’ and highlighted the […]
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London child health system led to vaccination problems
Problems with the introduction of a new child health information system, provided under NHS Connecting for Health to ten PCTs in North London and Essex, have created difficulties in identifying which infants and children are due for jabs, issuing vaccination calls and recording whether they have received them. According to a report in the Observer […]
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ECGs by phone for GPs in the north west
GPs in Lancashire and Cumbria SHA have started using a telephone-based clinical monitoring service, using small devices that take ECGs which are then interpreted over the phone while the patient waits. Broomwell Healthwatch, based in Manchester, have supplied monitoring devices to several GP practices. These devices are already in several practices in Preston, Chorley and […]
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Lorenzo CRS solution delayed until late 2007
The delivery of the strategic Care Record Service solution in the North West and West Midlands cluster has been confirmed as running badly late and subject to "significant delays" until at least late 2007. As a result, strategic health authorities in the area are now developing "delay mitigation plans" based on interim use of existing systems […]
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HC2006 to run NHS basics course for new IT staff
The annual Healthcare Computing conference (HC2006) in Harrogate is to feature for the first time a series of workshops for technical staff new to the NHS. The stream, ‘Understanding Healthcare’, will be aimed at IT staff who have just joined the healthcare sector and be designed to educate them about the realities of healthcare […]
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