Correspondence

FT Bulletin 2 December 2015

Published 2 December 2015

Applies to England

1. For action

1.1 Agency price caps: new rules now in place

Thanks to those of you who took the time to respond to our consultation on national price caps for agency staff working in the NHS; we’ve now published the summary of your responses.

Following the consultation we, along with the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA), have implemented a cap on the amount of money that NHS trusts and foundation trusts can pay per hour for agency staff. This is one of the steps we’re taking to help ease some of the financial pressure facing the sector.

The new rules came into effect on 23 November and they cover all staff groups, including:

• nursing
• medical
• all other clinical and non-clinical agency staff

The price caps do not apply to substantive/permanent staff, bank staff, or staff employed by ambulance trusts. All NHS trusts and foundation trusts are required on a weekly basis to complete a short qualitative survey and to report the number of shifts where they have made payments in excess of the price caps, and/or the number of shifts where they have procured agency nursing staff through a non-approved framework or agency. The deadline for submission is 12pm on Wednesdays.

Further information and the weekly reporting tool is available on our website.

1.2 Acute and specialist foundation trusts: nominate your contact for activity planning by this Friday

We’re working with the NHS TDA and NHS England to promote better alignment in activity planning and reporting between commissioners and providers.

For the 2016/17 operational plan we’ll be using Secondary Uses Services’ (SUS) technical data definitions to replace the previous activity definitions used for the monthly activity return.

To give you early sight of our proposed changes, we’ve recalculated data for months 1 to 6 using these new definitions. We’d now like to share this with you to give you the chance to feed back any comments.

To receive a copy of your recalculated data, please email [email protected] by 5pm on Friday 4 December and include the details of your organisation’s contact for activity planning.

1.3 Have you told us what you think of the first national whistleblowing policy?

We’d like to hear your thoughts on the draft of the first national whistleblowing policy as we work to encourage a culture where raising issues at work becomes normal practice and where concerns are taken seriously and investigated properly.

We know many of you already have good organisational policies which support staff to raise concerns; however having a single national policy should ensure consistency across the NHS.

Please share this with your staff including local guardians, lead clinicians, non-executive directors (NEDs), and your patients so that all of their views can help shape the final policy.

You can respond using our online form by 5pm on Friday 8 January 2016.

1.4 Revised guidance for your A&E attendances and emergency admissions monthly return

Monitor, the NHS TDA, NHS England and the Department of Health (DH) have recently agreed changes to the guidance for the A&E attendances and emergency admissions monthly returns definitions. Please use these from January 2016’s data collection (to be published on 11 February) onwards.

The changes to the guidance reflect the following:

• a move from a weekly to a monthly collection (from June 2015 onwards)
• addressing the issue of 12 hour trolley waits where the patient is transferred to a mental health provider but the wait is not included in the return
• clarification of how GP referrals to medical assessment units or drop in clinics should be counted

Acute providers, please also note that if you provide only clinical governance support to a type 3 unit you cannot report this data in your activity; you can only include this activity if you are clinically responsible for the service.

1.5 New annual reporting manual available for your 2015/16 reports and accounts

Thanks to those of you who shared your views on our proposed changes to the foundation trust annual reporting manual. We’ve now published the summary of your responses and the updated version of the manual, for you to use when preparing your 2015/16 annual reports and accounts.

1.6 1 April 2016: preparing for the end of the 3 year automatic designation of foundation trust commissioner requested services (CRS)

As set out in Monitor’s 2013 Continuity of Services policy, on 1 April 2013, all services provided by foundation trusts were automatically designated as CRS for a 3 year period allowing commissioners time to review their service needs with you and to identify those services meeting one or more of the criteria for designation.

This automatic designation of foundation trust services expires on 1 April 2016 (or 12 months post-authorisation for foundation trusts authorised after April 2015) and, alongside NHS England, we’re encouraging commissioners to consider, working with you, whether they now need to designate any of your foundation trust’s services as CRS ahead of this date.

You can find more information about CRS on our website and if you have any queries about the designation process contact us at [email protected].

2. For information

2.1 Jimmy Savile: your responses and clarification over disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks

Thanks for sharing your views on the lessons learnt from Kate Lampard’s review of investigations into the activities of Jimmy Savile at NHS institutions. A summary of these has now been published in DH’s response.

Understandably, many of you commented that NHS providers carrying out 3 yearly DBS checks on all employees and volunteers (recommendation 7) is not a legal requirement, nor does it form part of NHS Employers’ guidance. DH’s response clarifies that there is no legal requirement for employers to undertake 3 yearly checks and the frequency period should remain determinable by any risks you identify at a local level as opposed to being prescribed at a national level.

The guidance from NHS Employers also makes it clear that you can ensure your information on volunteers is up to date by asking volunteers to make use of the DBS update service.

2.2 Update on operational planning for 2016/17

Please note that for your 2016/17 operational plans, we’ll require you to submit a full set of plan data, including a finance, workforce and activity template, as well as a full draft operational plan narrative. Last year, we only asked for a summarised financial template and a brief three-page narrative, so you may want to allow more time for this year’s submission.

This new approach means we can give you more detailed feedback on your plan and at an earlier stage in the planning timetable. We can also more closely align our process with the NHS TDA.

We’ll provide further detail on all aspects of the annual planning process in our guidance which we’ll be publishing later this month.

If you would like to see the draft operational plan template for 2016/17 before we publish the final version, please email [email protected].

2.3 From NHS England: new toolkits for complaints handling - please share with your complaints manager

Two new toolkits have been launched by NHS England to support commissioners in the assurance of good complaints handling; one for the commissioning of primary care and one for the commissioning of acute, community and mental health care.

The toolkits have been co-designed and tested with Monitor, the Care Quality Commission, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, clinical commissioning groups and the Complaints Managers Forum.

The aims of the toolkit are to ensure:

• all complaints are well managed
• the learning from complaints is identified and used for improvement
• the complaints service is accessible, open and transparent

2.4 Support for chief executive officers: read our findings and sign up for our development event

Earlier this year, we asked for chief executive officers (COOs) to complete our survey on the work, priorities and challenges that they experience in their role. Thanks to those of you who completed or shared the survey.

One of the aims of the survey was to establish how we can further support COOs in their role; to help with this we will be running a series of events, starting with a development event next Wednesday, 9 December.

Read the findings of the survey in our report and sign up for the event.

3. Events

3.1 Planning for 2016/17 and beyond: NHS leaders meetings

Friday 4 December 2015

• Leeds, 9.30am to 11.30am
• London, 3pm to 5pm

Who are they for?

NHS provider chief executives and clinical commissioning group accountable officers.

Why attend?

You are invited to attend a meeting with leaders of national health and care bodies where you will have the opportunity to discuss planning for 2016/17 and the outcome of the recent Spending Review. You will also hear from both Jim Mackey and Simon Stevens.

Book your place for Leeds.

Book your place for London.

For more information, please email [email protected].

3.2 HFMA annual conference 2015

London:

Wednesday 9 - Friday 11 December 2015

Who is it for?

Directors of finance, chief executives and anyone with an interest in finance.

Why attend?

Join the conference to hear from some of the most prominent figures in the NHS along with key policy makers, clinicians and professional and technical experts.

There will be a series of themed workshops and you’ll have the opportunity to join small, focused groups on specific topics and to benefit from hearing about practical case studies, lessons learnt and success stories with time for questions and discussion.

Come and visit us and the NHS TDA on stand D11. You can also hear from Jim Mackey in a session titled ‘Improvement in the NHS - the contribution of the finance profession’ at 10am on Thursday 10 December.

Find out more and book your place now.

3.3 Demand and capacity planning events – please share with your operations team

NHS England, the NHS TDA and Monitor are hosting a series of regional training events in January on demand and capacity planning.

The first of these 2-day events is on 12 January and they will run throughout the rest of the month.

Who are these for?

• members of planning teams who are involved with demand and capacity modelling – operations managers, information analysts
• interested clinicians

Why attend?

The events aim to improve understanding of the basics of demand and capacity planning, and will provide access to a number of models which will inform the production of local activity plans for the 2016/17 planning round.

They are part of a wider piece of work from the NHS TDA, Monitor and NHS England, driving a more robust approach to health economies’ understanding of their business and resources and to improve the outputs of the planning process more generally.

A full list of dates and venues is being confirmed and will be posted on NHS England’s events website shortly.

Other events coming up

Event name	Event details	Who is it for?	Why attend?	How can I sign up?
National cancer breach allocation summit	London, Thursday 10 December	Foundation trust and NHS trust clinical leads and operational leads.	This event has been organised to support the development of a national cancer breach allocation policy.	Find our more and book your place now.
Chief operating officer development events	London, Wednesday 9 December; Leeds, Monday 25 January	Foundation trust and NHS trust chief operating officers (COOs).	This is a development event for COOs and will cover career development, improving organisational change and meeting the challenges of the current strategic and operational environment.	Find out more and book your place now.
Introduction for new foundation trust and NHS trust medical directors	London, Wednesday 27 January	New foundation trust and NHS trust medical directors.	Monitor and NHS TDA are holding this workshop to support you in this demanding role both now and in the future.	Find out more and book your place now..
NEDtalk seminars - events for foundation trust and NHS trust non-executive directors	Monitor offices, Waterloo, London, January – March 2016	NEDs of foundation trusts and NHS trusts.	Hear from NEDs who will share their experiences and reflections on: finance and turnaround; culture and workforce; strategic planning and business development.	Find out more and book your place now..

4. Webinars

4.1 Improving payment for mental health services

The Five Year Forward View identified a number of new care models for NHS services. The vision also recognised that the way we provide and pay for mental health services needs to change.

We’re holding 2 webinars on this subject for the following roles within commissioners and providers of mental health services:

• finance directors, managers and others
• mental health leads
• commissioning and contracting leads
• analytical leads

Mental health payments: vision and approaches

Watch again from Thursday 3 December 2015

Why watch?

Hear about the overall vision for mental health payment in the future, and outlines of the different payment approaches of capitation and year of care/episode of treatment.

Mental health payments: implementing the new approaches

Friday, 4 December, 12.30pm to 1.30pm

Why join?

This second webinar will go into further detail about the 2 payment options, including how to adopt these approaches, potential issues, and pros and cons for each approach. It will also include time for you to ask questions of Monitor and NHS England staff.

If you have the time, we’d recommend you catch up on the ‘Mental health payment: vision and approaches’ webinar before watching this.

Catch up on ‘visions and approaches’.

Book now for 4 December.

4.2 Save the date: reducing use of agency staff

Monday 14 December, 1pm

Who is it for?

NHS trust and foundation trust:

• nursing directors
• medical directors
• finance directors
• HR directors
• chief operating officers
• those involved in organisational development or transformation
• ward managers
• staff bank managers
• matrons

Why join?

We’re hosting this webinar with the NHS TDA as part of our wider programme of support to reduce the use of agency staff.

This is the first in a series of webinars, where we’ll provide an outline of the new rules and explain how to use our new diagnostic tool to help you identify issues in your trust. You’ll also be able to ask us questions.

Registration will be open shortly on our webinar channel.

5. External updates

5.1 From the National Quality Board (NQB): a call for good practice case studies

A national programme of work is underway to refresh the NQB’s guide to nursing, midwifery and care staffing capacity and capability, ‘How to ensure the right people, with the right skills, are in the right place at the right time’.

They are looking for case studies that demonstrate the variety of different ways in which providers have implemented the 10 NQB expectations through using workforce information and quality of care metrics to drive improvements in the quality of care patients receive.

If you would like to submit a case study for consideration please contact Sarah Tilford for further information, via [email protected] or 07775 404257; the chosen case studies will be finalised in early January 2016.

5.2 From Health Education England (HEE): shape of caring video

HEE has launched a film highlighting some of the key themes emerging from the engagement phase of the Shape of Caring Review. More than 1,000 stakeholders shared their views through a series of face-to-face events and Twitter chats.

Health Education England (HEE): shape of caring video..

6. Get in touch

6.1 Our latest job opportunities

For more information or to apply, please visit our recruitment website joinmonitor.com.

6.2 Queries or feedback

If you have any queries about the information in this bulletin, please contact your relationship manager at Monitor.

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6.4 Publications

All of our publications are available to download from our publications section.