Department of Health prioritises Francis response
pharmafile | June 7, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | DH, Francis, Mid Staffs, NHS
The Department of Health has set out its priorities for the next year, explaining how it will enhance public health and wellbeing but also providing pointers on areas such as financial savings and R&D.
However, much of the preamble to the corporate plan for 2013-14, written by DH permanent secretary Una O’Brien, is taken up with the response to the Francis Report into scandalous treatment of patients at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
The DH pledged a ‘renewed focus on putting patients at the centre of everything we do’ earlier this year following Francis’ 290 recommendations on issues such as improving basic standards, creating more transparency, increasing compassion in care and strengthening leadership.
In the next 12 months the DH says it will deliver the government’s full response to the Mid Staffs Inquiry recommendations “working jointly with other bodies, to help increase compassion and dignity in the NHS”.
It will also deliver health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s Care Priority to ensure that quality of care “is as important as the quality of treatment”.
Away from Francis, the DH says it is on target to achieve the £20 billion in QIPP savings that need to be achieved by 2014-15, saving £5.8 billion in 2011-12 and on course for £5 billion in 2012-13 ‘ahead of trajectory’.
Life sciences are also highlighted, with the DH saying that it supported 364 new life sciences industry studies through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network last year – 77 more than in 2011.
Before September it will publish what has come out of the NIHR/Economic & Social Research Council joint call for research on living well with dementia, and also start the contracts and funding for Diagnostic Evidence Cooperatives.
And in the final quarter of 2013 the DH is set to confirm the newly-designated Academic Health Science Centres and – of particular interest to pharma in the light of the ongoing transparency debate – enhance the information currently on the NIHR’s publicly-accessible Clinical Trials Gateway website.
Finally on R&D, in the first quarter of next year, the DH pledges to start the contracts for the designation and funding of NIHR Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care and to reconfigure Local Clinical Research Networks.
When it comes to public health it will introduce Rotavirus immunisation into the children’s immunisation programme and publish its first antimicrobial resistance report.
Pharma’s collective ears will also prick up at the DH’s statement that it will work with industry to encourage the development of new antibiotics as part of its “urgent action to help slow down the development of antimicrobial resistance”.
The bulk of the rest of the DH’s broad priorities for 2013-14 are made up of catch-all statements on reducing the numbers of people dying prematurely by improving prevention, screening and early diagnosis, and so on.
Adam Hill
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