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Independent Healthcare Voices

Independent Healthcare Voices is a platform for healthcare and other industry leaders to share their views, observations and insight on the independent health sector and wider health and social care issues with the aim of sparking debates, spreading learning across the system and sharing solutions to tricky and common challenges facing local services.

Please note that all views expressed are those of the individual author, not of IHPN.

If you would like to discuss an idea for a blog or submit an article for consideration please email Megan Cleaver at [email protected]

RTT data - a window on elective care recovery

Date of publication: 11th Jun 2021

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

IHPN’s Head of Acute Care Policy, John Hopgood, looks at why this month’s Referral-to-Treatment waiting times data carries particular significance for the independent sector. The monthly publication of data from NHS England this week carries more significance than usual. Not only is it our first chance to have a detailed look at activity since the start of the 2021/22 financial year (and the end of the National Hospitals Contract), but it’s also the biggest indication yet as to where recovery...

No Turning Back –Transforming Co-existence into Collaboration for the Long Haul

Date of publication: 19th Mar 2021

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Andrew Vaux, Head of Independent Healthcare at Practicus, looks at how the partnership between the independent sector and the NHS that evolved during the pandemic can be sustained. The NHS has long turned to the independent sector when it needs additional capacity to manage waiting times and avoid penalties for missed targets. But the pandemic that was unleashed over the last year changed this relationship, at least for a while. As the impact of the rapid rise in Covid hospital...

How to respond to an adverse CQC inspection

Date of publication: 22nd Feb 2021

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Peter Killwick from Verita looks at how independent healthcare providers can respond to an adverse CQC inspection and what they can do to improve patient safety and quality. The work of the CQC is crucial in both maintaining and improving patient safety and identifying  areas where performance is falling short of requirements. Our recent work with providers suggests that the CQC is developing a much closer focus on organisational leadership and the impact - positive or negative - that this...

How can clinicians and hospitals earn back the trust of patients in the wake of the Paterson Report?

Date of publication: 2nd Oct 2020

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Lindsey Condron, Chief Executive at King Edward VII's Hospital, looks at how can clinicians and hospitals earn back the trust of patients in the wake of the Paterson Report. The Paterson Inquiry has been a wake-up call for all hospital leaders both in the NHS and private sector. The Inquiry found that Ian Paterson’s victims were “let down time and time again” by the surgeon, then by the hospitals where he practised and finally by the regulators, who failed to...

The planned care crisis and opportunity: reaching new heights of productivity and value for patients

Date of publication: 11th Sep 2020

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Co-authored by IHPN and Transformation Nous Introduction Covid-19 has generated an unprecedented challenge for the UK healthcare system, with a particular pressure on planned care services. By the end of December, it is estimated that ~9.8m patients will require treatment, which is more than double the number of patients on the official waiting list at the start of March. As healthcare providers across the entire country are expected to stop this demand from rising, and in fact begin reducing it,...

Embracing a “whole systems” approach to localised continuity of care

Date of publication: 17th Aug 2020

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Tony Veverka, Chief Executive of the Transform Hospital Group, looks at how the coronavirus pandemic has brought together the public and independent sectors in an unprecedented way, revealing the need for a (time-sensitive) rethink of the way healthcare is delivered in Britain and towards a model that continues to generate new ways of working, foster innovation and maintain high quality continuity of care in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Coronavirus has tested every part of the UK’s health infrastructure and...

So what would an NHS without private sector provision look like?

Date of publication: 13th Nov 2019

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

The argument that the NHS is being ‘privatised’ is as old as the hills yet it still persists as a potent political issue. But why is this when the NHS remains funded through general taxation free at the point of use to patients, no frontline assets or services have ever been sold into private ownership and private provision of NHS services has been a feature of delivery since 1948? The answer is multifaceted and revolves around a vagueness over the...

How successful has government outsourcing been?

Date of publication: 27th Sep 2019

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

In 2007, a government review of the UK outsourcing industry called it the “most advanced in the world”. Beginning in local government with services such as waste collection, successive governments have extended outsourcing to areas including front-line services and major information technology projects. But since then there have been several high profile “failures” which have certainly grabbed the headlines – who can forget the security at the London Olympics or Atos pulling out of the contract to provide work capability...

IHPN marks first ever World Patient Safety Day

Date of publication: 17th Sep 2019

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Patient safety is the number one priority for independent healthcare providers, and IHPN are delighted to mark the first ever World Patient Safety Day – a new initiative to raise global awareness about patient safety and encourage global solidarity and action. In the past few years, improving patient safety has undoubtedly risen up the health agenda, with everyone from the World Health Organisation (who are the architects of today’s celebration) to former Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt who declared it...

Supporting Overseas Nursing Staff in the New Job

Date of publication: 3rd Sep 2019

Categories: Independent Healthcare Voices

Supporting Foreign Nursing Staff in the New Job: Tips for Employers on How to Best Organise the First Weeks by Sandra Jelew, Coach for Intercultural Competence, Business Development & Partnerships Care With Care   A new language, foreign culture, different working style, new tasks and responsibilities, maybe even a different climate, new time zone, and often limited contact with one’s own family and friends: For every foreign nurse a job in a UK hospital or retirement home means many life changes at...