Innovative Developments in NHS Health Provisions - Essay Example

INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN NHS HEALTH PROVISIONS By Presented to Innovative Developments in NHS Health Provisions Introduction The Department of health [DoH](2011a), identified innovation as instrumental to the future of National Health Services (NHS) for three reasons. First, innovation can help prolong lives. In this regard, innovations in the healthcare system can help change the lives of millions. To support this argument, evidence within the NHS emphasises the importance of innovation and its role in the health sector. Secondly, it is important to support and maintain the quality of services and productivity within the NHS, which is possible through innovation. Thus, innovation will equip the NHS to face future challenges such as an increase on financial exchange and the increasing demanding by the public to improve the quality of services offered in the health sector. Supporting this idea, Omachonu and Einspruch (2010) noted that innovation is a driving force to balancing the containment of costs and quality in the healthcare system. Therefore, it is critical to seek the highest standards and effective financial intervention to maintain development in the health sector, which is possible by agitation from the customers. Finally, innovation will support the economy of the United Kingdom. In this regard, the NHS is important to the country’s economy and should be properly managed since it is a source of wealth in the UK through investments in various sectors such as engineering and science. Thus, it is the future of UK in the health and social services sector, and also economically. Currently, NHS’ fundamental challenge is achieving agreed plans, and delivering innovations at specific rates and standard system of measurements. Nevertheless, one indispensable element is that most of the excellent practices, new technologies, and innovations in work are widely accepted with the NHS mutually distributing these innovations and technologies. One way these innovations appear in the NHS is through the work of NHS members of staff. On the other hand, innovation can appear in the form of education and rehabilitation of employees or even through the management of patient care with an example being a new device important for the health sector. Others include new treatment, new systems, and new software. Nevertheless, all innovations are important in developing health care services in the UK and should pass a rigorous test and evaluation process and effectively publicised for use, once they meant all the necessary standards (DoH, 2002). Therefore, this essay elucidates three innovative developments in the NHS. These three innovations are the new public health system, virtual wards, and the urgent care centres in the UK. Finally, the expose explains the importance of these three innovations while focusing on healthcare in East London. Virtual wards While examining projects in the health sector, Geraint (2012) identified the NHS’ activities in seeking new and innovative ways to provide better services. Additionally, the NHS identified ways of overcoming the problem of patient’s entry to hospitals without prior appointments. In retrospect, organizations in NHS introduced the virtual wards system with aiming to improve health services across the country. These organizations used the predictive model, which identifies high-risk cases in patients who require emergency admission at any time in the future (Billings, Dixon, Mijanovich and Wennberg, 2006; Wennberg, et al., 2006). Thus, the model identifies cases and makes the duty of healthcare workers easy, which ensures providing medical follow-up on the cases. In addition, it involves providing additional assistance to ensure patients stay healthy, and that can reduce unplanned admissions in healthcare facilities involved. Geraint (2011) further viewed the operations of virtual wards as similar to normal wards in hospitals. The similarity was from the fact that normal hospital wards used the same systems and the same employees like a virtual ward. However, virtual wards provided services at homes while the wards were in a hospital setting. Conversely, staff from the two setups was a mixture of health and social professionals working with other professions in other multidiscipline. Similarities in the two settings extended to the coordination of work in virtual wards, which was similar to coordination in hospital wards. In this regard, team members in virtual wards have a manager or an organiser charged with directing and coordinating work while ward clerks performed a similar role in virtual wards (Geraint, et al., 2011). Lizzy found virtual wards an important initiative in the country’s healthcare system. She noted them as essential for preventative services meant to reduce the duration of admission of patients with multiple long-term conditions. Furthermore, they played an important role by treating patients at home. Another important role that virtual words played facilitating of patient’s needs, which helps determine patient’s needs for hospitalization. On the other hand, Chris noted the importance of virtual wards in reducing the number of potential patients who required hospitalization and helping patients to live in a social context better by allowing complete flexibility to receive visitors (NHS North East Essex, 2011). In effect, the innovative measures made the virtual wards win the “transformation category” award during the Guardian Public Service Awards in 2007 (Society Guardian, 2007). In Newham, virtual wards became operational on the 1 February, 2011 (NHS Newham, 2011). During their implementation, Newham expected the virtual wards to develop healthcare services in three aspects. First, the virtual wards would help in reducing the length of stay in hospitals, especially in cases of rehabilitation and in treating the elderly. Second, virtual wards helped to manage long-term conditions by providing ways to overcome the unplanned admission. Finally, they provide treatment to patients in the same community using the directions and instructions of GPs (Newham Council, 2011). On realizing the importance of virtual wards, Newham extended the coverage to include cases of rehabilitation in homes and supported multi-disciplinary teams’ cadres to cover more areas. In effect, the vision of the NHS is to increase the effectiveness of virtual wards and enhance efficiency in Newham while helping patients to receive treatment in their homes instead of going to the hospital. In a 2011 report, NHS identified the location of virtual wards teams in four locations with all providing local services within communities in East London. These were the Vicarage Lane Health Centre in the North West; the Centre Manor Park in North East; the East Ham Care Centre in the Central region; and Appleby Health Centre located in the South. The organisation in each virtual ward entails 60 beds divided into four places so that each place has 15 beds. To ensure efficiency, members of teams meet every day with the multidisciplinary team in the four centres to provide health services to patients in their homes. Moreover, the report indicated that the virtual wards admitted approximately 828 patients between February and September 2011. The distribution of this number in the four locations was 131 admissions in Vicarage Lane Health Centre in the North West. The Centre Manor Park in the North East had 294 admissions. Finally there were 302 admissions in East Ham Care Centre in the Central region while there was a total of 101 admissions in Appleby Health Centre in the South (NHS Newham, 2011). Urgent care centre According to the East London NHS Foundation Trust (2012), an urgent Care Centre is the section of the hospital that works all year-round for emergency conditions that cannot wait for appointment. The staff members in such centres consist of expert doctors, qualified nurses, and many other staff members. The trust further identified urgent care centre’s main responsibility as seeking to address the urgent cases of accidents and injuries. Furthermore, the centres are also responsible for receiving certain pathological cases such as acute abdominal pain, diseases resulting from colds and flu, skin diseases, and others (DoH, 2011a). According to the NHS Confederation (2008), there are a myriad of challenges and difficulties facing health care services in the country. They include aging, which affects the entire population, huge increase in long-term conditions, and an increase on demands from patients. In effect, urgent care centres played a key role in the discovery of these challenges and sought to solve the problems and ensure that all patients accessed medical care. Recently, the NHS carried out significant improvements in urgent care centres, but there still is a lot of work remaining undone before it becomes a realistic initiative. Thus, the commissioners, NHS service providers, and other stakeholders in the health and social care aspects should work with urgent care centres to achieve a high level of services and meet all future exceptions. While realising the importance of working together, it is important to point out that many of the changes in the health system are also required to achieve this vision (DoH, 2010a). At the level of consortia, emergency health care initiatives will help to facilitate health services for patients by providing them with the contacts to emergency centres. These services include ambulance services, emergency services, and social services among others (NHS East London and the City, 2011a). A report by the Director of Public Health (2009, p.11), showed the prospects of healthcare services becoming better and efficient if urgent care centres determined and focused on their needs. In this regard, the report realised that many patients sought treatment in urgent care centres, even in circumstance where cases did not merit urgent care centres since the GP and the primary care centre can treat the case. In addition, some cases admitted through the urgent care centres are avoidable with a good management of emergency situations in primary care. In this case, the presence of quality primary health care is an assurance of good health outcomes. On the other hand, the report found that the highest rate of urgent admission in London was in 2004/05 with approximately 22,185 conditions requiring urgent admission (Director of Public Health, 2009). The Primary Care Foundation (2009) identified four major factors that determined the level of quality in urgent care centres as ease in access, fast response, absorption capacity, and evaluation by staff. On the other hand, Newham University Hospital (2009) mentioned that the East London Trust opened an urgent care centre in 2009 in order to provide ambulance services for patients who required urgent health care. In retrospect, Newham General Hospital replaced the walk-in centre with the urgent care centre effectively providing 24-hours urgent services to the communities in Newham. In this case, the purpose of the urgent care centre is to offer treatment during emergency conditions, but not offer treatment to normal or stable conditions. It is crucial to point out that urgent care centres operate continuously in order to reduce huge pressure in a hospital’s emergence department since they classify and divide cases. New public health system According to DoH (2011b), the implementation of the new health system will be on April 2013. In effect, the local authorities will be responsible for developing healthcare systems and ensure that all people enjoyed health services while increasing local and concerted efforts to promote public health. Coinciding with this, there will be an establishment of a body called Public Health England, which will provide multiple health services that include health protection, required support information, and develop public health (DoH, 2011b; Chartered Institute of Environmental Health [CIEA], 2012; Triggle, 2012). To emphasise the important role of the Public Health England, the DoH (2011b) noted that the system will ensure that local people had a role to play for their health. On the other hand, NHS Confederation (2011) suggested that the government should issue a series of factsheets to define approaches to the new public health system. The confederation noted that the factsheets should focus on public health in local government, and how to operate the public health in the country. On December 2011, the confederation presented a document outlining the functions of local authorities, Public Health England, the NHS, the Chief Director, and the department of health (NHS Confederation, 2011). According to the document, local authorities will be responsible for promoting the overall health of the population. While playing this responsibility, the local authorities should make sure that all plans were on the right track to help protect the population, and also to provide suggestions and recommendations for the NHS commissioners (NHS Confederations, 2011). Public Health England main objective will be to support the local and national services while seeking to provide health protection. Furthermore, the body will have a role of supporting the public health system and the development of workers (Triggle, 2012). This body, which will be within the Department of Health, will start functioning from April 2013 (Triggle 2012; NHS Confederation, 2011). Besides performing these functions, the body will work towards integrating the key elements in public health, which are health protection, the development of health and other general health services (Campbell, 2012). According to DoH (2011b), the Public Health England’s future mission will focus on reducing the inequalities in health aspect and the outcomes of wellbeing. In this regard, Public Health England and its partners will be involved in helping local governments, the NHS, and other sectors in promoting and protecting the population through the provision of appropriate health services (NHS Confederation, 2011). In addition, the body will develop and educate the workforce while ensuring that all services went according to plan and their application was effective. In ensuring the importance of achieving the set objectives, the NHS will continue playing its central role in public health by ensuring delivery of quality services by all healthcare services. In addition, the NHS will positively improve the impact of healthcare services on public health. To realise this, the management of Public Health England will be headed by an independent chief executive who will be instrumental in providing advice and suggestions to the State Secretary of Health on populations and the health system in general (NHS Confederations, 2011). In order to ensure success, it is crucial to ensure that the Department of Health played a leading role in the daily coordination of Public Health England through the promoter department. In addition, the Director of Public Health England should be submitting a report to the State Secretary of Health and other health departments. Conclusion Based on the foregoing, it is evident that all developments and innovations will have a positive influence on health care services across the United Kingdom. In this regard, the virtual ward initiative will be very convenient and will increase the level of people satisfaction in health services. In addition, it will help reduce the increasing long-term health conditions. In order to realise this, the composition of all virtual wards teams will require qualified staff members and experts who will play an important role in the success of this service. On the other hand, urgent care centres will also help in developing health care services. In achieving this, the innovation will provide prompt treatment during emergency cases. In effect, the service will be crucial in reducing the probability of delaying access to treatment. Thus, the reduction of this probability will help in easing the pressure of the emergency departments in most hospitals, which will ensure that the departments play their fundamental role of dealing with the most life-threatening cases. Finally, the new public health system, which starts on April 2013, will have a positive impact in the development of NHS health care services. The system, called Public Health England, will help divide the functions of local authorities. In effect, the implementation of this new health system will help transfer high quality of health care services to the citizens. References Billings, J., Dixon, J., Mijanovich, T. and Wennberg, D., 2006. Case finding for patients at risk of readmission to hospital: development of algorithm to identify high-risk patients. British Medical Journal, 333(7563), 327. Campbell, D., 2012. Health Comes to the Community. The Guardian. [online] Available at: [Accessed 19 April 2012]. Department of Dealth [DoH], 2002. The NHS as an innovative organisation. [online] Available at: [Accessed 04 April 2012]. Department of Health [DoH], 2010a. Urgent and Emergency Care Services. [online] [Accessed 19 April 2012]. Department of Health [DoH], 2010b. 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