Audiology, NHS and Healthcare publications

The Academy for Healthcare Science was established in shadow form at the beginning of 2011, and an Interim Chief Executive was appointed soon after this.

The high-level ambitions for the Academy were set out as follows:

• Define high quality education and training standards across the UK HCS workforce and improve patient outcomes by ensuring that the standards are promulgated and met.
• Enable effective professional engagement in the ongoing development, and review of national curricula for the UK HCS workforce, across the career framework

The Academy for Healthcare Science is the first Register for the healthcare science workforce to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care.

The Accreditation quality mark signifies that the Academy has meet the Professional Standards Authority’s high standards in governance, standard-setting, education and training, management of the register, complaints handling and information; assuring the public and employers.

The National School of Healthcare Science is an important part of the new system for healthcare science training established through Modernising Scientific Careers. This new system was set up to ensure that patients benefit from the scientific and technical advances by ensuring that healthcare science staff have the knowledge and skills to put these advances into practice.

http://www.screeningservices.org.uk/nbhsw/index.asp

The Commissioning Zone is a portal for clinicians, managers and anyone else involved in commissioning. It brings together in one place the best sources and resources, to save time and promote sharing of useful information.

The NHS is recognised as a world leader at invention, however sometimes the best ideas fail to achieve widespread use in the NHS as adoption has been slow. Now more than ever before, innovation has a vital role to play if it is to continue to improve outcomes for patients and deliver value for money.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Hearing-impairment/Pages/Treatment.aspx

NHS Supply Chain helps NHS trusts reduce costs on clinical supplies and medical capital equipment, providing a procurement and logistics service which transacts more than 316,000 products nationally, spanning areas such as audiology wound care, gloves, implants and surgical equipment.

Building the NHS of the Five Year Forward View – NHS England Business Plan 2015/16

NHS England has published its business plan for 2015/16, setting out its priorities for the coming year.

Lists local services for Audiology

You can check using your local postcode to see if your service is listed here: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/hearing-problems/Pages/getting-your-hearing-tested.aspx

BAA feel it is important that all services are equally reflected on the NHS choices website and felt it important that this information is shared.

Subsequent contact with the site gave the following information on how to get your service onto the website and how to ensure updates to services are accurate.

“The Hearing Aid Services dataset is published on NHS Choices through data provided by Serco for the Department of Health. Please send these, and all future changes, direct to  nhschoicesupdates@serco.com who will update all related datasets.

These will feed through to NHS Choices as part of our regular data feeds and will be updated on the site.

Please note that this can take up to  4 weeks from original submission.”

The following gives detail on how to ensure your Service is represented on NHS Choices and I would suggest you:

• look at the website http://www.nhs.uk/service-search
• ·search “Hearing Aid Services” and check which of your local sites are listed.
• send information to update the local list of services to nhschoicesupdates@serco.com
• check in a few weeks to ensure the list has been updated

When contacting Serco please ensure you include the following details,

• Name of Service
• Address
• Contact Details
• Opening times

Changes to the Referral to Treatment (RTT) operational standards and reporting arrangements.

Simon Stevens wrote on 4 June 2015 to let you know that he had accepted Sir Bruce Keogh’s recommendations on improvements to current waiting time standards and reporting arrangements. This letter sets out the operational arrangements required to enact these changes.

RTT
The admitted and non-admitted operational standards are being abolished, and the incomplete standard will become our sole measure of patients’ constitutional right to start treatment within 18 weeks.

This means that from the date of this letter (24th June 2015), no provider or commissioner will receive any form of sanction, whether in the form of regulator investigation/intervention or the levying of financial sanctions, for failing the admitted or non-admitted standards.

Read the full letter here

2016 marks 10 years since the roll out of newborn hearing screening in England.

Most babies born deaf are identified within a few weeks through screening and getting support right from the start has been shown to transform the language and communications skills of deaf babies.

This report celebrates 10 years of universal new born hearing screening in England. As you may know, the National Deaf Children’s Society took a lead in campaigning for this programme to be introduced. It is clear that the programme has transformed the lives of many children born deaf but, 10 years on, there is still much to do to make sure that high quality early years support is in place following diagnosis. http://www.ndcs.org.uk/right_from_the_start.html