BREAKING NEWS: Single patient record included in King’s Speech reforms
A single patient record joining up health and social care records is part of the NHS Modernisation Bill announced in The King’s Speech.
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The single patient record will be available on the NHS App and is targeted first at those receiving maternity and frailty care by 2028 before a wider roll out.
The Bill also includes the abolition of NHS England and transfer of its functions to the DHSC.
ICBs
Under changes to local democratic accountability there will be new requirements for mayoral nominees to be on ICBs.
ICBs will also be supported to become strategic commissioners for all but the most specialised commissioning functions, including primary care, dentistry, ophthalmology and pharmacy.
The Bill will also streamline the planning process to ensure there are ICBs plans at neighbourhood and strategic level, eliminating the requirement on a local area to have an Integrated Care Partnership.
Patient voice and regulation
Health Services Safety and Investigations Body functions will be transferred to the CQC. The time limit for the CQC to bring legal action against a provider will also be extended.
Healthwatch England functions will be transferred to the DHSC along with the development of a new Patient Experience Directorate in the department.
Local Healthwatch healthcare functions will be transferred to ICBs with social care functions transferring to local authorities.
Foundation Trusts
Foundation Trusts will be given more flexibility to design and deliver healthcare around local needs by removing the requirement for a Council of Governors. The power to deauthorise Foundation Trusts as a last resort option will return to ministers.
Reaction
Healthcare leaders welcomed the single patient record as ‘potential gamechanger’ but highlighted previous failures in part due to privacy concerns.
On NHSE abolition, Nuffield Trust chief executive, Thea Stein warned of the danger that ‘the NHS is tied up reorganising itself precisely when it needs to be improving patient care’.
Stein also questioned the necessity of a 50% cut in the shared workforce as well as removing the independence of the HSSIB.
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King’s Fund, warned of the Bill being seen as a push towards more centralisation with by ‘disbanding the independent organisations set up to listen to patients and ensure their voices are heard across health and care services’.
Woolnough added: ‘The Bill sets out a desire to give more power to patients but in the same breath proceeds to abolish the organisations responsible for studying patient experience independently with no clear plan for stopping the NHS and ministers from “marking their own homework”.’
Bernadette Wightman, Iron Mountain chief executive, UK and Ireland, said: ‘A single patient record will only deliver on its promise if it’s built on foundations that can scale, remain secure, and support the innovations ahead.’
Dr Pallavi Bradshaw, medical director at Medical Protection, warned the ‘considerable’ administrative burden of a single patient record roll out, adding ‘robust safeguards’ would need to be in place to protect patient data.
Deputy chief executive of The NHS Alliance, Sarah Walter, warned the Government to be ‘mindful of concerns about the practicability of absorbing local Healthwatch functions into ICBs when the number of these bodies has already been halved, and of the risk of conflicts of interests which could erode patient confidence’.
Tom Reynolds, director of policy & communications at The MDU, said: ‘If the Government is serious about investing more in patient care, it must tackle the spiralling costs of clinical negligence, which is currently diverting millions of pounds from frontline NHS services.’
