HSJ Health Check

Leading ICB and council CEOs join HSJ Health Check to talk about the earthquake shaking relationships between local government and the NHS.
Tectonic plates are moving with major structural reorganisation in the NHS and local government. Funding and demand pressures, alongside national attempts to reform other public services, are also straining relationships and integration.
Amid these tensions, Rob Webster, West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board CEO, argues local leaders can choose to protect relationships and joint working at the level of place, despite organisational mergers.
And Robin Tuddenham, a council CEO in west Yorkshire and president of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, says: "What we're seeing is the need to adjust to a reshaping of the local state".

NHS maternity care continues to be under the spotlight, so on this week’s episode we unpick the web of different national reviews and how trusts could be asked to improve services.
We cover Baroness Amos’ interim report from the government’s ‘rapid’ review, which has turned out to be less rapid than hoped, and some shocking findings highlighted by newly published national maternity data.
Also, why home birth services could become a thing of the past in the NHS.

Hospitals are being told by NHS England to focus on easy wins to hit this financial year’s A&E targets, so on this episode we unpick what trusts are being ask to do and whether this will get them over the line by the end of March.
NHSE also finally published guidance on its “model emergency department”, which will see under-performing trusts required to open new treatment areas. But, as ever, big questions remain about funding. 
And we get under the skin of a recent HSJ analysis that showed the health service has been haemorrhaging non-clinical staff.

This week we cover a mysterious update to the “model ICB” blueprint that hasn’t been formally published or endorsed by NHS England, but instead passed in whispers. 
We also talk about the full timetable for merging NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care and one of the biggest stories this week: the unexpected resignation of Ming Tang, NHSE’s chief data and analytics officer. 
We discuss her legacy, most notably the federated data platform, and why some of the biggest trusts are yet to start using it.

On this episode we’re joined by Lord Philip Hunt of King’s Heath - who was a minister in the Labour government until last year, and has played a huge role in Labour health policy and in NHS leadership over several decades.
He was a health minister in the Blair government with Alan Milburn, has served in several Labour shadow health teams, worked as a senior NHS manager, and was the first chief executive of the NHS Confederation. 
Lord Hunt is an active Parliamentarian and will shape the health bill when it hits the upper house. He tells us about its likely (tight) timings, and where the big clashes and U-turns may come.