By Andrew De’ath FAME, the Framework for Multi-Agency Environments, is a national project supported by the ODPM, which provides support to help local authorities, their intermediaries and other public sector and voluntary organisations to effectively tackle issues of joint working and information sharing, in order to improve services to communities. The author describes how 25 councils have built a successful and sustainable multi-agency environment.
Research published today says the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which evaluates treatments for the National Health Service, needs to be insulated from external financial, political, and emotional pressures. The article in the BMJ reviews NICE’s recommendations between 1999 and 2005 and says it has faced growing pressure to influence its decisions. .The Institute was set up in 1999 as an independent and was charged with getting the best from the Health Service’s health resources in England and Wales. Since then it has examined the value of treatments and recommended whether or not they should be used. The researchers say NICE published 86 guidance notes on 117 topics. Its recommendations, they found, were fairly evenly distributed. In 22 cases- 19 per cent – it ruled a treatment should not be used, agreed to the unrestricted use of 27 (23 per cent), approved 38 with major restrictions, equivalent to 32% and gave the go-ahead to 30 treatments (28 per cent) with minor restrictions.
The vast majority of hospital in-patients are well satisfied with their care, according to the results of the annual survey published today by the Healthcare Commission but it highlights the need for improvements in the information given to patients, cleanliness in hospitals and in some areas of care.The survey, now in its third year, is one of the biggest assessments of patients’ views, capturing the experiences of more than 80,000 adults from all 169 NHS acute and specialist trusts in England. It covers the national picture and the opinions of patients in individual areas, giving the trusts an independent view of what patients think and allowing them to compare their results to the national average and to those of similar NHS trusts. The findings are also fed into the Commission’s system for measuring the performance of NHS organisations that has replaced star ratings.
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