RECENT NEWS

More patients are rating NHS hospital care as “excellent”, a Healthcare Commission survey suggests.

The Healthcare Commission has launched what it says is the biggest inspection programme ever carried out in English NHS acute Trusts to verify that they are meeting infection control standards.

UK hospitals and health facilities can now benefit from detection of Legionella “ten times faster than before”, via a rapid detection process known as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) now being offered by environmental analysis organisation ALcontrol Laboratories.

Agfa HealthCare has been selected by Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust to provide PACS (Picture Archiving & Communication System), RIS (Radiology Information System) and Cardiology IT “solutions” to “transform the Trust’s information workflow” by enabling a “completely free data flow” between the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, despite the fact that each facility’s system will work independently of the other.

Welsh Minister for Health & Social Services Edwina Hart has said a large North Wales district acute hospital that does not meet current fire safety standards can continue being used, subject to interim measures, but hospital bosses say much of a central 1970s-built ward block needs rebuilding at an estimated £270 million cost.

Galliford Try Facilities Management has won a three-year contract to provide hard facilities management services for independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) on behalf of Circle, which claims to be the UK’s largest partnership of healthcare professionals.

Two individuals who have studied “lean healthcare” provision in Japan, subsequently successfully applying the key principles at a $650 million Seattle tertiary healthcare centre, are joining Manchester’s Manufacturing Institute to apply the “best practice lean methodologies” they say have “revolutionised” the US healthcare industry to UK hospitals.

The Department of Health and HM Treasury recently gave the final sign-off for building to start of the new £225 million PFI-funded hospital at Pembury near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, set to be the UK’s first large acute hospital with 100% single in-patient rooms.

UK office interior design and fit-out specialist Area Sq has transformed the existing Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) assessment centre in Croydon, reportedly the only UK facility that allows assessments of GPs to be undertaken in a realistic environment, into “a pioneering facility” in just 12 weeks.

Southampton University scientists, whose similar research into the metal’s ability to inactivate MRSA led to an ongoing trial at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital, have established that copper surfaces can also inactivate the Clostridium difficile organism.

Health service specifiers will be among the first visitors when Wolseley’s new £3 m Sustainable Building Center (SBC), currently nearing completion by Warwick-based contractor Sol Construction at the company’s Leamington Spa headquarters, opens in June.

The British Fire Consortium (BFC) has launched a website detailing the offerings of 250 member providers of fire risk consultancy, extinguisher supply, installation and maintenance, fire alarms and domestic and residential sprinkler systems.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shown the first visitors around its new critical care unit at the city’s Northern General Hospital, said to be Europe’s only one of its kind (Health Estate Journal, April 2008).

Private equity specialist Graphite Capital has sold medical device designer, producer and distributor Summit Medical to global private equity firm The Riverside Company.

The Welsh Assembly Government has approved funding for a 1,493 m2 primary care centre to replace the current GP practice building on Kinmel Avenue, Abergele, North Wales.

Speakers from Government health departments and other key sector bodies representing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland will describe how each country is tackling hospital cleaning at the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals’ (AHCP) 33rd Annual Healthcare Cleaning & Domestic Management event in Harrogate from 11-13 June.

The Department of Health last month issued “climate change guidance documents” whose aim it said was to encourage health sector workers, including health estates and facilities managers and healthcare engineers, to “play their part in tackling the health effects of climate change”.

At a time when estates and facilities managers are taking increasing responsibility for sensitive information (see article page 51), the Information Commissioner has strongly criticised Hounslow Primary Care Trust for non-compliance with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act by “failing to respond adequately” to an individual’s request for information about his late father-in-law’s care in a nursing home.

IHEEM’s Northern Ireland Branch promises that a “wealth of high profile speakers” will discuss such topical issues as the “pros and cons” of single room accommodation, infection control, and sustainability, at a two-day conference being staged by the Branch at Bangor’s Marine Court Hotel on 21 and 22 May themed “Making a Difference”.

Nicola Oliver (pictured) has joined IHEEM as the Institute’s new events manager.