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Chief executive of Whittington Health, Dr Yi Mien Koh, explains to Jessica Fuhl that the biggest challenge to integration and efficiency is getting staff on board Whittington Health has ambitions plans for the future. It hopes to achieve foundation trust status by 2014 and its first step to ensure it made sufficient efficiency savings in order to do so was to fully integrate local community services with the hospital last year. In January it had reached 98% of its cost improvement programme (CIP) target for the financial year as a result. The integrated health organisation is a merger of the formerly...

British Medical Association urges health secretary to slow down implementation of non-emergency number to allow for proper assessment The British Medical Association (BMA) has written to health secretary Andrew Lansley over concerns about the implementation of the NHS 111 24-hour non-emergency phone service. The letter, written by Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA's GPs committee, expresses "serious misgivings" about the roll out of the NHS 111 service. "Our key concerns include specific problems in some of the pilot areas, failure to ensure a smooth transition or to address...

Department of Health says trial shows telehealth can provide significant benefits for patients and providers Telehealth technologies can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, the number of bed days spent in hospital and the time spent in A&E, according to the initial findings of a study by the Department of Health (DH). Early indications have shown that, if used properly telehealth – a term for electronic sensors or equipment that monitors vital health signs remotely in a patient's home, or while on the move – can deliver a 15% reduction in A&E visits and, say the DH, a 45% reduction...

Online videos can be shocking, sexy – and a cheap way for NHS organisations to spread public health messages As arguments over whether NHS efficiency savings are leading to longer waiting lists continue, there is no debate over whether spending on public health advertising has been cut. One of the first acts of the coalition government was to slash government advertising, including the £60m spent annually in England on health , although it has made an exception for two campaigns on dementia and strokes . But some NHS organisations are starting to exploit the potential that online video has to disseminate...