The Care Quality Commission is asking for members of the public who have received treatment from the Royal Berks Hospital Foundation Trust over the past year to give their feedback as part of their inspection of the hospital trust. This includes the main Royal Berkshire Hospital site in Reading plus the Prince Charles Eye Unit, West Berkshire Community Hospital, Windsor Dialysis Unit and Royal Berkshire Bracknell Clinic (continues) 

We will be meeting between 6pm and 7:30pm on Wednesday, 26th February 2014 at the University Health Centre, 9, Northcourt Avenue, Reading RG2 7HE The main feature is expected to be a presentation on the PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) at the Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust. There will also be an update on the Better Care Fund - the local NHS-funded social care programme - and on the CCG's progress with planning and public consultation. News from local practice Patient Groups will be welcome.

We will be meeting between 6pm and 7:30pm on Wednesday, 26th February 2014 at the University Health Centre, 9, Northcourt Avenue, Reading RG2 7HE The main feature is expected to be a presentation on the PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) at the Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust. There will also be an update on the Better Care Fund - the local NHS-funded social care programme - and on the CCG's progress with planning and public consultation. News from local practice Patient Groups will be welcome.

Surveys and statistics are essential tools in identifying patterns of disesase, effectiveness of treatments and care, and in suggesting new treatments to medical research. The power of modern computing and statistic applied to this data is currently termed Big Data. The NHS has a developing programme called Care.Data to gather patient data from all GP surgeries in England. The data is to be used in health services management, preventative medicine and medical research.

The NHS is to moderate its underpayment of hospitals for seeing patients in A&E, the Guardian website reports. A big headache for NHS hospitals has been that theyt have not been getting full fees for patients attending A&E. Instead they get only 30% of the fee for every patient more than seen in the year 2008/9. With steeply rising attendance this has put finances under strain. CCGs have been advised to spend the money withheld with providers. Locally some of the money withheld from the RBH has returned to it but by no means all the money withheld.