§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner)My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today publishing The National Service Framework for Renal Services, Part Two: Chronic Kidney Disease, Acute Renal Failure and End of Life Care.
The national service framework (NSF) programme is a major part of our agenda to tackle health inequalities and to drive up the quality of care across the National Health Service. Part two of this NSF sets out a programme for the prevention and early treatment of chronic kidney disease, the management of acute renal failure and the extension of palliative care to people with established renal failure who are near the end of their lives. Together with part one, which was published in January 2004, it completes a 10-year framework for the improvement of services for people with kidney problems.
This is an important part of our modernisation programme to improve renal services over the next 10 years. Part two sets out four quality requirements to provide a more responsive service for people with kidney problems, delivered when and where they are needed. It identifies 23 markers of good practice drawn from national and international evidence and National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance. It builds on the programme of modernisation set out in the NHS Improvement Plan and is in keeping with our public 20WS health White Paper's aspirations to promote healthier lifestyles and reflects the three policies of Shifting the Balance of Power, Building on the Best and National Standards Local Action. Furthermore, it supports previously published national service frameworks for diabetes, for coronary heart disease, for older people and for children.
NHS organisations need to aim to deliver these quality requirements over the next 10 years, at a pace they determine. The four quality requirements in part two of the NSF support self-care, better diagnostics and treatment, as well as choice, and are closely correlated with the public service agreement (PSA) targets for long term conditions (specifically care-planning and reducing emergency admissions) and for reducing cardiovascular deaths.
The NSF identifies six steps that local health communities can take to support the delivery of local service improvements:
integrate care pathways by closer links between renal, coronary heart disease and diabetes networks;
identify people at risk of chronic kidney disease and test their kidney function;
develop protocols for the effective measurement of kidney function, calculating and reporting results automatically by clinical biochemistry laboratories;
take the NSF into account when developing local plans and targets to deliver the PSA targets;
tackle acute renal failure by following NICE guidance on pre-operative testing and closer working between critical care and renal networks; and
improve end of life care for people with established renal failure by establishing links between renal and palliative care services.
In addition, five modernisation programmes are being established to support the implementation and delivery of the NSF. Two action-learning sets will tackle issues linked to patient information and the prevention of chronic kidney disease and two others will address problems associated with the extension of palliative care to people with established renal failure who are near the end of their lives. A fifth programme aims to support primary care staff in measuring kidney function.
Copies of The National Service Framework for Renal Services, Part Two: Chronic Kidney Disease, Acute Renal Failure and End of Life Care have been placed in the Library.