Programme Update October 2011

National Reports and Resources Available

• The IDPS Annual Report for 2010-11 has now been published
• The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has published the national data for 2010
• A Map of Medicine pathway for the immunisation of babies born to hepatitis B positive mothers is now available online. This pathway describes the process for immunising babies born to hepatitis B positive mothers. This compliments the management of hepatitis B in pregnancy and birth pathway

Implementing the Programme Standards and the Laboratory Handbook

A lot has been happening since the publication of the new standards, but below are a few key areas to note.

• Many thanks to those who completed the IDPS Gap Analysis. In general, these were well completed and most Trusts are already meeting the majority of the new standards, and only have a few areas to focus on. Many of you found this exercise useful for bringing people together, identifying gaps and agreeing next steps.
  
  Your Regional Screening Team will now have a good sense of the action areas for your Trust and will be working to support you on these issues going forward.  At a national level, the IDPS Programme Team has received a summary of the common issues (key issues outlined below) and will be considering what action we should take at a national level to help address these.
  
  Laboratory Handbook:  ensuring rapid turn-around for urgent samples; linking initial screening sample to the second sample; failsafes for repeat samples; meeting turn-around times for confirmatory samples
  
  Programme Standards:  documenting/monitoring declines and re-offering screening; referral of hepatitis B positive women within six weeks; documenting/communicating rubella susceptible results and offering/giving MMR before discharge and transfer of information to primary care; IT issues; and dealing with requests for unacceptable or repeat samples

• A number of specific questions have been asked in relation to the standards. We are currently drafting responses to these to post on the website. We are also keen to build up a hub of templates, resources and case studies of good practice. So if you have any templates/resources, please share them with your Regional Screening Team.

• Over the summer, we consulted on the IDPS minimum data fields for the laboratory booking request forms/electronic requesting. The response to this consultation was very positive. We have now published a covering letter and the final list of minimum data fields. We hope these data fields will help address some of the issues raised through the gap analysis

• The IDPS e-learning resource is now live. The resource aims to help support the implementation of the new programme standards. Training and CPD underpins quality and we encourage all professionals to complete this resource

• We are considering organising a few laboratory-specific IDPS workshops in the new year to support the implementation of the laboratory handbook. More information on this to follow