All Acute care articles – Page 463

  • News

    Live and direct: cutting waiting times

    2007-01-08T00:00:00Z

    HSJ's Sutton Coldfield GM Live event proved an excellent platform for sharing successful service redesign strategies

  • HSJ Knowledge

    Quicker diagnosis makes good timing

    2007-01-08T00:00:00Z

    Strides towards the 18-week patient pathway have been made in Blackpool, where a trust slashed diagnostic waits. Varya Shaw reports

  • News

    £100m to help increase NHS energy efficiency

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Health minister Andy Burnham has announced £100m funding to help NHS trusts meet their energy efficiency targets. Seven out of 10 are already on track, he said, but more should be done to reduce carbon emissions and deliver savings that will be ploughed back into patient care.For more information click ...

  • News

    Heart disease deaths down 35 per cent

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Investment and reform in services to tackle coronary heart disease is saving lives, says a progress report on implementing the national service framework for CHD today. Shaping the Futuresays premature deaths from CHD are down 35.9 per cent since 1996, on course to meet ...

  • News

    Breast cancer drug Herceptin 'prolongs life'

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Researchers from the Royal Marsden Hospital in London have confirmed that giving Herceptin to women with certain types of breast cancer does prolong their lives. The study, published in The Lancet, followed women for two years after treatment and found a 2.7 per cent ...

  • News

    Inpatient waiting times fall

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    The number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks for inpatient treatment in England fell by 22,500 from October to November 2006. Latest waiting time figures published by the Department of Health show that the median waiting time at the end of November was 6.9 weeks, with just 212 people ...

  • News

    New grade: BMA backlash expected

    2007-01-04T08:00:00Z

    Government proposals to reduce a glut of over 3,000 consultants by creating a sub-consultant grade will be 'bitterly opposed' by the British Medical Association, the draft workforce strategy warns.

  • News

    Plans for consultants 'absurd', says BMA

    2007-01-04T00:00:00Z

    British Medical Association consultants committee chair Dr Jonathan Fielden has criticised the Department of Health’s draft pay and workforce documents, revealed in HSJtoday. He said: ‘It is absurd to suggest that the NHS in England needs fewer hospital consultants. ‘To suggest that there should be fewer consultants, and of a ...

  • News

    DoH plans mark rewriting of relationship with professions

    2007-01-04T00:00:00Z

    If one image of the dole queue helped finish off Labour in 1979, just imagine what might happen if the jobless wore white coats. The prospect of making large numbers of consultant posts redundant is one rarely articulated in public. That changes this week with HSJrevealing ...

  • News

    Stomach pain tops Christmas complaints

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    Stomach and jaw pain dominated calls to telephone helpline NHS Direct over Christmas, statistics show.Vomiting, toothache and diarrhoea were also among the top 10 reasons for calling the helpline in England.Over the whole of 2006 the service received around 7 million calls, while during the Christmas period there were a ...

  • News

    Sir Liam demands faster progress on safety

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    Chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson has called for more speed in improving patient safety in his newsletter published today.Although Sir Liam praised a 'greater awareness among clinicians, managers and policymakers that patients are not as safe as they should be', he said that the pace of change had ...

  • News

    High take-up for optician training

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    More than 90 per cent of opticians met the requirement for continuing education and training (CET) by the 31 December 2006 deadline.Final figures for the first cycle released by the General Optical Council show that 95 per cent of optometrists, 89 per cent of dispensing opticians and 86 per cent ...

  • News

    2007 a make or break year for NHS, says think tank

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    A failure to tackle rising costs and to invest in modern services means that 2007 is a make or break year for the NHS, according to a report by think tank Reform. The report says the service's long-term strength has been sapped by the lack of an underpinning costed reform ...

  • News

    Health figures honoured

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    Christie Hospital trust chair Joan Higgins has been made a DBE in the New Year Honours list. NHS Confederation chair Peter Mount, former Greater Manchester strategic health authority chief executive Neil Goodwin, Royal College of Nursing president Roswyn Hakesley-Brown and health economist Anne Mills have been made CBEs.To see the ...

  • Comment

    Martin Pearson on warm glows and icy winds

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    'Directors and managers of today's organisations need to recognise that they are there not only to create cost-efficient and financially successful health businesses but also to lead services in a way that saves the world from further degradation and climate chaos'

  • News

    Trust offers 6,000 staff voluntary redundancy

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Wage slips received last week by almost 6,000 staff at County Durham and Darlington foundation trust also included a letter offering them voluntary severance deals.

  • Comment

    o/p19/061130

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'My local supermarket does not call me an inappropriate shopper - ever'

  • Comment

    o1/p20/070426

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    With European law and the emphasis on work-life balance already shaking things up, what does the future hold for medical education? Three experts predict the shape of things to come

  • News

    DoH agrees £10m 'top-up' for children's hospitals

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    The Department of Health has agreed to bail out three children's hospitals to the tune of £10m after the trusts claimed that the specialist payment by results tariff was 'inaccurate'.