Comment archive – Page 323
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CommentCourage, leadership and public support are needed to avoid nightmare scenarios
We all know that the financial situation facing the NHS is the greatest challenge the health service has faced. Courage and public support are vital if the NHS is to survive, says Mike Farrar.
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CommentMichael White: Burnham's return signals the start of a grudge match
Watching the Rugby World Cup I sometimes thought of John Healey, Labour’s health spokesman until Ed Miliband’s autumn reshuffle brought former secretary of state Andy Burnham back to tackle Andrew Lansley and his now notorious bill.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge: savings are not surpluses
Before we called it “the recession”, it was known as “the credit crunch”. Trading confidence drained away, the banks stopped lending, and anyone with cash held on to it.
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Comment
'We all want integrated care - who will stand up and be accountable for it?'
We all want to see more joined-up care: patients, carers, other service users, government and professionals are all signed up to it. But who is responsible for sorting out integration, and who will be accountable, asks National Voices director of engagement Jules Acton.
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CommentThree South East coast trusts singled out for security slip ups
The government may be promising an NHS information “revolution” but events suggest Kent and Surrey is not quite ready to storm the Bastille.
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CommentSurgery in Yorkshire goes it alone on procedures decision
Haxby and Wiggington Health Centre, a GP surgery just north of York, has helped Yorkshire to make its mark on the latest round of NHS reform.
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Leader
Rewriting the rules of the blame game
An honest debate about the challenges and tensions of making management decisions in the NHS is hard to find.
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LeaderPension squeeze is another victim of inept NHS reform
“I’m not touching that, it’s a quagmire,” said the health minister fleeing from HSJ’s question at last week’s Conservative Party conference.
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CommentCompete or collaborate? The policy dysphoria facing NHS organisations
The buzzword in the NHS is collaboration, but with the Health Bill steeped in competition, despite significant amendments, realising integrated care still seems a long way away. It’s time to focus, says Professor Bob Hudson.
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CommentThe system needs fixing if we're to find the financiers
The NHS’s flawed payments system must be mended and evolved into something more robust and attractive in order to secure the as-yet-undecided new financiers, warn James Barlow, Colin Gray and Steve Wright.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: healthy fun for all the NHS family
What will be this year’s Christmas stocking must have: Mid Staffs Cluedo, PFI Monopoly or Liberating the NHS Scrabble?
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CommentMedia Watch: all of NHS life appears in the papers
Most types of health professional featured in the media this week, though some more positively than others.
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Comment'We cannot tolerate incompetence in the search for sustainability'
The turnaround of one factory into an efficient, clean, collaborative and effective faciility should shame healthcare organisations into doing more to make sure sustainability in the NHS becomes less an ideal and more a way of working, writes Sir John Oldham.
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CommentMichael White: the search for Tory health debate beyond the fringe
Before the Tory faithful arrived in Manchester for their 2011 conference, a veteran party figure predicted the NHS would not feature much, despite the turbulence behind the Health Bill and the frantic applause lines which Ed Miliband effortlessly generated in the service’s defence a week earlier in Liverpool.
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CommentChange plans grind to a halt in the North West
Change takes forever in the NHS. So long, sometimes, that by the time your plan is finally agreed it is out of date, or there are different people in charge and they want to develop a new plan.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: in theory, the reality could be even worse
Let us start, as we hacks are so fond of doing, with the bad news. The Department of Health’s first quarterly report for 2011-12 reveals primary care trusts are planning to take savings worth £3.1bn out of acute care this financial year alone.
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CommentTide turning on transparency in the South
The government’s drive for a more open public sector does not sit easily with its “foundation trust or bust” policy, which gives FTs more say over the information they publish and whether their boards meet in public.
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CommentWhy public health practice must be integrated into commissioning
Whatever form the new NHS commissioning landscape takes, public health practice needs to be an integral part of it. A discussion is needed as to how it fits in to the structure, write Julie Sin, Su Sethi and Alison Rylands.
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LeaderDH chases up service changes with an undisguised urgency
The Department of Health’s report on the NHS’s record in the months April to June presents an impressive list of achievements and the NHS staff responsible for them should rightly feel proud. But look closer and a less reassuring picture emerges.
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Comment'Social enterprise is a real alternative to the big, bland offer'
City Health Care Partnership CIC chief executive Andrew Burnell reports from the social enterprise’s first AGM how it is aiming to utilise its flexibility to deliver quality local services by making its offering bigger, and more sustainable.