Comment archive – Page 329
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CommentThe North West's performance problems
A few days after NHS deputy chief executive David Flory issued a curt letter warning the health service not to allow any further failures to hit waiting times targets, an NHS North West board meeting considered its own share of the problem.
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CommentMedia Watch: migraines, babies and social care, oh my
Any newspaper-reading migraine sufferers might conclude that the NHS could soon use Botox to prevent their headaches - but only at the expense of making them unrecognisable to their babies.
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CommentMichael White: political meltdown?
Meltdown is an overworked media cliché which I try to avoid. But recent developments look a bit serious for the coalition.
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CommentProgress in the community: how TCS has helped community providers
With the Transforming Community Services transfers largely complete, attention turns to realising the benefits this sector of the NHS can now bring. Dr Kate Fallon looks at the progress that has been made.
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CommentPower to the patients: promised improvements to patient choice need backing up
A change in what “choice” represents in policy has great potential for patients. Now that change needs to be backed with a firm will to implement it, writes Health Foundation chief executive Stephen Thornton.
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CommentMedia Watch: backstreet operations and the threat to Human Rights
The “milking of the health service” was the message coming loud and clear from Monday’s Daily Mail as it accused the NHS of a “fertility free for all”.
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CommentMichael White: the well-intended Dilnot report may fall on deaf ears
Ministers didn’t sound very grateful for Andrew Dilnot’s report on how to solve England’s elderly care problems and, I suspect, eventually those of the devolved Celtic regions too because they have similar money issues with oldsters who stubbornly won’t die.
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CommentBig ambitions cause dilemma on the South East Coast
The South East Coast region is home to several large and ambitious mental health foundation trusts but evidence suggests that there has been a victim of one trust’s success.
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CommentClinical concerns in the South West rumble on
The aftershocks of last year’s independent inquiry into Bristol’s histopathology services are still being felt across the city through a series of reviews.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: Southern Cross offers clue to designating essential services
Those nasty bits in the health reforms where snazzy well-loved hospital buildings were going to get “designated” as essential while boring outpatient and orthopaedic departments were cast aside as ultimately dispensable have gone, right?
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CommentAndrew Lansley: the strength of feeling shows why we had to listen
Readers of HSJ will need no reminding that the NHS Future Forum recently published its recommendations on the Health and Social Care Bill. Nor that parliamentary scrutiny has begun on its amendments.
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LeaderTransparency offers a chink of light in a dark week for reform
You should not mistake Professor Roger Boyle’s outspoken criticism of the health reforms as the demob happy words of a man about to retire.
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CommentInvestment alone is not enough to solve the social care crisis
It is now well established that there is a crisis in social care and that we urgently need more money in the system. But we must also reform the way care services are organised and delivered: a priority that has been absent from recent debate, says IPPR researcher Laura Bradley.
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CommentNigel Edwards: NHS reform is nothing new, but it's about time leadership delivered
When I was asked by HSJ to reflect on what I have learnt about in my 12 years at the NHS Confederation, I thought I would specifically reflect on the constant process of reform including at least two which were billed as a once in a generation chance to change ...
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CommentMedia Watch: health reform fatigue sets
After the headlines generated by the NHS Future Forum report and the government’s response to it, the 181 amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill, published on 23 June, received more muted coverage.
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CommentMichael White: Cameron takes Labour to task in Wales
Have you noticed in all the excitement over reform of the NHS in England that David Cameron has taken to poking the NHS in Labour-dominated Wales for cuts being factored into the health budget in Cardiff?
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CommentSupport for children's heart unit intensifies in the South
Nothing mobilises a community quite like a hospital reconfiguration. Especially, it turns out, when the service threatened with possible closure is a children’s heart unit.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: time for primary care to shoulder its share of the savings burden
Around 20 per cent of the entire NHS budget is currently spent on primary care.
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CommentNorth divide to be united under NCB plans
NHS North East and North West are to be united – along with NHS Yorkshire and the Humber – HSJ understands.