Comment archive – Page 334
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Comment'Without evidence, the rhetorical reforms are irrelevant at best'
As real funding is eroded amid grand health policy rhetoric, there is a desperate need for hard evidence and data to inform the fundamental policy challenges facing this government. Without it, the reforms are all but irrelevant, argues York University professor of health economics Alan Maynard.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: balancing the books with creative 'fiddling'
It is year-end accounts closing time and finance departments are a hive of fevered book balancing. This column wants to salute the best of that and so is launching the NHS Finance Departments Delivering Liberty and Excellence – FiDDLE – award.
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LeaderPCTs are dead. Long live the PCT cluster?
Here’s a quiz for you. What do the following numbers - 581, 331, 162, 62 - represent?
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CommentMichael White: the Tory rhetoric is now bogged down in detail
Over a junk food lunch with NHS heavies recently I found the conversation turning – yet again – to Andrew Lansley. Is he on the level? Does he have a hidden agenda to privatise the system? That kind of thing.
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CommentKeeping safer service delivery at the forefront of the NHS
The NHS has made great strides in delivering safer services: the recent work on surgical check lists is another excellent example that hospitals cannot afford to ignore. However there is still much to do, says Paul Zollinger-Read.
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CommentWhy the reforms need to avoid penalising NHS and local government relationships
Areas where improved health outcomes are already being delivered through strong NHS and local government partnerships will be hoping the negative impact the reforms could have on this success will be seriously reviewed, writes Blackburn with Darwen chief executive Graham Burgess.
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CommentThe debate on consortia governance requires sound principles, and hard evidence
To commission effectively, consortia will need governance arrangements that create confidence and trust, and build legitimacy and partnerships, writes The Health Foundation chief executive Stephen Thornton.
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CommentMedia Watch: worries over 'rationed' availability of treatments
After last week’s universal coverage of the health secretary’s will he/won’t he appearance at the Royal College of Nursing congress, the media headed towards the Easter break with a fairly united front over the availability of NHS treatments.
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CommentIs the NHS constitution still relevant in the new NHS landscape?
Since the government came to power and the health secretary announced sweeping reforms to the NHS, there seems to have been little focus on the NHS constitution. Gerard Hanratty, partner at healthcare law firm Capsticks, weighs up what may happen to it under the coalition government.
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CommentCally Bann: the Big Society's 'Big Listen'
I have my doubts whether this period of political deflection, that is, reflection, will bring changes of any substance to the NHS reforms.
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CommentMidlands looking for leaders to deliver business and savings plans
The detailed, costed 2011-12 business plans produced by commissioners this month make interesting reading – but who will be accountable for achieving them?
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CommentA chief executive merry-go-round in London
It appears to be poacher turned gamekeeper season among the capital’s chief executives.
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LeaderInquiry adds to the toxic reform mix
Cynthia Bower, chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, appeared at the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust inquiry on Monday. Ms Bower was previously chief executive of NHS West Midlands, responsible for monitoring the troubled trust.
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CommentMichael White: time to address costly preventable failures
It being Easter weekend this column thought to give Andrew Lansley and his NHS reforms the week off. The secretary of state is on his own painful road to Calvary, carrying a legislative cross of his own making.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: PFI pipe dream turns sour
Within the EU, the talk is now of a periphery and a core. Peripheral countries that the international bond market no longer loves – Greece, Ireland and now Portugal – have to borrow large sums of money from the core merely to stay afloat.
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LeaderStraggling organisations set to slip into crisis
The popular perception is that the fortunes of the NHS rise and fall on a national basis. HSJ readers will know the true picture is one of variation – often stark – between organisations and regions.
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CommentMichael White: Lansley must tune in to rescue reforms
To listen to Nick Clegg picking his way through the minefield of NHS reform on Radio 4 was to be reminded how hard it is to calibrate effective opposition – words and actions which can make a difference to important legislation.
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CommentPerformance surplus hides the fact many trusts are facing critical finance problems
Trusts with serious financial problems are in danger of being overlooked as a surplus on “aggregate performance” comforts some in the NHS. Nick Bosanquet looks at five ways to avert the hidden crisis.
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CommentThis ‘natural break’ is an opportunity to develop a genuinely patient-centred NHS
The coalition’s ‘listening exercise’ shows that Cameron and his ministers know they do not have the votes to push the reforms through Parliament in their current shape. They might do better if they radically rethink their proposals, argues Institute for Public Policy Research senior research fellow for health Phil McCarvill.
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CommentYour humble servant: Lansley live - for one month only
Time is running out to get a ticket to the Andrew Lansley show, where the only certainty is there are no certainties.