Comment archive – Page 336
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CommentSally Gainsbury: welcome, belatedly, to austerity
Worried how your organisation will cope with the coming real terms cut in its spending power? Well, don’t be. By the time you read this, it will already have survived its first year of it.
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LeaderAction on the ground is proving as fascinating as Westminster tussles
There are two narratives running in parallel on the current NHS reforms. Within Whitehall and Westminster and among the health policy chattering classes debate rages over the exact intention of each clause of the Health Bill.
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LeaderTransparency tsar could spark a revolution
When Andrew Lansley became health secretary he gave a series of presentations which all began by stressing how the new government would increase patients’ control by giving them more choice and information.
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CommentHealth and wellbeing needs to remain a local responsibility
Early formation of health and wellbeing boards can quickly reduce wasted effort and result in clear strategic oversight of health issues - but they need to stay free from too much Whitehall interference, as Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council chief executive Graham Burgess explains.
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CommentUniting health and social care to give dementia patients improved services
Projections that the number of people with dementia could double in 30 years will worry a health service that is already failing to adequately support patients with dementia. But making important changes to unite health and social care services could dramatically improve the quality of dementia care, writes Institute of ...
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Comment
Community action in the NHS is quietly building the Big Society
Mention the Big Society now in the voluntary sector and you are likely to be met with stony gazes. The prime minister’s relaunch of what he describes as his mission in politics will struggle to convince a sector facing the loss of £1.2bn in public funding from April.
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Comment'63 per cent of managers are making cost-savings - what are the others up to?'
Decision over jobs and pay are going to be tough - but that’s all the more reason to take them now, and start preparing for the future, writes David Flory.
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CommentEast Midlands marching toward structural change
Policy makers would have us believe the reforms are all about changing patient pathways rather than building new structures, but announcements on structural change are coming thick and fast.
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CommentMedia watch: someone needs to get a grip on reforms
There was little room for domestic issues amid wall to wall coverage of events in Libya and Japan in the papers this week, but nevertheless the Sunday Telegraph managed to maintain the pressure on health secretary Andrew Lansley.
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CommentNorth West making up ground for new financial year
Just a few days from the start of a financial year, there are two main questions for those who want to know how the North West will cope.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: shouldn't specialist services be cheaper, not dearer?
The value of specialist top-ups under the NHS tariff is falling. Specialist children’s hospitals had 78 per cent additional funding compared with the standard tariff, but from April their uplift will only be 60 per cent.
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CommentMichael White: under fire Tories retreating forwards
In my inbox on Monday I found an email from some self-styled “Big Society NHS” doctors reporting what they heard Andrew Lansley saying at a dinner given for the health secretary in his childhood neighbourhood of Hornchurch, Essex.
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LeaderOne more sign that we may miss the expertise of PCTs
While the NHS accelerates towards an uncertain future, primary care trusts are braking hard on activity.
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LeaderPay attention to the sound of the crowd
“The wisdom of crowds” was one of the buzz phrases of 2004. The theory was that social media and other digital services allowed opinion to be aggregated quickly and effectively to drive real world decisions.
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CommentCally Bann: is life imitating art in La La land?
La La’s Teletubby house has many potential uses: as long as they remain over the hills and far far away.
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CommentStephen Eames: it's time to embrace disruption
We are entering a new phase of reform which some see as reckless tampering and others as the natural evolution of the NHS from a superstate behemoth to a consumer-driven 21st century business.
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CommentCan GPs become agents of change, or will they remain gatekeepers?
In my forthcoming book on the NHS and reform, I have devoted a chapter to trying to answer the question of whether GPs can move from gatekeepers to change agents. Andrew Lansley’s reforms pose the same question along with others – do a sufficient number of them want to make ...
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CommentMedia watch: Lib Dems' wash hands of reforms in spring conference
The papers this week were full of the Liberal Democrat spring conference’s rejection of the government’s health reforms.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: what will the year end yield for trust finances?
Ever wondered why financial years begin in April? It’s the crop cycle.
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CommentWhat will the private sector do with failed hospitals?
The setting of a final deadline for NHS trusts to apply for foundation status is certainly focusing minds and starting to move long-postponed jobs out of the “too hard” tray, but the unpalatable truth is that some trusts are not going to make it by the drop-dead date of 1 ...