Comment archive – Page 344
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CommentMichael White: health panel discussions
As I type I can hear this week’s opening of the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust public inquiry being discussed on the radio.
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Comment'A good coach helps you to see the world as it really is'
Stress levels in the management community are higher than at any time since I joined it 41 years ago. At best, many managers face the loss of career prospects and life chances. At worst, they face the loss of employment and real hardship.
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Comment'Major NHS reforms are driven by the heart, not the calculator'
Two things become apparent from recent parliamentary exchanges on the cost of anticipated large scale NHS redundancies.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: home front
‘We’re invading your privacy at home, and turning it into the outpatient clinic’
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LeaderThe new mortality indicator suffers from mixed messages
The debate over how hospital mortality should be measured and whether those measures reveal anything useful has rumbled on for the last decade.
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LeaderGPs stung by maternity services rebuff
Who should commission maternity care? Health secretary Andrew Lansley has decided it should not be part of the “great majority” of services that GPs will eventually be responsible for.
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CommentThe NHS needs to re-invent itself to cope with funding cuts
The NHS’s funding increase is actually a 0.5 per cent cut - efficiency savings of 4-5 per cent will have to be found.
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CommentIndependent contractors and the NHS
Are independent contractors really part of the NHS? The answer, traditionally, has been “yes, when convenient; no, when not”.
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Comment'Complaints about NICE on one page and useless, costly drugs on another'
After a summer in which Labour’s health team was off fighting a leadership contest and the Liberal Democrat team was co-opted into government, health politics are livening up. No more Mr Nice Guy seems to be John Healey’s message.
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CommentNHS efficiency savings could get a rough ride
What is the difference between a cut and an efficiency saving? And will patients be able to tell the difference?
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LeaderNHS management challenge stays much the same, rich or poor
On 25 April 2002 HSJ gave its verdict on Gordon Brown’s decision to lavish unprecedented riches on the NHS.
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Comment
NHS underspends under the microscope
It is one of the most common dilemmas of NHS financial management. The trust sets an annual expenditure budget. A budget holder underspends - no doubt for excellent reasons - and wants to carry the unspent balance forward into the following financial year.
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CommentBig Society: little guys vs big guns
The third sector is uniting in the hope of building enough clout to win the big society contracts
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CommentGPs in the driving seat?
It seems GPs are not really up for being put “in the driving seat” of NHS reform.
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Comment‘Labour MPs who call the Osborne way Thatcherism Mk II are not up to speed’
It took less than a week for some vociferous supporters of George Osborne’s £81bn spending cuts experiment to get cold feet about the likely consequences for lower economic growth. The government “cannot cut its way to prosperity”, business leaders warned on Monday.
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LeaderHSJ Finance: helping you achieve NHS efficiency
This week HSJ introduces a new section in the magazine. HSJ Finance has two goals: to explore how increasing financial pressures are impacting on the NHS, and to plot the developing relationship between the service and the private sector.
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Comment'Who will own the NHS?'
Somewhere between this week’s spending review and the parliamentary debates on the Health Bill, we will learn where the real balance of power between the commissioning board and GP consortia will lie.
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Comment'La La is throwing his limited political capital into reshuffling bureaucracy'
It’s all getting rather confusing with La La Lansley. Is he the mild mannered janitor who turns in to Hong Kong Phooey, or is he just the janitor for Stephen Dorrell?
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CommentMedia Watch: digital drive and damaging cuts
After cloth merchant Sir Philip Green got backs up last week with talk of waste, Martha Lane Fox is the latest entrepreneur to try telling public servants how to do their jobs.