Comment archive – Page 363
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LeaderHard cash makes Tory policy a soft target
As the Conservatives’ policy of handing commissioning cash to GP consortia comes under closer scrutiny, the lack of detailed thinking about how it will work becomes increasingly apparent.
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CommentAndy McKeon on NHS efficiency and pre-election sparring
The pre-election sparring has begun and the NHS will not escape some cuts. How tough things get will be a true test of how well money has been spent recently
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CommentMedia Watch: News of the World becomes preferred provider
It doesn’t happen often, but this week the intricacies of health policy have made it into the tabloids.
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CommentMichael White on public vs private
The line dividing the public sector from the private has been fragmenting for decades.
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CommentCally Bann: NHS car parking
Ten years at the helm and not a single complaint about car parking. Until the Boy Burnham sticks his nose in, that is.
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CommentSimon Stevens on the best healthcare system in the world
Torture the statistics until they confess. That seems to be the approach of many academics, journalists and policy wonks to the ideologically loaded question: which country’s healthcare system is best?
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CommentPete Mason on lessons for the NHS from hazardous industries
The NHS and hazardous industries, such as aviation, often use the Swiss cheese model of accident causation, or the “cumulative act effect”.
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LeaderStars of the health check ratings must not be eclipsed by failures
The annual health check reveals a stronger performance by primary care trusts, but provides worrying signs that improvement in acute trusts has stalled.
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LeaderGP commissioning is turning in its grave
Practice based commissioning is dead. Primary care tsar David Colin-Thomé, unable to find signs of life, has written its death certificate.
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CommentJon Restell on NHS choice and personalisation
Every film has its fans. Although no one I know has had the audacity to big it up, even Marley and Me must have a tiny cult following somewhere. (Tip: if necessary, kill to avoid seeing Marley and Me.)
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CommentClare Chapman on delivering a healthy and happy NHS workforce
The investment in creating and maintaining a content and healthy workforce is outweighed by the rewards of improved effectiveness and patient satisfaction
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CommentMedia Watch: working time menace
The apparent failure of the second swine flu surge to turn into a plague of biblical proportions - touch wood - has left the media searching for a new killer.
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CommentMichael White on Tory worries
I was slightly surprised this week to find myself trudging into expenses-gripped Westminster for the last parliamentary session before the election more troubled by the prospect of a new Conservative government than I was a week ago.
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CommentPaul Corrigan: world class commissioning
The Department of Health launched the second year of the world class commissioning process in mid September.
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CommentJenny Rogers: how to survive a media onslaught
Over a glass of wine, a friend in a high profile public sector job is agonising about how her organisation should have responded to what she saw as the humiliating newspaper hounding of a senior woman colleague.
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CommentAndrew Lansley on a Conservative recipe for NHS reform
Competition, choice and clinician power: the shadow health secretary lists the ingredients that he would use to make NHS outcomes the best in the world
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CommentYour Humble Servant: McKinsey, McJected
‘Imagine if you are in your umpteenth meeting in a hospital or PCT or SHA somewhere, with a McKinseyite costing your directorate’s annual savings plan being taught the McKinsey way of saving the world. You are going to be feeling a little dubious about it all’
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LeaderAndrew Lansley and NHS managers must face hard truths about cuts
The policies which shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley outlined to this week’s Conservative conference are not the answer to the exam question he will be set - save £20bn.
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CommentMichael White on the Conservative conference
Even before I set out for the Conservative conference, a neighbour asked me how David Cameron plans to fund residential end of life care for a flat-rate insurance contribution of £8,000.
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CommentMedia Watch: party conference season
Unsurprisingly with the party conference season in full swing, there is plenty of NHS politics in the papers this week.