Comment archive – Page 366
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CommentNoel Plumridge: RIP, payment by results
After nearly a decade, it’s time to say goodbye to payment by results.
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CommentMichael White: with friends like Lansley's, who needs an opposition?
More and more people have started to ask me: “Is David Cameron going to sack Andrew Lansley?”
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CommentIs there really room for localism in the Big Healthy Society?
As the centre slowly learns to let go, three bills will shape the future relationship between local and central government, writes Local Government Group’s Rob Whiteman.
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LeaderWhy Andrew Lansley should stay - and why he might go
Andrew Lansley must go. That is the demand of many of the opponents of the government’s health reforms. They are wrong.
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CommentAttention in the South East turns to QIPP
The quality, innovation, productivity and prevention drive is preoccupying primary care trust plans in the South and East of England.
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CommentLondon trusts' savings to fall short despite cost-cutting success
It is becoming clear that while trusts in London have succeeded in cutting costs during 2010-11, savings will fall significantly short of what was planned, meaning surplus targets will not be met.
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CommentMedia Watch: flu vaccine orders get in early
Just as everyone was reaching for their sunglasses, the Guardian reported how GPs had already been told to start ordering flu vaccine stocks for next winter.
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CommentHakin rejects 'disappointing' reform criticisms
Dame Barbara Hakin, a GP of 20 years and the woman charged by the government with developing consortium commissioning, is growing irritated by alleged misinformation about the NHS reforms, as HSJ’s Dave West finds out.
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CommentMichael White: 'Nicholson's challenge' matters more than Osborne's Budget
At the TUC’s big anti-cuts rally in Hyde Park a young NHS physiotherapist spoke with a passion and sincerity which characterised the day’s main event, if not the hooligan fringe rioting in nearby Piccadilly.
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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.