Comment archive – Page 373
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CommentMedia Watch: Shame on you
The Observer bagged the tenth Dr Foster Hospital Guide exclusive, leading with an exposé of the trusts it said “shame the NHS”.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: Must no deficit mean saying no to delivery?
According to the recently published Department of Health report on the first quarter of 2010-11, no primary care trusts are forecasting a deficit this financial year.
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Comment'Stalinist Whitehall controls will be needed'
I felt a bit sorry for Phil Morley, chief executive of the Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust, getting roughed up on the radio after Dr Foster’s sleuths named his patch as the place where patients are most likely to die of complications after routine operations.
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LeaderWhite paper let down by speedy schedule
The public health white paper is something of a an anticlimax. Government plans for improving the country’s wellbeing may well prove to be significant, but we will have to wait until well into 2011 to find out.
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LeaderCircle’s success at Hinchingbrooke is more likely to be cultural than commercial
What will we learn from private provider Circle’s success in becoming the preferred and only bidder for the contract to manage Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust?
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CommentAli Parsa: the NHS must learn to put quality ahead of price
Under a new approach to procurement, value for money rather than price will determine who is awarded contracts
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CommentMark Britnell: quick fixes for making efficiency gains
Some people think more cash is coming for the NHS, but just in case it isn’t, here are some instant gains we can make in the meantime
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LeaderGPs and government battle for custody of white paper reforms
The struggle for the soul of the reforms is intensifying as the outline shape of the new landscape clarifies.
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CommentParliament, prudence and productivity
What Commons health committee chair Stephen Dorrell said to HSJ last week was not symptomatic of a tiff between him and Andrew Lansley. More significant issues are coming into play.
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Comment'The challenge is to get better average outcomes and reduce variation'
Post-Blair Labour health “reforms” overemphasised a centrist, target driven culture that tended to distort how care might best be delivered. It marginalised clinical staff, leaving them often to adopt a stance of disgruntled passivity.
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CommentMedia Watch: All eyes are on Lansley
Health secretary Andrew Lansley is not a politician to wilt in the face of criticism, which probably came in handy last week.
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Comment'Dorrell argues now for quiet pragmatism, for letting change evolve'
Am I just imagining it? Or did Andrew Lansley start to modify his combative message to the NHS, its suspicious staff and customers, even before Stephen Dorrell’s striking intervention in the reform debate courtesy of last week’s HSJ?
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CommentOur lives are in the cancer detectives’ hands
Helping GPs to hone their skill at identifying cancer early will go a long way to improving survival rates
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CommentHealth insurance is a game of poker, against an expert
“NICE is accountable to the public,” Lord Crisp - the former NHS chief executive - advised Parliament last week. “What we don’t need is to import American style private sector rationing where individuals find themselves the victims of decisions made in private by individual insurance companies where nobody is accountable.”
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CommentAndrew Murrison on the military covenant
The British public is discerning. It may doubt the validity of UK involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan but gives the thumbs up to the means of its prosecution.
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CommentMedia Watch: targets and treatment
The last week and a half proved a good few days for journalists, but a less good few days for NHS managers and their staff.
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Comment'NHS cuts will come off a far fatter bird'
It won’t have changed your life much, but MPs have been squabbling for weeks now over the future size of the NHS budget under the coalition’s plans for the next five years. “Bigger or smaller?” critics demand to know. Yes or no, does it change anything?
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CommentWhat happened to courage?
A client describes the following scenario to me. The 24-year-old son of a close friend has lost his job in the fallout from the sudden collapse of the business in which he was working.
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LeaderHSJ100: Politicians and medics surge to power in the new world order
We live in political times. That much is clear from the first HSJ100, the expanded version of the HSJ50 which, for the past four years, has plotted the most influential people in health.
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LeaderWhat Dorrell says matters, and his message to the NHS is clear
House of Commons health committee chair Stephen Dorrell made an electrifying intervention into the NHS reform debate last Thursday.