Comment archive – Page 385
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CommentMichael White: the personal care row
Seatbelts on please, crash helmets too. The pre-election row over personal care for the elderly shows alarming signs of blundering on to polling day.
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CommentAlan Maynard: could the Tories give PCTs bite?
The ‘toothless bulldogs’ of the NHS might hope for more control over purchasing under the Conservatives
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CommentAndrew Jones on the politics of wellbeing
Election season is upon us and the aspiring communicator can only watch in awe as the main protagonists wheel out their proven strategists and presenters.
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LeaderBurying the NHS mortality row will clear the way for quality push
The Department of Health is trying to get a grip on the toxic issue of hospital standardised mortality ratios.
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LeaderRoyal Surrey has some explaining to do
HSJ’s revelation that Royal Surrey County Hospital was the foundation trust selling millions of pounds of drugs on the export market requires some answers from its board.
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CommentMedia Watch: social care funding fight
A toe-to-toe row between health secretary Andy Burnham and his Tory counterpart Andrew Lansley in the Commons injected some colour into the papers last week.
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CommentCally Bann: funding gap
Call me old fashioned, but if you ask me, the difference between 240 and 260 is 20. Which is what I call a gap.
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CommentSheila Williams on leading staff through tough times
Leaders need to remember their core purpose - that of engaging the hearts and minds of their people.
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CommentMichael White: NHS spending pledges
Which is the more alarming spectacle: David Cameron and George Osborne promising real term cuts in public expenditure (but not “swingeing” ones) in the coming Parliament? Or Gordon Brown behaving as if he can carry on making new spending pledges for the NHS?
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LeaderSenior NHS ranks have proved their value, how can they maintain it?
HSJ this week reveals that NHS trusts with the greatest increases in the number of managers are often those that are providing the best quality services.
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LeaderPatients shortchanged in local trade-off
It is ominous when the health secretary won’t deny that a political ideal has been a “damp squib” in practice. And so to foundation trusts’ local accountability, which Andy Burnham spoke to HSJ about in an exclusive interview this week.
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CommentStephen Eames on NHS merger turkeys
Most evidence of the impact of mergers is mixed and suggests benefits do not always materialise.
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CommentMedia Watch: cancer care pledge
Gordon Brown’s pledge to provide free one-to-one homecare by specialist nurses for cancer patients divided the newspapers.
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CommentJanice Stevens on same sex hospital accommodation
Same sex facilities call for changed attitudes more than new buildings
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CommentNicky Spencer on building a high performing team
Attention on world class organisations, productive services and talent management, together with a natural inclination to safeguard our own roles and careers, could leave a crucial building block neglected: the team.
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CommentThomas Hughes-Hallett on a better place to die
Despite significant improvements in recent years, care of the dying is too often a lower priority than saving lives.
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CommentStephen Thornton on interpreting NHS performance data
Dr Foster’s Hospital Guide was no help to managers and patients - in fact it added to the confusion
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CommentYour Humble Servant: weapons of self-destruction
If GPs would not stop referring patients to hospital, we had to get rid of both.
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LeaderIt’s crunch time, but job cuts are not the only way to save the NHS money
While politicians have been quibbling over the size and the semantics of the public sector spending cuts to come, the NHS is quietly starting to get on with them.
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LeaderNHS quality accounts must live up to the name
A year and a half after former health minister Lord Darzi’s next stage review called for all NHS providers to publish quality accounts, there is still no real consensus on what they should look like.