Comment archive – Page 411

  • Comment

    Jenny Rogers on forced fun

    2008-09-01T09:00:00Z

    I have a memory: my one-year-old child is squatting in the kitchen looking a touch restless. Feeling it my maternal duty to play, I approach with a synthetic 'let's-have-fun' voice.

  • Comment

    Andrew Jones on achieving quality care

    2008-09-01T09:00:00Z

    Piloting the NHS towards quality requires robust regulation and inspection, and the DH has already set up overlapping organisations to provide this, presumably with a thinly spread budget. But if Lord Darzi's plan is to be accomplished, it will require action rather than rhetoric, and action requires funding.

  • Comment

    Naomi Chambers on grumpy boards

    2008-08-29T09:00:00Z

    With Lord Darzi's review of the NHS casting an uncertain light on the role of boards, some members might be forgiven for becoming tetchy, mistrustful, grumbling souls who always seem to be on the defensive

  • Leader

    Divide and rule: time for the UK to debate its four health systems

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    Among the oceans of data washing around the NHS, it is striking that government has avoided collecting one of the most illuminating sets of figures - comparisons between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

  • Leader

    Clinical code-breaking jeopardises safety

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    The Audit Commission's exposure of a high error rate in clinical coding has an impact far beyond payment by results.

  • Comment

    Your Humble Servant on co-payments and co-operation

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRE: No-payment?

  • Comment

    Media Watch: teenage time bomb

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    The NHS is facing a 'teenage time bomb', several newspapers warned this week, based on statistics showing increased admissions of young people to hospital.

  • Comment

    Noel Plumridge on a family tragedy

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    When the mobile phone leaps into life before 8am, it's usually ominous. Yesterday was no exception, with a text from my sister Amy: 'Tony has been in a terrible accident and is fighting 4 his life. Everyone pls pray 4 him.'

  • Comment

    Michael White on the golden age of the NHS

    2008-08-28T09:00:00Z

    I have been sitting in patchy sunshine reading Rejuvenate or Retire? the Nuffield Trust's anthology to mark the NHS 60th anniversary.

  • Comment

    Ginette Camps-Walsh on measuring patient satisfaction

    2008-08-27T09:00:00Z

    Lord Darzi's next stage review sets out that the NHS will begin systematically measuring and publishing information about the quality of the care it provides. Measures will include patients' views on the success of their treatment and the quality of their experiences.

  • Comment

    David Levy on the changing face of clinical leadership

    2008-08-26T09:00:00Z

    Clinical leadership is changing in response to Lord Darzi's review of the NHS, but the changes have not been uniform across the health community.

  • Comment

    Lisa Rodrigues on foundation trust tips

    2008-08-25T09:00:00Z

    Well, we did it. Sussex Partnership foundation trust - a teaching trust of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School - was born on 1 August 2008.

  • Comment

    Ken Jarrold on Darzi and nursing

    2008-08-25T09:00:00Z

    While Lord Darzi's review of the NHS is to be warmly supported, it is astonishing that it contains almost no reference to nursing or to ward and team leaders.

  • Comment

    David Lee on integrating care

    2008-08-25T09:00:00Z

    Two recent phone calls from different parts of the country got me thinking about what good management can do to make mental health and social care systems tick.

  • Comment

    Stephen Pearson on partnership working

    2008-08-22T09:00:00Z

    At the NHS Confederation conference, a group of mainly NHS managers was asked whether anyone thought working with the private sector was a bad idea. That no-one put their hand up is an indication of how far the NHS has come on partnership working.

  • Comment

    Andrea Sutcliffe on transforming the NHS

    2008-08-22T09:00:00Z

    NHS 60 week was full of celebration of the past and, as Lord Darzi unveiled his plans for the next 10 years, full of promise for the future.

  • Leader

    Beleaguered NICE is powerless to call off postcode lottery

    2008-08-21T09:00:00Z

    The NHS is caught in a media storm over access to drugs, with NICE at the centre.

  • Leader

    Patients have a right to know about mortality rates

    2008-08-21T09:00:00Z

    The argument in the West Midlands over interpreting mortality rates is just a taste of the rows that will ensue once the Department of Health starts publishing outcomes data.

  • Comment

    Media Watch: overweight children

    2008-08-21T09:00:00Z

    The issue of overweight children, always a popular topic, was widely reported this week.

  • Comment

    Michael White on pandemic flu

    2008-08-21T09:00:00Z

    Did you clock the government's new national risk register, published by the Cabinet Office? It was widely reported as putting pandemic flu as potentially the most lethal threat mankind is facing.