Comment archive – Page 433
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Comment
Unity will unlock gateway to success
Sir Ian Carruthers' two-month review of England's reconfiguration proposals urges much greater co-ordination of effort - a more united front to replace a series of skirmishes.
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Comment
Water fluoridation
I was interested to read that Jessica Crowe uses water fluoridation as an example of a public health intervention that might provoke local protests, and that therefore overview and scrutiny committees (OSCs) might assist.
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Comment
Will is the way to win the patient safety war
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement is aiming to prevent 5 million medical injuries through an improvement campaign in the US. Here Don Berwick says safety requires a passionate determination by managers
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Comment
Breaking even must not mean trusts losing focus on money
The NHS should manage to hit its forecast position of a small surplus at the end of this year, according to this week's Department of Health figures. Not that it will be thanked or even believed. Within a few hours of the report being released on Tuesday, the protests began ...
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Comment
Top thinkers hail power of imagination
If clinicians are the likely generators of the ideas that will transform NHS performance, managers need the confidence to create the space for them to blossom. Our main feature this week looks at a group of very different ideas with the potential to make a huge difference locally and nationally.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: quiz night conundrum
You will no doubt carry off your duties of quiz master with your usual aplomb, entertaining the audience with mock looks of surprise as you reveal the answers.
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Comment
To solve a problem, first you must admit you have one
Managing demand will be a major issue this year and also a major test of the maturity of relationships between acute and primary care trusts. Variability is an acknowledged reality but poor access to and grasp of information means that it too often remains amorphous.
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Comment
MPs cannot be beaten, so try taming them
Whether they are sat on Commons select committees or stood outside your offices with a banner, MPs can seem like fierce and unpredictable beasts. Many seem to take unwholesome delight in raking their claws across health service plans, particularly at a local level, and even when they have secretary of ...
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Comment
Giving patients the cost of treatment
Having had first hand experience of this in the USA, when my father lay dying in ITU and we kept getting bills from the insurance company 'for information only' I would urge the Minister to give this proposal serious consideration.
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Comment
Peter Penson on one way to cut the NHS drugs budget
In recent months, the media has reported numerous cases of patients campaigning to be given expensive anti-cancer drugs such as Herceptin by the NHS despite a lack of NICE approval. Difficult decisions must be made about how money should be spent and where economies can be made.
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Comment
David Peat on choice
I suppose it's a generation thing. Choice, that is. And come to think of it, consumer power in general.
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Model contract and foundation trusts
Two issues highlighted in HSJrecently - the model contract ( HSJ, page 5, 1 February 2007) and an NHS charter ( HSJ, opinion, pages 18-19, 2007) - show how current NHS reform is engendering contradictory expectations.
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Comment
Criticism of Dr Foster JV masks the real story about poor data
The National Audit Office report on the Department of Health joint venture with health information provider Dr Foster does little to combat the notion that government is still feeling its way when doing deals with private companies.
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Comment
Angela Coulter on the national patients survey
'Access to GPs has dramatically improved!' claims the government. 'Nonsense, it's got worse!' yells the Daily Express.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on reconfiguration and supercasinos
So far this year I've enjoyed a strange mixture of speaking to the public about the case for change; getting involved in what I might loosely term 'people processes' - all of which has been a rich source of learning; and finding myself in a new-found role of professional patient.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on reconfiguration and supercasinos
2007 is promising to be a good year. I'm an optimist - it has to be!
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Comment
'Unacceptable risk' to acutes exposed by PCTs' contract
The final model contract released last week has provoked fierce resistance from hospital providers, which have little time for the argument that it rebalances the power levels between primary care trusts and acutes. For more, read New model contract threatens survival, foundations warn.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: disaster planning
‘Four black Mercedes limousines with police outriders screeched to a halt outside trust HQ heralding the arrival of the McKashsky consultants’
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Comment
Clinical engagement: the beginning of reform is the end point
The fall-out from Sir Gerry Robinson's TV programme on NHS management continues, and this week two very different commentators address the central issue of what is holding back managers and clinicians from working together properly.