Comment archive – Page 447
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Comment
Listening to complaints
David Lee's article on listening to complaints was engaging. What would have been really useful is a sense of what has actually changed in the day-to-day operation of services and the impact on patient care, efficiency and staff relations.
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Comment
Funding formula
I am delighted that you reported calls to scrap the NHS funding formula on the evidence given to the health select committee by Professors Asthana, Stone and McCormick.
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Comment
Back to the wards
A selection of reader responses about our story on senior nurses going 'back to the wards' to save trusts money
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Comment
Andrew Jones on conspiracy or cock-up
'It could be kindly argued that, by general lack of enthusiasm, a third of the country is yet to churn out any meaningful health activity data, yet alone customise or dynamise it to specific local goals. Perhaps more telling is that two-thirds have yet to even put together a simple ...
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Comment
Dianne Leyland on the lack of clarity over local involvement networks
Voluntary and community groups must be actively involved if LINks are to work. Yet the sectors' goodwill, undermined by the botched creation of patient forums, is eroding further.
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Lots of turnaround, but no new direction
Is turnaround working? The latest figures from the Department of Health suggest there is little evidence yet that it is. Read the news story here. While the number of affected trusts has risen from an original 52 to a current 143, there are few clear signs that turnaround is bringing ...
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Comment
The new economics
Treating individual services as profit-and-loss units promises to transform financial management and clinical engagement. With plans imminent for foundation trusts, Monitor chair Bill Moyes puts the case for a fresh approach
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Comment
And so to bed The problem with mental health inpatients
Mental healthcare faces a problem of bed shortages for inpatient care, but while a large part of the solution might be stronger community support rather than increasing the number of available beds, there is still a need in some places to boost their number. Mat Kinton and Suki Desai explain
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Comment
Richard Barker on why the IT programme is never going to come right
'NPfIT will never get back on track; it was never on track in the first place. It breaks every rule of project management - from scoping to delivery - and is patently failing to take into account the actual requirements of clinicians across the NHS.'
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Comment
David Peat on snipers and Special Ones
I believe that in the fullness of time we will look back at these months of uncertainty and see it as a short diversion from the grand task in hand.
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David Woodhead on love and understanding
'If love is all around us, why is it seldom discussed? What is the exact role of love in promoting health? And if love were a desired outcome, how would we recognise it?'
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Comment
Emma Dent on publishing pictures of NHS demonstrations
A regular point of discussion at HSJTowers is whether we should publish pictures of demonstrations against NHS cuts and closures.
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Comment
Patient involvement
A current exemplar of the way the government misjudges citizen engagement is the proposal to introduce LINks and abolish Patient and Public Involvement Forums.
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Comment
Predicting unplanned admissions
Your article 'Long Term Conditions: Predicting the Future' (2 November 2006) showed the value of measuring the risk of patients experiencing unplanned admissions to hospital, and I thought it would be helpful to highlight other work that is underway
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Comment
Rights and responsibilities is the issue on the Cabinet table
The government believes it has to reassert its power to make policy in response to the Brown-Blair faction-fighting of the autumn. Public services is one of six policy areas under debate (the others include the role of the state, crime and security) and the first to arrive on the Cabinet ...
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on being half-way through radiotherapy
Soon I can put radiotherapy and my emotional reaction to it behind me and enjoy Harry Hill's advice: 'My auntie used to say, what you can't see won't hurt you. She died of radiation poisoning'
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Comment
Clinical governance
While I agree with using data for decision making (Click here to read the full story), for this to happen effectively we need greater management leverage of clinical governance.
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Comment
Professor David J Hunter and Jeffrie Strang on public health and organisational reform
The justification for the current reorganisation of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts is to strengthen the commissioning function of PCTs and to save £250m in management costs. But are these good enough reasons and will the mergers create a period of stasis? ...
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: non-executive joy
‘As for selection processes, we still can’t fathom them. It used to be so simple: either failed politicians found a way to boost their pension or successful ones got their wives out of the way a few days a month’.
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Comment
Merit awards
Dr Giles Croft's lament about the inaccuracy of Hospital Episode Statistics and their inappropriateness as a means of managing the performance of doctors (HSJ, November 2nd) raises the nice issue of why there are some problems with HES accuracy. Surely such inaccuracies are the product of failures by clinicians to ...