All Comment articles – Page 211
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Comment
What the new healthcare environment holds for clinical negligence indemnity
Changes ushered in by the Health Bill will mean indemnity contracts between providers and commissioners will need to be considered carefully and satisfy both sides before being set in place. Medical Defence Union chief executive Dr Christine Tomkins explains.
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South West trust chiefs in merry-go-round shake up
The impending departure of Weston Area Health Trust’s chief executive to Kettering General Hospital Foundation Trust next month has sparked a round of musical chairs in the South West.
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Sally Gainsbury: the £2bn secret subsidy
Will the £500m ministers plan to spend each year on not sorting out failing hospitals suffice?
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Michael White: the strange landscape of US healthcare
Where else but the US should this column spend a few days as punishment for not understanding how inappropriate a mechanism competition is for driving efficiency and innovation in healthcare?
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Media Watch: deliberate delays report provokes fury in the press
The furore over the Cooperation and Competition Panel’s report suggesting primary care trusts were making patients wait longer in the hope they would die or go private was going strong when the weekend papers went to press.
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Restructuring risks worry West Midlands as SHA chair drops out of cluster running
Restructuring the health service can be a risky business and NHS West Midlands isn’t taking any chances.
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The crucial role health charities have to play
Never has there been a more important time to strengthen the relationships we have with hospital charities. And with more than 280 NHS charities across the UK, are we maximising these relationships that bring unquestionable benefits to our patients and staff, asks Peter Homa.
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Cynthia Bower interview: replacing the 'light touch' with a firm grip
Amid heavy political pressure, the Care Quality Commission is preparing to replace its “light touch” style with annual inspections of every provider. So is its chief executive ready to do battle? Cynthia Bower talks to HSJ’s Charlotte Santry.
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Noel Plumridge: the price of reputation
How would you feel about a health insurer that took your premium payments and then turned down your claim, not on the basis of an alleged pre-existing condition, or something in the contractual small print, but simply because it considered your illness a low priority?
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Reconfiguration pressures mounting in London
A report is sat on Andrew Lansley’s desk offering recommendations about the future of Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.
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Concern over 'red risk' providers in East of England
A performance report from NHS East of England this month showed a mixed picture. While referrals are down in the region, activity for both elective and non-elective procedures is nearly 2 per cent higher than last year.
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Comment
Media Watch: AQP rears its head to revive the privatisation debate
“The day they signalled the death warrant for the health service” chimed the headline on a piece by Max Pemberton, a member of the burgeoning doctors-who-are-also-journalists club, in the the Daily Telegraph this week.
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Michael White: see you later, innovator
Oh dear. The British Medical Association is promising health ministers a long hot summer over the Health Bill, instead of a few calm weeks for leisurely reflection; this is in the misplaced hope that the medics can force its withdrawal before the bill goes to the obstreperous Lords.
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Perfect placement: getting patients out of hospital and onto their preferred pathway
The biggest problem facing West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust is giving patients who no longer requiring hospital treatment the support and care they do need in the next stage of their pathway efficiently and cost effectively. Chief executive Jan Filochowski looks at the issue.
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The NHS Commissioning Board must support CCGs, not overshadow them
Amid the controversy around the government’s NHS reforms, relatively little attention has been given to the role of the NHS Commissioning Board.
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Local services need the backup of national support
We’ve all gone local these days. The health secretary is handing power to GPs. NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson is giving a bigger say to patients.
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Sally Gainsbury: what price public health?
How much does the NHS spend on public health? It is an important question because, whatever the amount is, it will be hacked off the NHS commissioning budget from 2013-14 onwards and passed over to those hungry colleagues in local authorities.
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South Tyneside FT not quite the 'darling' of the North East
The Care Quality Commission’s series of judgements on dignity and nutrition in hospitals is rumbling on – and South Tyneside Foundation Trust has been added to the list of those deemed not to be meeting “the essential standards of quality and safety”.
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Media Watch: a good week to bury health news
Health policy has been a little further than usual from the front pages this week, with the national dailies bingeing on the phone-hacking scandal.
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Michael White: Lansley - the boy on the burning deck?
Watching Andrew Lansley performing these days sometimes reminds me of Casabianca, Felicia Dorothea Hemans’ famous poem of 1826, the one about the young French sailor (was he 10, 12 or 13?) who stayed at his post on the doomed warship, L’Orient, during Nelson’s 1798 victory at the Battle of the ...