All Comment articles – Page 301
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Comment
A 'fixed' financial system will bring a legacy of control
One of the worst-kept secrets of the last few months has been that the much-despised resource accounting and budgeting system, which penalised trusts twice for their deficits, would be scrapped at the end of the financial year.
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Comment
Consistency and agreement are needed to spread success
'The MPs' committee calls for lessons learned from the turnaround programme to be shared. But evidence for its effectiveness is opaque'.
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Ruth Harrison responds to Healthcare Commission on C-Dif
I am writing with reference to your article on Healthcare Commission.standards published on the 15 March 2007 on page 5 that referred to me by name.
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Comment
Mental health farce cannot go on
The present deplorable state of affairs in mental health facilities is easily explained. Between 1970 and 1999 some 87,000 mental health beds were closed, according to the Department of Health.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: life on Mars
‘The ambulance would be at least an hour and that they should do what first aid they could until the paramedics arrived’
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Comment
There's life in patient forums yet
The patient forum concerned in the North Eastern Derbyshire primary care trust.versus Pam Smith, is far from dead or in danger of passing away ('moribund' is your term for it).
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Is flu testing really necessary?
I have to question whether the Department of Health's flu pandemic testing is really the best use of UK.taxpayers' money.
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Doctors have feelings too
I read Anna Donald's article on doctors' motives with interest (opinion, page 17, 8 March 2007). In terms of what doctors need, it is about finding an acceptable means of emotional release.
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Comment
Dispatching the New Labour ideal
As a participant in the Dispatches programme The NHS - Where did all the money go?, may I offer the following reflections to your correspondent Donald.Reid. He is right that there have been improvements in key areas, including waiting times.
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Comment
New day, same old reforms
I haven't had any first hand experience of this latest round of organisational change in the English NHS, having left it to work in Scotland some years ago in horror at the Tory internal market 'reforms' that resulted in the mass-sacking of almost everyone I respected in NHS administration.
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Comment
'Radical rethink' needed to cope with staffing crisis
One in five school leavers will have to make the NHS their employer of first choice if future vacancies are to be filled and services maintained.
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Richard Bourne on the price of better performance
The NHS.occupies a special place in the national psyche. It is a huge organisation with the major economic consequences implied. It is at the heart of politics, with the perceived state of the NHS being a proxy for the popularity of a government.
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Comment
The real best value
Dr Andy Jones writes on the reality of best value primary care and seems to conclude that clinical engagement is the key. However, it is unclear where the best value is to come from and in particular the role that he envisages for GPs and their teams.
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The importance of manager-doctor relationships
Training row emphasises the importance of collaboration
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Decade of mental healthcare defined by unproductive debate
Mental health trust chief executives give their views of ten years under New Labour
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Tristan Reuser on clinical engagement
The re-engineering of health systems requires traditional barriers between primary and secondary care to come down, writes Tristan Reuser
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Comment
Restoring confidence requires an end to financial fudges
.'With the NHS moving .towards a more transparent. market, top-down decisions. on the distribution of funds. must not become the norm.'.
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Comment
Look to the long term for 2020 vision on climate change
With front-page headlines this week warning that the UK's policies on climate change are set to achieve their 2020 milestone 30 years too late, the scale of the environmental challenge ahead becomes yet more daunting.
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Comment
Payment by results and South Yorkshire
Noel Plumridge states (HSJ, 22 February) that there was 'never really payment by results; it was always payment for activity' and highlighted the need for incentives for clinicians.