All Comment articles – Page 302

  • Comment

    Occupational therapists in the picture

    2007-03-05T00:00:00Z

    I write with reference to the photograph on page 9 of HSJ on 15 February, 'Airedale gets rehabilitation down to a tea'.

  • Comment

    Gay-friendly employers

    2007-03-05T00:00:00Z

    Stonewall is right in asserting the NHS has 'a long history of employing gays and lesbians' but unlike other minority groups, most remain invisible to their employers.

  • Comment

    The 'misery' of eliminating waste

    2007-03-05T00:00:00Z

    I thought Noel Plumridge's description of the 'miserable territory of hunting down and eliminating waste' a little trite (HSJ, 22 February)..

  • Comment

    Political bias on Dispatches

    2007-03-05T00:00:00Z

    I am writing to complain about the recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme on the NHS, which was politically biased...

  • Comment

    Falls in patients being added to waiting lists

    2007-03-04T00:00:00Z

    John Appleby (Data briefing, HSJ, 22 February) highlighted the 'strange' improvements there have been in reducing the number of people on NHS waiting lists between 1997 and 2006.

  • Comment

    Unity will unlock gateway to success

    2007-03-01T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    Disaffection rules as chiefs mourn Alan Milburn's vision

    2007-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Alan Milburn is the most popular New Labour health secretary, according to HSJ's survey of trust chief executives - not surprising when the same survey reveals the light that still burns brightly in people's hearts for the NHS plan.

  • Comment

    Water fluoridation

    2007-02-26T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    Emma Dent

    2007-02-22T09:10:11Z

    I have mentioned here before that both my parents worked in a psychiatric hospital during the 1980s. As a consequence they both advised me never to become a nurse.

  • Comment

    Will is the way to win the patient safety war

    2007-02-22T00:00:00Z

    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

  • Comment

    Top thinkers hail power of imagination

    2007-02-22T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    Breaking even must not mean trusts losing focus on money

    2007-02-22T00:00:00Z

    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 ...

  • Comment

    Your Humble Servant: quiz night conundrum

    2007-02-15T15:11:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    To solve a problem, first you must admit you have one

    2007-02-15T15:10:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    MPs cannot be beaten, so try taming them

    2007-02-15T15:09:14Z

    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 ...

  • Comment

    Giving patients the cost of treatment

    2007-02-15T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    Model contract and foundation trusts

    2007-02-12T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    David Peat on choice

    2007-02-12T00:00:00Z

    I suppose it's a generation thing. Choice, that is. And come to think of it, consumer power in general.

  • Comment

    Peter Penson on one way to cut the NHS drugs budget

    2007-02-12T00:00:00Z

    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.

  • Comment

    Criticism of Dr Foster JV masks the real story about poor data

    2007-02-08T10:27:41Z

    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.