All Comment articles – Page 321

  • Comment

    Data briefing: deficit forecasts, financial reality

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    The recent quarterly financial report from the Department of Health provides some encouraging signs as the NHS gets to grips with previous years' overspends. But the detail looks patchy.

  • Comment

    Mark Britnell on starting life as an SHA chief exec

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'I recently chaired a conference where it was put to me that I would be neither a poacher nor a gamekeeper but rather the pheasant!'

  • Comment

    Much-needed campaign brought cheer in the midst of gloom

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'Andy Burnham makes some thoughtful points about how managers can improve their own publicity'

  • Simon Stevens
    Comment

    Simon Stevens on Brown's opening salvo

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    ‘Mr Brown has chosen an issue that explicitly requires him to choose sides: patients v professionals’

  • Comment

    Michael White on the budget

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'Brown did not say what health will get in 2008-11, though he is said to be focusing on health in his Treasury lair'

  • Comment

    Pret a Porter?: what a US business guru has to teach the NHS

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    An academic tome about the US health system, even one co-authored by one of the world's most renowned business theorists, seems an unlikely hit for an NHS audience. But Redefining Healthcare: creating value-based competition on results, by Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, has caught the attention of UK policy-makers, ...

  • Comment

    Media watch: C difficile in Norfolk

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    The news on superbugs gets worse following reports that a mutant strain of Clostridium difficile has been linked to the death of 17 patients at a Norfolk hospital.

  • Comment

    Hilary Thomas on living with cancer

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Becoming a patient has been a salutary, levelling experience

  • Comment

    Hilary Thomas on living with cancer

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'Acupuncture and ginger beer have been as effective as any the anti-emetics I've been doling out for years'

  • Comment

    Cliff Prior profile: 'The only thing you can't predict is where it will go'

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    In his new job heading a group of not-for-profit organisations, former Rethink chief executive Cliff Prior will have a key role in reshaping community services. But first he has to explain what it is all about

  • Comment

    Media Watch: earnings cap

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    So ministers have 'blundered' again, according to London's Evening Standard. This time it is because they have failed to cap doctors' earnings.

  • Comment

    Media Watch: earnings cap

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    So ministers have 'blundered' again, according to London's Evening Standard. This time it is because they have failed to cap doctors' earnings.

  • Comment

    Unjust social care funding

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'One in four people over the age of 85 in Oxfordshire are in receipt of a high cost package of care'

  • Comment

    Sophia Christie on why tenders need loving care

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Community foundation trusts reproduce the organisations we disbanded five years ago

  • Comment

    Laura Donnelly on primary care leaders

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    One argument is that new strategic health authority chief executives, keen to assert authority and be seen to do so, are indulging in an exercise otherwise known as 'don't think much of yours?'

  • Comment

    Sophia Christie on primary care

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'The challenge of the last three years has been demand management. The focus for the next two years must be a considered challenge to activity attribution.'

  • Comment

    Simon Stevens on the case for independence

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    It now seems likely that, regardless of political party, our next prime minister will toy with some version of 'independence' for the NHS. Independence for the Bank of England is seen as one of the government's more important reforms, so an NHS parallel could resonate. And shadow health secretary Andrew ...

  • Comment

    Day case rates

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Marc Farr says day-case rates over the last three years have shown little sign of improvement

  • Comment

    Michael White: change in the NHS

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    We were standing on the edge of my local swimming pool discussing the inevitability of change when a fellow wrinklie walked past, saying: 'Don't talk to me about change. I work for the NHS and whenever I hear that word I just switch off.'

  • Comment

    Media watch: hospital phone charges

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Those unlucky enough to spend Easter in hospital also had the misfortune of paying a whopping 26p per minute if they wished to call their loved ones. Not unexpectedly the tabloids and broadsheets were up in arms last week as they bemoaned the 160 per cent increase in hospital call ...