External contributors – Page 214
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Comment
Michael White: 'Price competition has never been the policy... Yeah, right.'
To be frank with you, I’d never heard of David Bennett before he was unexpectedly promoted to become the new chair of Monitor, as it evolves into the economic regulator to the entire NHS. Truly this is a real-life version of Eric Carle’s children’s story The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Guess ...
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CommentTargets in sharp focus for the North West
The Department of Health might appear to hate targets these days, but you could be forgiven for thinking the news has not travelled north.
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CommentCompetition can work, but only with the right tactics
“Competition in health care should be tactical not ideological”. This was the main message from the “Competition versus integration in the NHS” debate organised by the Cambridge Health Network and the King’s Fund
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CommentBill Moyes: the reform agenda presents a massive opportunity
The government’s reform agenda for the NHS isn’t the beginning of the end of a primarily tax funded healthcare system. The reforms are probably the best way to preserve that for another generation or more. So, instead of focusing on the risks, let’s give more attention to the opportunities.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the true cost of training
In a transparent, rules based funding system like payment by results, how can we ensure a steady flow of financial goodies to the deserving rich in the London teaching hospitals?
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CommentMichael White: away from NHS reforms, healthcare problems - and solutions - still sound familiar
Let’s try even harder to cheer ourselves up this week by averting our gaze from NHS reforms and looking at a near neighbour with more pressing healthcare dilemmas. Not to mention deeper budget gloom. No prizes for guessing I was in Dublin recently.
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CommentMedia Watch: drunks and royals give NHS staff little cause to raise a glass
One health story got the attention of all of the nationals this week - an Alcohol Concern report on the pressure placed on the NHS by drinking.
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CommentMedia Watch: papers picking up on dismissals
The tale of two advisers, both of whom have lost the ear of the government, was making the headlines at the start of this week.
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CommentMichael White: somwhere to escape the cuts
Wherever you turn at present it’s hard to escape the government’s cuts programme. I confirmed that (again) when I rang my sister at the nursery-infant-and-parenting unit she has worked in for many years. Their budget has been slashed, redundancies loom. Should she volunteer to go, taking decades of experience with ...
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Comment'It makes a welcome change to hear praise for NHS managers'
Sir David Nicholson’s letter to colleagues after the spending review recognised that great public service leadership “more than anything else” will be central to improving quality and productivity.
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CommentPost-reform NHS is life, still, but not as we know it
As the dust begins to settle a little on the furore that surrounded the introduction of the Health Bill last month, the wiser among us have started to think through what the new landscape might resemble.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: health mogul
‘Family doctor to health mogul? It’s what my patients want for me’
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CommentNoel Plumridge: saying the unsayable
A section of the Health Bill that hopefully won’t often be invoked applies commercial insolvency law to foundation trusts. Section 113 places broke NHS hospitals under broadly the same winding-up regime as bankrupt companies. With falling tariff prices and rigid hospital cost structures, it will probably be tested before long.
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CommentBailouts, arbitration and postcode lotteries in London
The higher than expected workload of the capital’s acute trusts has now seen bailouts, at least one arbitration and an intra-London postcode lottery as primary care trusts struggle to cope.
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CommentMidlands 'yet to be won over by GP commissioning'
Some providers and commissioners in the Midlands are yet to be won over by the managerial talents of local GPs, it seems.
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CommentSuccessful healthcare mergers, like marriages, need a lot of hard work
Mergers and acquisitions of healthcare organisations in the developed world have become much more commonplace over the last decade.
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CommentMichael White: opposition's political artillery fire rings hollow
A barrage of political artillery fire preceded Monday’s Commons second reading of the Health and Social Care Bill.
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CommentMedia Watch: Cameron and Lansley spring into action
The week kicked off with the health secretary and prime minister both going into action to defend the Health and Social Care Bill, ahead of its second reading in parliament on Monday.
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CommentPublic health tremors could unleash a monster
The double whammy of setting up a new national public health service (Public Health England) and returning responsibility for health improvement to local government is the most earth-shaking shift in public health since the abolition of medical officers of health in 1974.