External contributors – Page 221
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Comment'Primary care trusts? Send in the marines'
So this is what it feels like. I’m managing along, minding my own business, when along comes Andrew D Lansley (Dudya to his mates), who liberates me.
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Comment'Charities need to provide much more for the NHS'
No one in healthcare doubts that the public debt crisis has initiated a period of radical change across the NHS. The essential challenge is to become more efficient and flexible.
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CommentThe battle for NHS Direct
Party politics has resumed after the summer break, and former senior Labour ministers have headed straight for the NHS.
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Comment'Lansley is saying it's not about saving cash or sacking nurses'
I have this persistent weakness, doctor. I keep feeling sorry for politicians. I know they are all volunteers and do foolish things. But people are so unkind to them, even when they mean well.
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Comment'Remove the barriers to healthcare innovation'
We need new players in healthcare because they, not the incumbents, are the innovators
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CommentCoping with NHS reorganisation and redundancy
If you are managing organisational change for the first time or you are faced with little alternative but to make redundancies within your team, be mindful there is a process proven to help engage all employees.
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CommentConsultant spending under fire
The media reported en masse government figures revealing the NHS spent more than £300m on management consultants last year, though not all pointed out that it represented less than half of 1 per cent of the service’s budget.
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CommentNHS efficiency does not automatically equal value
There was an undignified spat on BBC radio on Monday between Evan Davis of the Today programme and Bob Neill, the pugnacious local government minister, over the price of bagels charged to the public purse.
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CommentNHS reorganisation: don't leave the patients behind
It could be the language that seals the deal. New Labour’s mission got lost in a technocratic haze, so a white paper more comfortable with the vernacular of the voluntary sector is helping patient groups swallow the pill of another reorganisation while showing genuine enthusiasm for the changes ahead.
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Comment'We all know NHS change will keep coming - the trick is to adapt'
In the immediate wake of the white paper it would be churlish to ignore what are potentially the most significant changes in the history of the health service.
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CommentUnderstanding how patients behave could help cut NHS waste
How the new science of social influence can save the NHS money
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Comment'As silly season stories go, Milburn's appointment was at least a genuine fact'
So, our reformist ex-health secretary Alan Milburn is to advise the coalition government on social mobility. The predictable cry of “traitor” goes up from within the Labour ranks.
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CommentOvercoming fears about the NHS's future
I am increasingly concerned by the tone of some responses to the government’s NHS policy.
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Comment'How is the state going to conscript GPs?'
In seeking to diminish the role of the state, the government has established a policy that attacks NHS bosses as the cause of most problems and abolishes state run primary care trusts and strategic health authorities. Instead, it proposes GP led consortia to do commissioning.
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CommentGP governance: handle with care
How will GP consortia be held accountable for their commissioning activities?
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Comment'La la Lansley has abolished the people who monitor us'
‘There is £80bn out there to be carved up between ourselves and the GPs. Well, surely that makes everyone a winner now?’
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CommentSteve Field on public health and milky u-turns
His members have been given the key to NHS commissioning, and now Royal College of GPs chair Steve Field has weighed in on the country’s public health.
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CommentMilton’s would-be milk snatch
As the overblown furore over school milk came and, almost as quickly, went after David Cameron stepped in, I was left feeling a bit sorry for Anne Milton, the coalition’s Conservative public health minister.
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CommentJenny Rogers on insulting the boss
The scene, several decades ago, is a BBC production department meeting and I am a timid recruit, already unnerved by the savage humour of my new colleagues.
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CommentIs this the end of the road for PCTs?
The winding down of PCTs must be handled with kid gloves if disruption to services - and loss of talent - is to be avoided