External contributors – Page 224
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CommentDebate: is general practice pulling its weight in the efficiency challenge?
On 30 June, HSJ columnist Noel Plumridge suggested primary care should carry its share of the £20bn Nicholson challenge, alluding to the Nuffield Trust’s March recommendation that primary care “should become a key focus of the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention agenda”. Noel’s article led to this correspondence with Pat ...
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Comment'If the reforms go wrong, the potential risk to public health huge'
Andrew Lansley’s new vision for public health must overcome tough tests if it is to grow into a healthy being, says Alan Maryon-Davis.
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CommentMichael White: what's wrong with giving overseas providers a crack at managing NHS hospitals?
I was still on my late summer holiday during much of the renewed skirmishing which heralded the return of Parliament and the latest battles over the Health Bill.
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CommentSouth Central trusts reveal underlying cash problems
A collective report from the pleasingly named SHIP primary care trust cluster – Southampton, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Portsmouth – gives a snapshot of the South Coast’s state of affairs.
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CommentMedia Watch: PCTs admit to deliberately making patients wait
Scheming NHS managers are making patients wait longer than necessary for operations to save cash, according to the Daily Telegraph.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: survival of the fittest in the NHS
Perhaps we should look back to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to see who’ll survive in the dog-eat-dog world of health policy.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: the real problems affecting readmissions
How do we keep people out of hospitals – those giant, multimillion-pound “monuments to the failure of preventive medicine”, as one director of public health recently put it?
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CommentPrivate income avenues being explored in the South West
Five foundation trusts in the overcrowded provider landscape of east Dorset and west Somerset are all looking to drum up some more private business.
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Comment'Leadership is key to preventing another Mid Staffs'
Antony Sumara, who spent two years at Mid Staffs as interim chief executive, reflects on what has been learned from the inquiry so far and what questions still need answering.
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Comment'It's time for managers to stand up and be counted'
In the battle against Whitehall maybe the NHS needs its own Arab Spring – led by managers, suggests Kieran Walshie.
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Comment'Health services need a new type of investment to help achieve savings'
The constrains that the current funding model puts on the NHS means value for money improvements are almost impossible to translate into long term savings. Paul Corrigan looks at how a new model of investment can change this cycle.
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CommentMichael White: through choice comes different outcomes - and that way we learn
Politicians had barely shaken the sand from their shoes or packed away the bucket and spade before they were gripped by that hardy health perennial, proposed changes to Britain’s abortion law.
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CommentMedia Watch: onset of autumn provides a gloomy filter for health news
Maybe it was the autumnal August Bank Holiday weather that meant the national media largely looked at health through a gloomy lens this week.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: inflation is set to inflame the pension problem
The most important economic indicator this autumn is an old friend, reappearing like a toothache you’d forgotten about. It’s inflation.
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CommentHandful of trusts let down South East Coast on performance checks
Two sets of national checks and balances have revealed the South East Coast’s A* performers and those that “must try harder” when it comes to issues of patient experience.
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CommentNHS estate wrangles in the North West
What do you do with a private finance initiative hospital when it becomes the subject of service reconfiguration?
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Comment'Real change in public health will be made more difficult if service transfers are delayed'
The positive steps in transferring public health services to local control will be marred by the delay of children’s services until 2015 under recent government proposals. Graham Burgess argues the public health strategy needs more coherence if local commissioning plans are not to be undermined.
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CommentMichael White: avoiding the thing called IT
A new report in the Harvard Business Review suggests that big IT projects are spiralling out of control, at considerable cost to taxpayers, shareholders and customers. Naturally it made me think again of the NHS’s own national programme for IT drama, running expensively since 2003.
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CommentMedia Watch: malnutrition nourishes the Mail
A mixed bag of health media coverage this week from the nationals, with the Daily Mail especially prolific.
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Comment‘Inert’ or improving: the state of medical regulation
Alan Maynard argues the GMC’s ‘feeble’ regulation of doctors does little to benefit the NHS, but chief executive Niall Dickson says a new approach will protect patients.