External contributors – Page 224
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CommentMedia Watch: variations in NHS performance in the news
Massive variations in NHS doctors’ performance and a widespread failure to collect data to show them how they are doing have been splashed across the press over recent days.
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CommentNicky Spencer on reputation management
An executive hears reports of committee members’ behaviour, experience of an interview panel is relayed to a colleague, staff are overheard chatting about their team-mate - so it is that reputations are built.
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CommentPredictions on the new government's next moves
The future of the largest departmental budget and the second biggest area of government spending after welfare initially boiled down to just 30 words in the government’s initial coalition agreement.
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CommentDoctor numbers: all trained up, nowhere to go?
Expanded training means there is an emerging glut of doctors - what should be done?
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CommentMedia Watch: the World Cup and public health
This summer’s ice cream weather has started early, giving those responsible for the nation’s public health a headache.
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CommentMichael White: the case for devolving power
Before we turn to the miserable stuff, here is something which may cheer you up. Naoto Kan, the new prime minister of Japan, is a former social activist who first made his name as health minister in the 1990s.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: Coabolition
‘So what is the opposite of “top down”? Bottom up. And how do we tend to regard things that come out of bottoms?’
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CommentPete Mason on the dangers of NHS strategy secrets
Ask the three people nearest to you in your workplace if they can clearly state what your organisation stands for and is trying to achieve. If they can articulate it, is the answer consistent from person to person?
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CommentJohn Deffenbaugh: let us exploit our canny GPs
Let’s tap into local doctors’ famous entrepreneurial nous - and pay them to manage demand on the NHS
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CommentMark Britnell on increasing NHS productivity
The new health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has already gone on public record to suggest that £15-20bn in efficiency savings may be needed.
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CommentCally Bann: Volunteers and Friends
So they’ve debated, they’ve negotiated, they’ve coalesced and they’ve agreed.
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CommentMedia Watch: freeing up NHS information
The post-bank holiday papers were brimming with information about how much more information on the mechanics of running public services is to become accessible.
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CommentMichael White: Richard Sykes' resignation
Before last weekend’s manure hit the coalition fan I had taken the trouble to dig out the Orange Book for further scrutiny. No, not the widely consulted guide to generic drugs, but the volume of essays published by the free market wing of the Liberal Democrat party. It caused so ...
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CommentSteve Preston on NHS employee engagement
What is employee engagement? There are many views on this buzzword. A simple definition is “a result that is achieved by stimulating and directing employees’ enthusiasm for their work and directing it toward organisational success”.
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CommentJohn McGowan on service-user involvement
It’s time we shattered a great NHS myth and said that service-user involvement is often of little or no use
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CommentYour Humble Servant: NHS regime change
‘The Major Incident Plan has been implemented as the first effects of the new regime are felt. All leave has been cancelled and we are making do as best we can’
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CommentPaul Corrigan on the new NHS value for money
One of the impacts of the election result could be that the deep fascination the leadership of the NHS has with the nuances of their secretary of state’s policy will in the near future provide very diminishing returns.
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CommentMedia Watch: Ban on cheap alcohol
Public health doctors have raised at least one cheer for the new government’s plans to ban supermarkets from selling cheap alcohol as a loss leader.
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CommentMichael White on coalition compromises
When is the glass half full and when is it half empty? It’s all a matter of temperament, in my experience. The 400-point Lib-Con coalition agreement seems to have been a relatively painless negotiation as far as the 30 health (plus four on public health) points are concerned. Should we ...
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CommentJenny Rogers on spin and language
Just before the election I was on a London bus, the spiritual home of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. I was eavesdropping on a conversation between strangers discussing how they would vote, agreeing they may not vote at all and also declaring that politicians are “all the same - ...