External contributors – Page 275
-
Comment
Mental health funding rows must not hinder urgent care
Being sectioned under the Mental Health Act is traumatic, but a section being delayed because of a row over funding is even more distressing.
-
Comment
Noel Plumridge on resource allocation
Buried on page 39 of the 2008-09 operating framework are two bland statements. The first says primary care trusts will receive an increase of 5.5 per cent or £3.8m in revenue allocations in 2008-09, with allocations announced for one year and no changes to PCT baselines.
-
Comment
Personal healthcare budgets - a real possibility?
Hilary Blackwell asks whether putting people in charge of their own healthcare budgets could really work
-
Comment
All Our Yesterdays
February 6, 1948, Public Assistance Journal and Health & Hospital Review "The fact has to be faced that the education of the wartime generation pf schoolchildren necessarily suffered a severe setback…Thanks are due to the devoted efforts of teachers and all others concerned with the service that this loss was ...
-
Comment
This week's lookey likey
Another footballing lookey likey this week. The lure of Newcastle was not enough to tempt Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp to the north east. But oddly enough that fine region is the former base of Department of Health director general of NHS finance, performance and operations David Flory, to whom a ...
-
Comment
David Woodhead on patient satisfaction
France and the UK may have different approaches to healthcare delivery, but many of the challenges they face are the same
-
Comment
Jon Restell on big picture partnerships
In the winter months I need some little fantasies to spice up my working life. Let me share with you just one of many.
-
Comment
Emma Dent: getting on the hospital ladder?
HSJ's announcements service recently carried the news that insurer Combined Insurance believes that a significant number of people would pay more for a home that is close to good hospitals.
-
Comment
Strong accountability offers a chance to focus on the neediest
How best to reduce health inequalities? Our news analysis this week shows what has long been suspected: that different areas not only have starkly different premature death rates, but that in some cases primary care trusts with the greatest need spend the least on tackling these early killers.
-
Comment
Management costs: trusts can only benefit from comparison
Figures published by the Department of Health reveal huge variations in NHS trusts' management costs, from 0.4 per cent of their income up to 15 per cent.
-
Comment
Media Watch: compensation claims
While Leslie Ash celebrated, columnists seethed, indignant at the £5m in compensation the actor received after contracting an infection in hospital.
-
Comment
Michael White on cutting costs
At a high-minded King's Fund breakfast a few months ago I heard battle-hardened NHS veterans agreeing that there won't be the opportunity for serious efficiency savings until the money tap is turned off. Then everyone will remember how to improvise.
-
Comment
Frank Burns on IT policy in the NHS
Anyone interested in how high-profile national policy is developed will have enjoyed the revelation, on Radio 4’s Wiring the NHS programme, that in 2002 then NHS IT director Sir John Pattison was given only 10 minutes to pitch the creation of the national IT programme to prime minister Tony Blair. ...
-
Comment
Hospital beds - dispelling myths
Throughout the NHS's history, politicians have been under pressure to protest against proposed hospital closures. But having more beds is not always better. In fact, too many hospital beds can lead to imbalances in overall health service provision and damage the quality of services, argues Richard Banyard
-
Comment
All Our Yesterdays
January 30, 1948, Public Assistance Journal and Health & Hospital Review On the midwifery service: “The year just reported on by the Central Midwives Board saw continues heavy pressure on both domiciliary and institutional midwifery services. The increase in the birth rate during these twelve months was also reflected in ...
-
Comment
Brown's good news for public health
Gordon Brown's New Year commitment to cardiovascular screening is a firm step in the right direction - upstream towards prevention - and although we've heard this kind of thing from government before, this time I get the feeling they really mean it.
-
Comment
Narrowing the Gap - call for evidence
Christine Davies invites HSJ readers to make a submission to the Narrowing the Gap project's evidence panel.
-
Comment
PROMs get their big night at last
For 60 years, NHS policy makers, in common with counterparts in all healthcare systems, public and private, have believed that regular 'redisorganisation' of structures, combined with increases in funding to increase activity, improved patients' health, writes Alan Maynard
-
Comment
Andrew Alonzi on legal requirements of the Mental Health Act
When the Mental Health Act 2007 is fully introduced, the existing Mental Health Act 1983 treatability test will be replaced by a new appropriate medical treatment test.
-
Comment
David Peat on getting world class commissioning right
Call them benchmarks, standards or targets, it is no bad thing to have aspirations and the will to achieve. It is also good to be put on the spot sometimes, to help streamline the process and refine best practice.