External contributors – Page 283
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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.
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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.
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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. ...
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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
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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 ...
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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.
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Narrowing the Gap - call for evidence
Christine Davies invites HSJ readers to make a submission to the Narrowing the Gap project's evidence panel.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Fair play, please
Liver patients are far too often the victims of stereotypes about self-inflicted illness and being unworthy of NHS treatment and we can really do without Michael White adding to this, writes Imogen Shillito
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Unpeeled - the NHS's top bananas
The 'terse' mail between two health leaders exemplifies a problem that has become ubiquitous in health partnerships, writes Woody Caan
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Kremlin correction
The doctored image of Richmond House in your mighty organ includes domes from St Basil's Cathedral, not the Kremlin, says Niall Smith
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Media Watch: organ donors
Prime minister Gordon Brown's Damascene conversion to presumed organ consent was, naturally, a hot topic for the press.
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Michael White on Brown's plans for health
Gordon Brown's Big NHS Speech, to which HSJ gave front-page treatment last week, was full of virtuous declaration about what needs to be done to manage rising - and costly - demand in healthcare systems around the world.
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Ministers should heed warnings over accountability
Wrangling over the precise remit of the forthcoming Care Quality Commission continues apace.
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Clegg throws down mental health gauntlet
Mental health is not an issue that politicians generally choose to make a splash on. But newly elected Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had more to say about mental health in his inaugural speech on public policy than he did about the rest of the NHS.
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Simon Stevens on Brown's first health speech
Until last week, Gordon Brown had been surprisingly - even painfully - quiet on where he thought the NHS should be headed. But last Monday he finally showed some leg, in the form of his first major health pronunciamento since moving into Number 10.
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Frank Burns on politicians, short cuts and dead ends
Those of us interested in the genesis of high-profile national policy will have enjoyed the revelation, on Radio 4's Wiring the NHS programme, that in 2002 Sir John Pattison, then responsible Director for NHS IT, was given all of 10 minutes to make a pitch to the then prime minister ...
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Weird world health
All hail the Darwin Awards, the annual celebration of those 'who improve the species by accidentally removing themselves from it.' Winners of the 2007 awards include a Texan man who died after giving himself an enema made up of two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry and a young couple fromSouth ...