External contributors – Page 294
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Comment
Jasbir Sunner on academic health science centres
Our vision and strategy for an AHSC, strongly supported by clinicians, bodes well for the future of hospital services in north west London
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Comment
Patient safety: Avoiding blame will not remove danger
Is the desire to establish a 'no blame' culture around patient safety becoming dangerously close to being seen as an end in itself rather than as a necessary aid to progress?
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Comment
Why the talking cure can help ease the reconfiguration blues
A list is circulating - despite Department of Health denials - of 18 trusts that have been deemed unviable in their present form and on which strategic health authorities will be acting. There will probably be few surprises in the names and no surprise that major restructuring of acute services ...
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Comment
Andrew Jones on aligning incentives
'After a few cycles in the policy washing machine, you would have thought we would all have come out looking the same colour and trying to iron out the same creases'
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Comment
Adrian Ashurst on making a real difference
'In order to make a real difference, managers and staff need to make a personal commitment to their customers. It is worth remembering that we are all customers - we should be prepared to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.'
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Comment
Whitehall shake-out rumbles more change
'The DoH will not comment on whether posts such as director-general of commissioning will disappear rather than be filled, but is it likely that much of the spate of high-profile leavers, so far and to come, is part of a coming restructuring.'
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Comment
Pioneers race on but progress is measured by the backmarkers
'It is notable that not one of the 13 early achiever sites comes from NHS London or NHS East of England'
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Comment
Primary care: what will improve discharge summaries?
GPs are complaining this week that they are 'plagued by delays' and errors in the quality of discharge summaries many of them are sent by hospitals (see news story). According to an NHS Alliance survey, almost 60 per cent say clinical care has been compromised as a result and almost ...
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Comment
A 'fixed' financial system will bring a legacy of control
One of the worst-kept secrets of the last few months has been that the much-despised resource accounting and budgeting system, which penalised trusts twice for their deficits, would be scrapped at the end of the financial year.
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Comment
Consistency and agreement are needed to spread success
'The MPs' committee calls for lessons learned from the turnaround programme to be shared. But evidence for its effectiveness is opaque'.
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Comment
Ruth Harrison responds to Healthcare Commission on C-Dif
I am writing with reference to your article on Healthcare Commission.standards published on the 15 March 2007 on page 5 that referred to me by name.
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Comment
Mental health farce cannot go on
The present deplorable state of affairs in mental health facilities is easily explained. Between 1970 and 1999 some 87,000 mental health beds were closed, according to the Department of Health.
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Comment
Richard Bourne on the price of better performance
The NHS.occupies a special place in the national psyche. It is a huge organisation with the major economic consequences implied. It is at the heart of politics, with the perceived state of the NHS being a proxy for the popularity of a government.
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Comment
'Radical rethink' needed to cope with staffing crisis
One in five school leavers will have to make the NHS their employer of first choice if future vacancies are to be filled and services maintained.
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Comment
Doctors have feelings too
I read Anna Donald's article on doctors' motives with interest (opinion, page 17, 8 March 2007). In terms of what doctors need, it is about finding an acceptable means of emotional release.
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Comment
Is flu testing really necessary?
I have to question whether the Department of Health's flu pandemic testing is really the best use of UK.taxpayers' money.
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Comment
There's life in patient forums yet
The patient forum concerned in the North Eastern Derbyshire primary care trust.versus Pam Smith, is far from dead or in danger of passing away ('moribund' is your term for it).
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Comment
New day, same old reforms
I haven't had any first hand experience of this latest round of organisational change in the English NHS, having left it to work in Scotland some years ago in horror at the Tory internal market 'reforms' that resulted in the mass-sacking of almost everyone I respected in NHS administration.
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Comment
The real best value
Dr Andy Jones writes on the reality of best value primary care and seems to conclude that clinical engagement is the key. However, it is unclear where the best value is to come from and in particular the role that he envisages for GPs and their teams.