External contributors – Page 296
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Comment
Breaking even must not mean trusts losing focus on money
The NHS should manage to hit its forecast position of a small surplus at the end of this year, according to this week's Department of Health figures. Not that it will be thanked or even believed. Within a few hours of the report being released on Tuesday, the protests began ...
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: quiz night conundrum
You will no doubt carry off your duties of quiz master with your usual aplomb, entertaining the audience with mock looks of surprise as you reveal the answers.
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Comment
To solve a problem, first you must admit you have one
Managing demand will be a major issue this year and also a major test of the maturity of relationships between acute and primary care trusts. Variability is an acknowledged reality but poor access to and grasp of information means that it too often remains amorphous.
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Comment
MPs cannot be beaten, so try taming them
Whether they are sat on Commons select committees or stood outside your offices with a banner, MPs can seem like fierce and unpredictable beasts. Many seem to take unwholesome delight in raking their claws across health service plans, particularly at a local level, and even when they have secretary of ...
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Comment
Giving patients the cost of treatment
Having had first hand experience of this in the USA, when my father lay dying in ITU and we kept getting bills from the insurance company 'for information only' I would urge the Minister to give this proposal serious consideration.
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Comment
Peter Penson on one way to cut the NHS drugs budget
In recent months, the media has reported numerous cases of patients campaigning to be given expensive anti-cancer drugs such as Herceptin by the NHS despite a lack of NICE approval. Difficult decisions must be made about how money should be spent and where economies can be made.
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Comment
David Peat on choice
I suppose it's a generation thing. Choice, that is. And come to think of it, consumer power in general.
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Comment
Model contract and foundation trusts
Two issues highlighted in HSJrecently - the model contract ( HSJ, page 5, 1 February 2007) and an NHS charter ( HSJ, opinion, pages 18-19, 2007) - show how current NHS reform is engendering contradictory expectations.
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Comment
Criticism of Dr Foster JV masks the real story about poor data
The National Audit Office report on the Department of Health joint venture with health information provider Dr Foster does little to combat the notion that government is still feeling its way when doing deals with private companies.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on reconfiguration and supercasinos
2007 is promising to be a good year. I'm an optimist - it has to be!
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Comment
Angela Coulter on the national patients survey
'Access to GPs has dramatically improved!' claims the government. 'Nonsense, it's got worse!' yells the Daily Express.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on reconfiguration and supercasinos
So far this year I've enjoyed a strange mixture of speaking to the public about the case for change; getting involved in what I might loosely term 'people processes' - all of which has been a rich source of learning; and finding myself in a new-found role of professional patient.
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Comment
'Unacceptable risk' to acutes exposed by PCTs' contract
The final model contract released last week has provoked fierce resistance from hospital providers, which have little time for the argument that it rebalances the power levels between primary care trusts and acutes. For more, read New model contract threatens survival, foundations warn.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: disaster planning
‘Four black Mercedes limousines with police outriders screeched to a halt outside trust HQ heralding the arrival of the McKashsky consultants’
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Comment
Clinical engagement: the beginning of reform is the end point
The fall-out from Sir Gerry Robinson's TV programme on NHS management continues, and this week two very different commentators address the central issue of what is holding back managers and clinicians from working together properly.
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Comment
Clinical coding
Regarding thr piece in HSJ by Tim Kelsey of Dr Foster Intelligence: 'Clinical record taking has been left to coders for too long.' Excuse me? Clinical information is recorded by clinicians. Coders then translate this information into clinical codes in accordance with National Standards.
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Comment
Neil Goodwin on the training challenge for NHS managers
'Foundation trusts will need to lead the way in learning to establish effective working relationships with their investors, namely primary care trusts and practice-based commissioners, and being proactive in discussing future strategy.'
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Comment
Joint working: more power for councils will test relations
The government has proposed that councils and primary care trusts sign up to joint 'strategic assessments' of local health needs and, potentially, 'a single regime' to meet them (news, page 5). The details will emerge next month, but already a number of things are clear.
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Comment
NHS independence: removing politicians will leave a hole that must be filled
Would an 'independent' NHS create a worse provider monopoly than British Leyland or set it lose from the targetitis of Whitehall? Who would hold the reins of scrutiny - regulators, Parliament or local councils? Where are the models - the BBC, Scandinavia, Oregon or New Zealand? Is independence even a ...
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Comment
Response to Gerry Robinson and Brian James
Comments on Gerry Robinson's contribution and the programme in general seem to reflect comments in almost any discussion about 'NHS' and 'management'. The issues are so emotional for so many people that it's difficult to overcome bias. As a change manager, with some experience of the NHS, my bias will ...