External contributors – Page 307
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Media watch: C difficile in Norfolk
The news on superbugs gets worse following reports that a mutant strain of Clostridium difficile has been linked to the death of 17 patients at a Norfolk hospital.
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Media watch: hospital phone charges
Those unlucky enough to spend Easter in hospital also had the misfortune of paying a whopping 26p per minute if they wished to call their loved ones. Not unexpectedly the tabloids and broadsheets were up in arms last week as they bemoaned the 160 per cent increase in hospital call ...
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Michael White: parliamentary deadlock
'Parliament is deadlocked on serious issues that may end up in a 'ping pong' test of wills'
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Media Watch: drug company's promise
This week comes news that a drug firm has offered to refund the cost of one of its products to the NHS if it fails to work on patients.
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Media Watch: NHS meddling
'We're still waiting for Mr Brown to give any indication of what he might do to the NHS. Surely he won't be able to resist some meddling'
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Media Watch: Granger leaves
'Anger as best paid civil servant goes', The Sunday Telegraph told its readers as it emerged earlier this week that the chief executive of Connecting for Health Richard Granger would leave his £292,000-a-year post in October.
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Noel Plumridge on the cost of a day's work
'Calculate your daily rate. Say it out loud. 'I'm a £500 a day sort of guy''
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Data briefing: the truth behind the A&E target
A recent analysis from Les Mayhew and David Smith at City University's Cass Business School has suggested some theoretical reasons - backed by data - why achievement of the accident and emergency maximum four-hour wait by 98 per cent of hospitals was probably not all it seemed.
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Barometer: mental health, February 2007
With the end of the financial year looming, chief executives of mental health providers are very confident this month that they will end the year in financial balance. A score of 9.26 is the highest ever recorded for this measure and the highest score of this barometer.
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Time to tear ourselves away from paper
Trusts' reluctance to store patient records electronically is a national scandal which is draining resources, harming patient care and limiting the potential of historical archives, argues Capita's Robert McIndoe
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Dr Marc Farr on understanding preventable injury
In February, the National Audit Office called the number of accidental injuries across the country a 'disgrace', with 2 million children a year visiting accident and emergency due to an accident.
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Michael White on politics
I spoke to Lord Hunt at the weekend, probably for the first time since he returned to government via the Department for Work and Pensions after resigning with quiet dignity over the Iraq war in 2003.
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Sophia Christie on health and employment
The publication of the Commissioning framework for health and well being is a welcome reminder that 13 months ago the government published white paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say. For many of us it is a long-awaited statement about the future direction for the 90 per cent of NHS ...
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Who can make the health service listen?
With the rejection of local restructuring proposals raising eyebrows, will the independent reconfiguration panel and overview and scrutiny committees fill the democratic deficit?
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Barometer acute trusts March 2007
There was a late surge in confidence at the end of February about reaching financial break-even or surplus, according to the latest Barometer survey of acute trust chief executives.
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Clinicians and trust
Katzenbach is close (Anna Donald, Opinion, 8th March), but Onora O' Neill is closer. Her Reith lectures in 2002, 'A Question of Trust', pointed not to a crisis of trust but to a pervading culture of suspicion, directed particularly at the professions.
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Media Watch
'The focus has well and truly turned to the NHS, as it once again becomes the battleground for the next election'
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Simon Stevens on the lost art of analysis
'Explaining NHS Deficits detonates many of the most powerful urban myths surrounding the NHS'.