External contributors – Page 310
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Lots of turnaround, but no new direction
Is turnaround working? The latest figures from the Department of Health suggest there is little evidence yet that it is. Read the news story here. While the number of affected trusts has risen from an original 52 to a current 143, there are few clear signs that turnaround is bringing ...
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The new economics
Treating individual services as profit-and-loss units promises to transform financial management and clinical engagement. With plans imminent for foundation trusts, Monitor chair Bill Moyes puts the case for a fresh approach
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And so to bed The problem with mental health inpatients
Mental healthcare faces a problem of bed shortages for inpatient care, but while a large part of the solution might be stronger community support rather than increasing the number of available beds, there is still a need in some places to boost their number. Mat Kinton and Suki Desai explain
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Richard Barker on why the IT programme is never going to come right
'NPfIT will never get back on track; it was never on track in the first place. It breaks every rule of project management - from scoping to delivery - and is patently failing to take into account the actual requirements of clinicians across the NHS.'
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David Peat on snipers and Special Ones
I believe that in the fullness of time we will look back at these months of uncertainty and see it as a short diversion from the grand task in hand.
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David Woodhead on love and understanding
'If love is all around us, why is it seldom discussed? What is the exact role of love in promoting health? And if love were a desired outcome, how would we recognise it?'
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Emma Dent on publishing pictures of NHS demonstrations
A regular point of discussion at HSJTowers is whether we should publish pictures of demonstrations against NHS cuts and closures.
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Patient involvement
A current exemplar of the way the government misjudges citizen engagement is the proposal to introduce LINks and abolish Patient and Public Involvement Forums.
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Predicting unplanned admissions
Your article 'Long Term Conditions: Predicting the Future' (2 November 2006) showed the value of measuring the risk of patients experiencing unplanned admissions to hospital, and I thought it would be helpful to highlight other work that is underway
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Rights and responsibilities is the issue on the Cabinet table
The government believes it has to reassert its power to make policy in response to the Brown-Blair faction-fighting of the autumn. Public services is one of six policy areas under debate (the others include the role of the state, crime and security) and the first to arrive on the Cabinet ...
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Hilary Thomas on being half-way through radiotherapy
Soon I can put radiotherapy and my emotional reaction to it behind me and enjoy Harry Hill's advice: 'My auntie used to say, what you can't see won't hurt you. She died of radiation poisoning'
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Clinical governance
While I agree with using data for decision making (Click here to read the full story), for this to happen effectively we need greater management leverage of clinical governance.
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Professor David J Hunter and Jeffrie Strang on public health and organisational reform
The justification for the current reorganisation of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts is to strengthen the commissioning function of PCTs and to save £250m in management costs. But are these good enough reasons and will the mergers create a period of stasis? ...
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Your Humble Servant: non-executive joy
‘As for selection processes, we still can’t fathom them. It used to be so simple: either failed politicians found a way to boost their pension or successful ones got their wives out of the way a few days a month’.
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Merit awards
Dr Giles Croft's lament about the inaccuracy of Hospital Episode Statistics and their inappropriateness as a means of managing the performance of doctors (HSJ, November 2nd) raises the nice issue of why there are some problems with HES accuracy. Surely such inaccuracies are the product of failures by clinicians to ...
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Lean thinking
While there is evidence supporting a case management approach to the care of patients in the greatest need of healthcare, this has been less convincing than some seem to believe. Also, the creation of structures that are separate from general practice is both counter-intuitive and seems to run contrary to ...
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Managing a merger? Don't lose the plot
A new era of NHS mergers is upon us. But lessons from the business world show that they can be painful and uncomfortable. Steve Downing outlines a theatrical route to tackling the problems
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Efficiency indicators
The 'Better care, Better Value' indicators are an important step forward. The sickness absence rate in the NHS has never been below 4.5 per cent in the past decade. Despite investment to 'improve working lives' and the health of NHS employees it has remained resistant to change in almost all ...
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Equality and recruitment
The NHS has a bad reputation when it comes to equality of opportunity. Historically it was slow to move from a colourblind approach to race, and many health organisations only introduced equal opportunity polices when they were required to by legislation.
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Turnaround consultants
I am sure Malcolm Lowe-Lauri's opinion column on management consultants must have struck a chord with PCT colleagues who have been subjected to the turnaround process in recent months (page 17, 5 October). Although the consultants input has been valuable in some areas the benefits were not apparent in many ...