Latest news – Page 2820

  • News

    Minister stands by primary care trusts timetable despite GP fears

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    There will be no brakes on the momentum towards creating a first wave of primary care trusts by April 2000, despite GP warnings that the timetable is too tight, health minister Alan Milburn told MPs last week.

  • News

    Labour's NHS reforms put before Parliament

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Legislation to implement the government's primary care and quality reforms is expected to be announced in the Queen's speech next week.

  • News

    Complaint procedure 'not seen as impartial'

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    NHS complaints procedures are 'not seen as impartial' and 'haphazard training' leaves some review panel convenors to 'make up the rules as they go along', a Commons select committee heard last week.

  • News

    CHCs raise fear over trusts' shift to 'managing' their property

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Community health councils are planning to seek legal advice about moves by trusts to change their legal powers over NHS premises.

  • News

    City limits

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    In the first of an occasional series on the development of primary care groups in the north London boroughs of Enfield and Haringey, Kaye McIntosh reports that settling the size of units in this diverse catchment area has not been easy

  • News

    To have and to hold

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Delegates to last week's NHS Primary Care Group Alliance conference expressed their worry that plans to let individual practices keep half of any savings made under PCGs will recreate the inequalities of fundholding. Kaye McIntosh reports

  • News

    Fiddlesticks or fact?

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Is there any substance to opposition claims that waiting lists are being 'fiddled' by the use of subsidiary lists? Laura Donnelly examines this and other accusations of manipulating waiting-list statistics

  • News

    Teachers' pay is no model - it's fallen as well

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Christine Hancock (Observations, 29 October) should not be seeking to raise nurses' pay to match teachers' pay. My wife is a teacher, and has a new colleague who is an ex-nurse. He says that as a nurse he went to work, did the job and went home.

  • News

    Suspensions: doctors not always in the wrong

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    I was disturbed to read your Comment (29 October) about the suspension of surgeons, 'Crack in the complacency', especially in the light of your sympathetic treatment of poorly performing managers on the same page. The fallacious deduction that an increase in the number of suspensions reveals a greater readiness to ...

  • News

    Still a long way to go on equal opportunities, and subjectivity doesn't help

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    At first I thought Steve Ainsworth's piece on equal opportunities ('Opportunities knock', 29 October) was a spoof. I suspect instead that he gives us a perfect illustration of why the NHS and so many other employers still have significant work to do on equal opportunities.

  • News

    The Institute of Health Services Management stands up and applauds its outstanding director

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    It is disappointing that Peyman Javidan continues to pursue his criticism of the Institute of Health Services Management's director (Letters, 5 November).

  • News

    PFI mortgages the future of the NHS, and professionalism is at risk when profit drives the system

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    David Stelmach (Letters, 15 October) feels it is not the role of the Society of Radiographers to influence trusts in their choice of cost- efficient ways to acquire high technology.

  • News

    The price of false prophecy

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    'Many cancer trials in recent decades have measured the end joint (the outcome) in terms of additional months or years of life. Trialists have been very reluctant to measure the quality of the additional time.'

  • News

    The price of false prophecy

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    'The cancer industry provides much advocacy and little evidence of cost-effectiveness...

  • News

    WEB WATCH MARK CRAIL

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    London's 32 boroughs spent an estimated £126m on mental health services in 1997-98 - more than the combined total for all other metropolitan districts, and almost a quarter of the entire local government spend on such services across the whole of England and Wales.

  • News

    Showing a flicker of life but firing blanks at Dobbo

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    There are weeks when you wonder how long it will take the Tories to get their act together after the collective nervous breakdown they inflicted on themselves in the mid 1990s. 'I go canvassing - the voters still hate us, don't they?' a former Downing Street official confided at a ...

  • News

    Short cuts Welsh waiting list figures show 'downward trend'

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Figures released by the Government Statistical Service show that the number of Welsh residents waiting for hospital admission on 30 September was 74,269 - down 1,747 on 31 August. Welsh health minister Jon Owen Jones welcomed the 'positive downward trend' but condemned as 'completely unacceptable' a further rise in the ...

  • News

    Short cuts Solihull's public health director is joint appointment

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Solihull health authority and Solihull metropolitan borough council have appointed a joint director of public health. Andrew Richardson, previously director of commissioning/consultant in public health medicine with Worcestershire HA, has taken up the post, thought to be the first joint appointment of its kind in the country. HA chief executive ...

  • News

    Short cuts Central Scotland 'over-payment' inquiry reports

    1998-11-19T00:00:00Z

    An independent inquiry into allegations of over-payments to senior managers at Central Scotland Healthcare trust is due to hand its findings to the trust board and the procurator fiscal. Trust chief executive Derek Pollacchi has been suspended on full pay since July, when internal auditors highlighted 'areas of concern'.