Leader – Page 20
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LeaderNHS giants sound warning of acute financial turmoil
The leafy villages of Great and Little Shelford lie around five miles south of Cambridge. Shelford boasts a rich history reaching back to the Domesday Book, but it is also has claim to fame in NHS circles.
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LeaderClare Gerada ups the stakes in her fight to ‘save’ the NHS
The unlikeliest and, perhaps, most powerful alliance affecting the delivery of the NHS reforms is between Royal College of GPs chair Dr Clare Gerada and what some might term the “old guard” of NHS managers who have wielded the greatest influence over the last decade.
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LeaderWhy caution on hospital failure still has its price
This week the government looked into the abyss of hospital failure and shuffled nervously back from the edge of the precipice.
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LeaderFear of failure or staff fury may drive further job cuts
During the summer our HSJ Local service has been reporting on plans to reduce hospital workforces. This week we reveal Aintree University Hospital Foundation Trust’s decision to remove 200 posts during each of the next three years.
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LeaderRival factions fight for influence in Future Forum’s second coming
Why continue with the NHS reform listening exercise? The NHS is already changing with a momentum no report is likely to affect.
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LeaderDistrust and pragmatism inform softly-softly authorisation plan
There is one sentence in the government’s draft authorisation process for clinical commissioning groups which highlights the atmosphere of distrust in which the new arrangements are being negotiated.
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LeaderThe government risks severing links with valuable volunteers
It was inevitable that a government regarding the empowerment of individuals and communities as its raison d’être would seek to instil a greater public voice into the health service.
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LeaderGetting clinicians to speak up is the real key to fighting poor care
To the list of life’s certainties, Benjamin Franklin might have added the change from strong to light-touch public sector regulation and back again.
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LeaderThe vision for public health dims as confusion surrounds spending
When health secretary Andrew Lansley unveiled the public health white paper last November he called for a “paradigm shift” by which professionals would be locally empowered to bring about the improvements that a plethora of central initiatives failed to achieve under New Labour.
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LeaderLansley’s defence of management cuts is disingenuous and dangerous
“I try to avoid saying things that are capable of misinterpretation,” Andrew Lansley told HSJ last week.
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LeaderTransparency offers a chink of light in a dark week for reform
You should not mistake Professor Roger Boyle’s outspoken criticism of the health reforms as the demob happy words of a man about to retire.
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Leader
High trust, robust challenge and a firm grip are key to success
Failing NHS organisations get much more attention than successful ones, despite the fact that the latter far outnumber the former.
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Save now, pay later: the pension cuts folly
Not for nothing was public service pensions commission chair Lord Hutton placed at number 28 in HSJ’s list of the people with the most influence on the NHS last year.
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LeaderNicholson’s power is unrivalled – so is his responsibility to lead
This week is expected to see the publication of the revised Health and Social Care Bill. Health secretary Andrew Lansley has written that it will contain more than 150 amendments. It would be only mildly surprising to find one of them enshrining in law Sir David Nicholson’s position as NHS ...
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LeaderThe government’s changes will only delay the tough decisions
One overarching conclusion can be reached from the changes to the government’s reforms: there will be a continuation of the planning blight that has afflicted the health service since the decision to scrap primary care trusts without thinking through the implications.
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LeaderReform changes may threaten what little progress is being made
What is the real impact of GP consortium commissioning on NHS services? Not the claim and counter-claim of the political battle, which is largely focused on imagined utopias or dystopias of the medium term, but the change being experienced by patients and staff?
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LeaderThe NHS must plan for a decade of austerity
After decades of underinvestment, the NHS required the turbocharging provided by the 2002 Budget. The resulting flow of funds did much good. However, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight many would argue the money could have been spent more efficiently – although there would be considerable dispute about what should ...
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LeaderThe CQC is feeling the pressure as rising uncertainty takes its toll
There has been so much focus on the future role of Monitor that almost no attention has been paid to how the NHS’s other regulator, the Care Quality Commission, is coping with the challenges of reform and tighter budgets.
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LeaderCelebrate, don't denigrate: the case for management is clear
“Leadership and management in the NHS matter and the role of managers should be celebrated and not undermined.”
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LeaderService sweats over plans B, C and D as pause takes its toll
The NHS is paying a heavy, although largely unseen, price for the “pause” in the government’s health reforms.