Leader – Page 21
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Leader
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.
-
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 ...
-
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.
-
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?
-
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 ...
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
LeaderBenefits lost as C-word remains a taboo
Do you remember the debate over the future of the US healthcare system that dominated the last Presidential election?
-
LeaderCameron phones friends to help answer tricky reform questions
It is a year since the general election that brought the coalition to power and Andrew Lansley to Richmond House.
-
LeaderPCTs are dead. Long live the PCT cluster?
Here’s a quiz for you. What do the following numbers - 581, 331, 162, 62 - represent?
-
LeaderInquiry adds to the toxic reform mix
Cynthia Bower, chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, appeared at the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust inquiry on Monday. Ms Bower was previously chief executive of NHS West Midlands, responsible for monitoring the troubled trust.
-
LeaderStraggling organisations set to slip into crisis
The popular perception is that the fortunes of the NHS rise and fall on a national basis. HSJ readers will know the true picture is one of variation – often stark – between organisations and regions.
-
LeaderAndrew Lansley: an enemy of reform?
HSJ’s increasingly unfashionable, strained and conditional support for Andrew Lansley continuing as health secretary is predicated on two beliefs.