Health Service Journal
1998-10-22
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22 October 1948
The numbers of nurses and domestic staff have been rising. Full-time nursing and midwifery staff in hospitals in England and Wales have increased by 2,000 in 12 months. Last June the total was 117,741 compared with 115,529 a year earlier. Part-timers over the same period rose by nearly 7,000 to 17,380. Full-time domestic staff increased from 96,500 to 99,700 and part-timers from 18,000 to 21, 575. -
Agencies cash-in on working time limit
The NHS is facing a bill of at least 100m as employment agencies seek to exploit nursing shortages and the new European working time directive to drive up the costs of hiring agency staff. -
Another degree of support for staff education
I read with interest the brief item on collaboration between Ashworth and Sheffield Hallam University to offer a degree in forensic care (News, page 4, 27 August). -
Big cash handouts are too low for big bang reform Realistic salary scales for PCG chiefs have been set but cash is still short
There will be considerable relief that health minister Alan Milburn has set the salary scale for primary care group chief executives at a realistic level (see News, page 4). The individuals appointed to these jobs will be crucial to the success of the whole PCG project, and it is vital that they carry the necessary clout to deal with the doctors on their own level if we are to avoid a descent into the chaos that would ensue if GPs were left to fight it out on PCG boards. Indeed, in setting PC -
Can pay, won't pay Who will pick up The Working Time Directive tab? Not us, say agencies
Someone, somewhere has to pay for the Working Time Directive. Alas, many of the staffing agencies on which the NHS relies so heavily appear to have decided that it won't be them (see News, page ?). -
Clinical psychology offers waiting list insights
I was interested to read John Henderson's letter (13 August) on a means of waiting list management in child and adolescent mental health services. -
CMO launches flu jab campaign
Professor Liam Donaldson, England's new chief medical officer, this week launched a national campaign to make clinicians and the public aware of the importance of flu vaccinations. -
Colorectal surgery
Prophylactic antibiotics are increasingly being used to counteract the high risk of hospital-acquired infection in colorectal surgery patients, but there is doubt about the most effective timing, duration and route for their administration. Anne-Marie Gle -
Daily transcripts of the inquiry into the deaths of children during heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary will be published on a website when hearings begin next year.
Daily transcripts of the inquiry into the deaths of children during heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary will be published on a website when hearings begin next year. The site, launched this week, will initially include details of the inquiry's terms of reference and the opening speech by inquiry chair Professor Ian Kennedy. -
Delegates may have worried about the future of managers in the reforms. But one a more local issue they were absolutely clear. The merger between their two organisations was widely welcomed.
The new Institute of Healthcare Management will bring together both the old Institute of Health Services Management and the Association of Managers in General Practice. -
Don't ignore the constructive message of the chief executives' forum
Your Comment (1 October) accurately reflected the feeling of chief executives at their recent forum that they wished to be more involved in NHS policy and wished to work on increasing their powers of influence. -
Duel carriageway
How could the new statutory duty of partnership placed on health and local authorities change existing relationships and working partnerships? David Owens thinks the road leads to conflict -
Events
Items are entered free for public sector, voluntary and professional organisations, but we need at least six weeks' notice of your event. Please send details to Uli Jaeger, HSJ, Porters South, 4 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW. Fax: 0171-843 4670. -
Fraud costs vulnerable people 1m a year
At least 1,500 elderly and vulnerable people are being defrauded of up to 1m each year by people, including nursing home staff, who are trusted to take over their financial affairs. -
Government will not order utility firms to put NHS first if IT bug hits
The NHS will have to rely on the good will of power, water and telephone companies for priority treatment if the millennium computer bug hits supplies, it emerged this week. -
Happy couples
The government's Partnership in Action green paper spells out closer joint working arrangements between health and social services, including joint budgets. Lynn Eaton finds out how the prospective partners are shaping up -
Head 28pt unica bold
POLITICS BY MICHAEL WHITE -
Hillingdon strikers win reinstatement
A three-year dispute at Hillingdon Hospital has ended with an industrial tribunal ruling that 25 Asian domestic and catering staff, sacked for refusing to take cuts in pay and conditions, should be reinstated and paid compensation totalling almost 300,000. -
Hitting an upbeat note
While a number of those attending the chief executives' forum would recognise the somewhat bleak mood described, I suspect others would not. -
In from the cold
Health workers are involved in a joint team with other agencies to help rough sleepers off the streets. Family doctor Nigel Hewett describes its impact on 72 clients over six months -
It's safe to come out now
In a break with tradition, there was not a single pot shot at health service managers during the political conference season. Patrick Butler wonders if 'mature' debate is, indeed, the order of the day -
It's safe to come out now
In a break with tradition, there was not a single pot shot at health service managers during the political conference season. Patrick Butler wonders if 'mature' debate is, indeed, the order of the day -
Key management role for those in the first line
Jaki Meekings' doubts about the level of management skill available in primary care (Letters, 8 October) are seriously misplaced. Are health authorities consistently successful in managing - or more correctly - in controlling NHS budgets? -
Kidney moans
Treatment for renal failure is missing its clinical targets. Mark Crail reports on new data -
Laugh? I nearly cried: conference comedians
Some thought Ann Widdecombe's line, 'The Conservatives are, and always have been, 100 per cent committed to the values of our health services', was a joke. It wasn't. -
London Initiative Zone: a capital idea whose legacy should be preserved
Six years as a GP principal in Greenwich leave me in no doubt that the pressures on primary healthcare services are rising. The London Initiative Zone was welcome, and many - patients and staff - have benefited from premises improvements ('LIZ: a legacy for London', pages 24-27, 1 October). -
Long-term care commission look to Australia
Proposals to reform care for elderly people in Britain are likely to borrow from the system in Australia, it emerged this week. -
Managers call for power
Government drives to improve quality in the NHS could give managers responsibility for clinical performance without giving them power to change clinical practice, says the Institute of Health Services Management. -
Managers come in from the cold Managers' social exclusion is the fault of the system that undervalues us
You report that chief executives feel they have become a 'socially excluded minority frozen out of policy-making and subject to rigid control from the centre' (News Focus, page 14, 1 October). You have also reported in recent weeks that a teaching hospital has found itself 6m in the red without knowing why, that plans to cut costs through the controversial closure of an accident and emergency department realised little of the predicted savings, and that the NHS is failing to manage the year 2 -
Managers summoned over Welsh waiting lists
Senior NHS managers have been summoned to meet Welsh health minister Jon Owen Jones to 'discuss their contributions' to reducing lengthening waiting lists. -
Milburn finds 9m for PCG recruitment
Primary care groups have won a 9.1m cash boost to recruit board members and staff before they start running in April next year. -
New voice promises constructive criticism
After years as a backroom fixer, one could forgive Tim Clement- Jones, the Liberal Democrat's new health spokesman in the Lords, if he was eager to make his mark with a thrusting, attention-grabbing attack on government health policy. -
NHS Direct 'will need 15,000 more nurses'
The new deadline of December 2000 for extending NHS Direct, the government's nurse-led telephone helpline throughout England is 'challenging but feasible' according to one of the scheme's advisers. -
On the record
CLIFF PRIOR is chief executive of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. He chairs the government's mental health national service framework sub-group on long-term care. -
On the transfer list?
Managers were dissatisfied when health minister Alan Milburn refused to make guarantees about jobs or places on PCG boards at the IHSM/AMGP primary care conference. -
Opportunities knock
Human resources -
Partnership in Action proposals
More joint working at strategic planning, service commissioning and service provision level closely monitored through either the Commission for Health Improvement, the Social Services Inspectorate or the Audit Commission, with joint national priorities and national performance frameworks. -
Partnership provides emergency bed
In Solihull, the Grove Road GP practice, a total purchasing project, and Solihull social services department have agreed to jointly purchase a bed in a nursing home for patients who may need emergency 24-hour care. -
Poor health
Some of 'the best health data in the world' has been pulled together, for the first time, in a report clearly showing the link between material deprivation and ill health in Scotland. It reveals that deprived Scots experience greater mental health problems and have a higher incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke and many cancers. Inequalities are reflected in death rates, GP consultations and admissions to hospital. Older deprived people, in particular, are also more likely to undergo in -
Poor law
Newly compiled statistical evidence on the state of health of the Scottish nation demonstrates as never before the link between deprivation and ill health -
Professor Rory Shaw
has become medical director of Hammersmith Hospitals trust. He is a specialist in respiratory medicine and led the development of a new curriculum at Imperial College School of Medicine. -
Quebec on call
Quebec's pioneering network of community health and social care centres provide easily accessible integrated services on a neighbourhood basis. Helen Busby and colleagues explain how they work -
Remember the halcyon days when Dobbo could drop a personal letter to a million NHS staff asking for suggestions
Remember the halcyon days when Dobbo could drop a personal letter to a million NHS staff asking for suggestions - and not be overwhelmed with anatomically inventive ideas about where to stick it? You may, but the Department of Health is trying to forget. To recap, Dobbo sent batches of letters to health authorities and trusts in March at a cost of 135,000 in a bid to involve staff in improving the service. So convinced was he that the initiative would get a good response that he set up a 'spe -
Royal College threatens A&E closure in Manchester
An accident and emergency department is threatened with closure after a critical report from the Royal College of Surgeons. -
Scenario one: a third way
There was a time when patients expected the NHS to be there on demand, however trivial the complaint. Yet as people became better informed they came to realise the limits of what the tax system can deliver. -
Select committee to probe NHS staffing
With increasing clamour for the government to improve pay for nurses and tackle chronic recruitment problems, the Common' s health committee' s decision to investigate NHS staff requirements is timely. -
Short cuts
New centre monitors children's reaction to drugs -
Social policy 'must focus on inequalities'
The chair of the government's inquiry into inequalities in health has called for 'health inequality impact assessments' to be applied to all areas of social policy. -
Some thought Ann Widdecombe's line, 'The Conservatives are, and always have been, 100 per cent committed to the values of our health services', was a joke. It wasn't.
She had a dig at public health minister Tessa Jowell's alleged vanity - 'now I could understand it if she had my good looks'. -
Strait-jacket required
The NHS may have fared well financially from Tony Blair's comprehensive spending review, but, asks Lyn Whitfield, will the conditions it comes with prove too restrictive? -
Tale of two views: were we at the same event?
Reading your report on the second annual forum of trust and health authority chief executives, I wonder: was I a guest at the same event? -
The NHS Executive
The NHS Executive has pulled back from compelling health authorities and trusts to sign a public assurance that all their clinical and non- clinical risks are assessed and properly managed by the year 2000. -
The patients' guide - to reinventing the wheel
I was pleased to read Ian Wylie's review of The NHS Home Healthcare Guide (Books, page 35, 17 September). -
The public health white paper, originally due for the autumn, is now likely to be published in in the New Year.white paper.
The public health white paper, originally due for the autumn, is now likely to be published in in the new year. According the Financial Times, an official explained that the plan was to launch it before Christmas, 'but we felt it was a bit nannying to tell people about cutting back on food and drink in the festive season. We think of it as more of a New Year's resolution white paper.' -
This one will run and run
AMERICAN GRAFFITI HOWARD BERLINER -
WEB WATCH
The House of Commons returned this week to complete the unfinished business of the old parliamentary session before the Queen's speech launches us into a fresh round of political thrills and spills. So what better time to look back on the obsessions of the past 12 months? -
Whatever next?
Public service managers are trying to see into the future, not through a crystal ball but with a series of questionnaires. Mark Crail took a sidelong glance -
Widdecombe considers widening PFI to NHS clinical services
The private sector would manage NHS hospitals and clinical services through an expanded private finance initiative under policy proposals being considered by shadow health secretary Ann Widdecombe as part of her review of Tory health policy. -
Working together to support mentally ill people at risk
Chris Heginbotham, chief executive of East and North Hertfordshire health authority admits that a joint mental health risk team was set up on the suggestion of Hertfordshire social services director Ian White. Both were concerned about patients with a history of mental illness who were living in the community and were potentially at risk, but not ill enough to warrant being sectioned in hospital. The team meets every couple of months to discuss problem cases, rather like a child protection co
