Health Service Journal
5 June 2008
View all stories from this issue.
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Academics slam two-tier corporate manslaughter legislation
The exclusion of sectioned patients from a new law aimed at protecting people from dangerous management practices is being condemned as 'scandalous'. -
Ali Mohammed on firing staff
Thank goodness The Apprentice is back on TV. It's basically the HR type's ultimate TV programme with a huge dose of entertainment built in. -
Andrew Jones on health outcomes
One thing that seems to be uniting healthcare policy makers is the urge to tackle so-called health inflation. -
Auditors query PCT attempts to reduce last year's surplus
Auditors are querying NHS organisations' attempts to minimise the surpluses they have reported in their 2007-08 accounts.Analysis by HSJ suggests new accountancy policies and provisions allowed NHS organisations to deflate their surpluses by up to £1.3bn. -
Awards preview
New CategoryBest Social Marketing Project sponsored by the National Social Marketing CentreThis year’s HSJ Awards introduce a new category for Best Social Marketing Project. This award recognises the rising importance of social marketing in health service policy over recent years.Social marketing is essentially a powerful way to achieve positive impacts on people’s behaviour. Adaptable -
Bringing a troubled PCT back from the brink
After forming from smaller trusts in 2006, Cambridge PCT found it owed £70m and needed to make some serious changes to avoid disaster. Gail Newmarch explains -
Change management rules
Helen Bevan's piece is excellent, writes Jazz Singh -
Change of focus for Primary Care Contracting
After NHS Primary Care Contracting lost its national funding, it had to ask each primary care trust to subscribe to its services. Despite positive feedback on its performance, it had to adopt a more practical focus to win support, say Helen Northall and Roy Greenhalgh -
Darzi review: East Midlands opts for local focus
NHS East Midlands has focused on localism in its regional Darzi vision.The strategic health authority said it had divided its patch into smaller areas to make sure its proposals reflect the diversity of its residents. -
Darzi review: Give old people a seat at the modernisation table
Services for older people are falling down government priority lists. Two consultant nurses argue for specialist care, in hospital and the community, to be made explicit in reform plans -
Darzi review: regions promise safer and fairer services
NHS West Midlands is to focus on prevention, quality improvement and patient involvement in a bid to tackle 'an unjustifiable variability in the safety and quality of services'. -
Dealing with presenteeism
There is a new bugbear for the employer - presenteeism - and there is evidence it can be just as harmful to an organisation as its opposite. Paul Gander reports -
Defining the role of the physiotherapist
With more than 35 million work days lost each year in the UK to occupational ill health and injury, it has been widely acknowledged that physiotherapists should play a key role in delivering future occupational health strategies, which in turn must be brought into mainstream healthcare provision. -
DH must step in to protect the vulnerable
The government needs to rethink its plan to exclude sectioned mental health patients from the protection of the Corporate Manslaughter Act for up to five years. -
Doctors plan industrial action vote
Doctors are set to vote on industrial action at the British Medical Association's annual GP conference next week. -
Failing managers to be axed under new NHS regime
Managers at failing trusts will be replaced with teams from the private sector or other NHS organisations under a tough new performance regime. -
Fewer deaths could mean more pay for consultants
Hospital consultants’ pay could be linked to outcomes such as the number of patients who die in their care, the NHS medical director has signalled. -
Fujitsu IT deal for e-records abandoned
The NHS's troubled IT programme has been dealt a further blow after negotiations with a key supplier broke down. -
Governors want more contact with the board
A review by foundation trust regulator Monitor reveals the trusts have some way to go before they are fully accountable organisations. -
Health volunteering abroad: a lot to offer
HSJ catches up with VSO workers in Cambodia to find out what they are contributing to the country's health strategy -
Hygiene code going unnoticed by most trusts
Less than a quarter of clinicians say their trusts are complying with infection control laws. -
Inexperience affects sexual health services
A lack of expertise and experience in sexual health commissioning is harming efforts to improve services, sexual health organisations claim. -
Infrastructure: rolling out Airwave
The NHS needs a communications network worthy of its size and complexity. David Sangster explains -
Inspector backtracks over deaneries decision
A government agency has backtracked after advising doctors that deaneries could be classed as employment agencies. -
Jon Restell on the NHS's 60th anniversary
Are managers going to be unwelcome guests at the NHS's 60th birthday party in July and merely bit players in the next instalment of the next stage review? -
King's Fund bursts the polyclinic plan bubble
Lord Darzi's proposals for a shake-up of primary care polarised opinion. This week the King's Fund attempts to clarify the terms of debate and set out what will work - and what won't, writes Helen Crump -
King's Fund urges polyclinic caution
Primary care trusts should consider polyclinic models that do not centralise GP services under one roof, the King's Fund has urged. -
Leadership skills: energising staff
How can we best engage people in their work, asks David MacLeod -
Lesley Wright on standardising work
Anyone planning a holiday that involves flying will have to have faith in the skills of a highly trained pilot and navigator to get them to their destination. -
Making joint strategic needs assessments work
Joint strategy to identify the service needs of local people became a duty last month. Renu Bindra looks at how some areas are making the process a success -
Maternity services at 60: the birth of a new era
For pregnant women, the birth of the NHS meant the family doctor’s advice could be sought freely without incurring expense, according to the 1949 Ministry of Health report. -
Media Watch: co-payment 'madness'
The fraught issue of 'co-payment' was one of the biggest health service stories this week, following the death of Linda O'Boyle from bowel cancer. -
Michael White on private vs public
The detail I am most likely to remember from this week's events is the revelation that when Harold Macmillan was chancellor in 1956 he suppressed evidence of the link between cancer and smoking. -
Monitor survey shows distance still to travel on FT governance
A survey of foundation trust governors by regulator Monitor reveals the distance still to travel to develop effective governance. -
New King's College Hospital chief
I was interested to read Tim Smart's comment with reference to his work at BT and his intentions for King's College Hospital foundation trust, where he has been appointed chief executive, writes Jane Molloy -
NHS politics: just a pawn in the game
From its early years to Thatcherite revolution to Blair's funding bonanza, the NHS has always been a political pawn. Click on the links at the beginning of the article to read more -
Parliament warns on NHS underspend damage
More than one in five NHS organisations were still in deficit by the close of the 2006-07 financial year, despite the health service itself achieving surplus. -
Patient records at City Hospitals Sunderland
Further to your article on missing patient records, I would like to point out that the figures released by City Hospitals Sunderland foundation trust under the Freedom of Information Act in relation to a -
Patient records at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole
The figures quoted for Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals foundation trust in your article 'Missing: the notes of more than a million outpatients' are misleading, writes Jackie France -
Paul Jennings on listening to staff
Improving communication with staff took Walsall Teaching primary care trust from the bottom 10 per cent to the top 10 per cent in the national staff survey -
Private providers and human rights
You report that a question mark remains over whether private providers in the NHS are subject to the Human Rights Act. Any attempts to narrow the scope of the act need to be robustly challenged, because this would leave people vulnerable to abuse, writes Jean Candler -
Service redesign: fast and effective change
Susannah Strong looks at the Care Services Improvement Partnership's 10 high impact changes for health and social care -
Sizewell B outage halts Wycombe operations
Wycombe Hospital in High Wycombe was forced to cancel operations after it was hit a by a power cut. -
Steve Onyett on transformational leadership
Picture the scene. Two clinical teams have received disappointing performance assessments. In each team, a senior manager brings the team members and their line manager together for an action planning workshop. -
Steve Slack on why being gay is still bad for your health
Despite improvements in UK legislation protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, discrimination is still affecting the quality of health and social care this community receives. -
Suspending trust chairs and non-executives
New legislation coming into force this month gives the Appointments Commission the power to suspend trust chairs and non-executives. However, suspension is unlikely to occur often, as Janice Scanlan explains -
This week's All Our Yesterdays
Public Assistance Journal and Health and Hospital Review, June 4 1948From the National Association of Local Government Social Welfare Officers annual conference presidential address: "The conference meets as a time when changes in the social welfare and assisting services are about to be out into operation and when members of the Association are on the point of embarking upon new tasks, which under different systems of administration will test the value of their experience. Whatever ma -
Trusts face green targets in bid to cut carbon footprint
The NHS will lead the way in tackling climate change by shrinking its carbon footprint by 60 per cent by 2050, the government has proposed. -
Understanding the new NHS standard contract for acute services
A new contract has tightened the rules governing interactions between acute care providers and commissioners. Johanne Smith explains the new requirements -
Welsh merger trust on the rocks say former directors
Five former non-executive directors have gone public with their fears for the future of a newly merged Welsh trust. They claim Hywel Dda trust, which serves three counties in south west and west Wales, is floundering because the organisation launched without a proper leadership team in place. -
West Midlands and South East Coast set out Darzi visions
NHS West Midlands has identified ‘seven big challenges’ for healthcare in the region, including an ‘unjustifiable variability’ in the safety and quality of services. -
Your Humble Servant: Confed blues
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: Fancy phrases
