Health Service Journal
1998-11-26
View all stories from this issue.
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£155m hospital for Bromley
Contracts have been signed for the ninth major hospital to be built under the private finance initiative. Building work on a £155m hospital for Bromley will start shortly. -
2000 bug compliance work sparks IT crash
A major teaching hospital was forced to implement its 'internal disaster plan' after work to tackle the year 2000 computer problem caused a telecommunications crash. -
26 November 1948
When re-planning the hospital feeding service, staff should not be forgotten. It is often inadequate to their requirements, as many of them are still growing. -
A fitting start
In the first of an occasional series on a health action zone in the making, Laura Donnelly looks at the challenges of linking up with other agencies -
Access route
Waiting-list buster Peter Homa is keen to point out that tackling waiting lists is only part of a wider endeavour to improve access to high- quality care. Kaye McIntosh listened in on an HSJ masterclass -
Acheson report demands action on inequalities
Former chief medical officer Sir Donald Acheson was today due to call for action across government departments to reduce health inequalities. -
Adding clarity to the picture of deprivation
It was good to see the prominent and helpful coverage you gave to the issue of deprivation and ill health in Scotland, based around our recent publication ('Poor health', News Focus, 22 October). -
Anger at pay freeze for senior managers
Unions have described a pay freeze for senior NHS managers as a 'slap in the face' for the people 'asked to deliver the most fundamental changes in decades'. -
BMA emphasises retraining after Milburn's performance warning
The British Medical Association has reacted stiffly to warnings from health minister Alan Milburn that professional self-regulation is 'under test' in the wake of well publicised scandals. -
Buyer's market
Books; Managing public involvement in healthcare purchasing By Carol Lupton, Stephen Peckham and Pat Taylor Open University Press 176 pages £16.99 -
Chance to influence NHS pension strategies
The NHS pension scheme is the largest in the country, and possibly in western Europe, with 1.5 million members, 11,500 employers and annual membership contributions of £1.5bn. -
Commissioner points to 'early warning role'
The health service commissioner's first report covering clinical complaints has highlighted the office's potential role as an 'early warning system'. -
Donation rates linked with role of transplant co-ordinators
The role, recruitment and training of transplant co-ordinators must be reviewed if the availability of organs for donation is to be standardised across the UK, according to a report from the British Transplantation Society. -
Drugs and bugs at the end-of-the-peer show
POLITICS -
Empathy is the enemy of the lawyer's bill
Trusts and contracts By Andrew Coulson The Policy Press 318 pages £16.99 -
Evening all
Public health; Setting targets to reduce health inequalities is a considerable challenge. And the public still needs convincing that local action can make any difference at all. -
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, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ. Fax: 0171-874 0254. E-m -
Exposed to poisonous pleasure
Martin Ball has overlooked the strong evidence linking passive smoking with coronary heart disease, bronchitis, asthma, emphysema, conjunctivitis and the myriad of other respiratory, inflammatory and allergic conditions that bring so much pain, suffering, misery and cost to the unwary, uninformed or simply vulnerable individuals who are exposed to the incontrovertibly poisonous substances inherent in tobacco smoke. -
First phase of Read review begins
The independent review of the Read clinical codes programme has begun, and the results of the first phase should be published at the end of this month. -
Former minister calls for CJD compensation
Victims of the human form of 'mad cow' disease should be paid compensation for their suffering, a former health minister has told the BSE inquiry. -
Give and take
There are about 65 transplant co-ordinators in the UK, but funding is uneven - even though trusts gain financially from doing transplants. -
Guidance brings in 48-hour week as exempt junior doctors fight on
Guidance on how the European working-time directive will affect the NHS was published last week amid a growing row about plans to extend the rules to junior doctors. -
In brief
Ministers are to issue guidelines to 'ensure greater national consistency in the uptake' of the controversial multiple sclerosis drug beta interferon. The government was responding to pressure from MPs and patients' groups over inconsistencies in the availability of the drug. Harry Barnes, MP for North East Derbyshire, claimed that only the 'top eight' on the list of sufferers in north Derbyshire received the drug, and that 'reassessments' had taken more than 40 sufferers 'off the list'. (Han -
Key points
Devolution will bring health policy under the democratic control of the directly elected Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. -
London region must 'work as one NHS'
London's health organisations will need to 'work as one NHS' to meet the 'challenge' of dealing with the Greater London Assembly and a directly elected mayor, managers have been told. -
Ministers lay plans to savage fundholding if bill is delayed
Ministers have drawn up contingency plans to emasculate GP fundholding in case the bill to abolish the scheme fails to become law by 31 March next year. -
Monitor
Monitor always suspected it, but now the truth emerges - the Department of Health press office is indeed a branch of the British fiction industry. Baffled by the fact that the DoH web site's otherwise excellent press release database had enormous gaps - about one in five of the sequentially numbered releases are not there at a rough estimate - Monitor phoned 'em up and asked why. Apparently it is not some great conspiracy to rewrite history, but because 'not all the press releases we write go -
NHS legal advice of 'varied' quality
The quality of legal advice offered to health authorities and trusts dealing with medical negligence claims is 'varied', according to Steve Walker, chief executive of the NHS Litigation Authority. -
Nothing will come of nothing
Why treat health authority managers differently from other staff groups? -
Passive smoking 'hoax' stinks
Tobacco debate -
Place rehabilitation within primary care
It's a progression, it's a promotion, it's a priority ('Dobson pushes for rehabilitation', News, page 7, 29 October). But if the goal of new rehabilitation services is to prevent 'permanent disablement' by an early response to 'illness or injury', services will need to intervene early in the history of a disabling condition. In most cases the early stages are picked up in primary care. -
Plymouth: a city guide - and HAZ blueprint
Plymouth is one of the most deprived local authorities - ranking 338 out of 366 on the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions' index of local conditions. -
Pulling out all the stops
Health matters Sociology of illness, prevention and care Edited by Alan Peterson and Charles Waddell Open University Press 384 pages £16.99 -
Recognition of diverse information needs of PCGs is key to success
Your article on primary care computing by Michael Cross ('Burned Out', Special Report, 5 November) rightly draws attention to the critical importance of information to primary care groups, and the absence of easy solutions. However, the conclusion that PCGs must either 'plug existing practice management systems together' or replace them all with a single networked system, seems misleading on two counts. -
Research on employee involvement schemes
I am researching the relationship between employee involvement schemes and employee commitment in a large NHS trust for an MA in industrial relations with labour law at Manchester Metropolitan University. -
Right-on rude boy who left MPs all shook up
Westminster diary; By Patrick Butler -
Safety catch
Michael Rawlins is to head the new National Institute for Clinical Excellence, but some feel that the appointment of a man 'used to working in a straitjacket' at the Committee on Safety of Medicines does not bode well. -
Separate ways
Will devolution mean an end to a truly national health service? Paul Jervis and Robert Hazell examine the possibilities -
Short cuts
Confederation calls for guidance on expensive drugs -
Something soft for hard times
LIVE FROM LEEDS DAVID HUNTER -
Steady as he goes: the Rawlins CV
Born -
The Barnett formula: fair shares for all?
There are a number of possible post-devolution tensions. As always, money is likely to be an issue. Total funding for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is determined by the Barnett formula, which was intended to bring about a gradual convergence in per capita funding of public services in the different countries, but has not done so. -
Thirst for regulation leaves bodies all over the place
Holding public services to account is fine, but we need to do it efficiently -
Time bomb
primary care; GPs' night visits are more strongly influenced by the fees they are paid than by patients' needs, argues Steve Ainsworth -
Time to move on from counsel of gloom on personality disorder management
HW Griffiths' description of psychopathic disorder (Letters, 12 November) is clinically pessimistic, which is probably why he thinks it is untreatable. Judging from Dr Griffiths' approval of the Butler committee's report he would prefer this disorder banged up so he can concentrate on the really treatable illnesses, like schizophrenia and manic depression. His assumption is that if psychiatrists can't fix it, no one can - which may say more about the state of psychiatry than it does about psy -
Vulnerable groups lose out on pregnancy care
The latest Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths Report has raised concerns about access to care for some of the UK's most vulnerable pregnant women. -
WEB WATCH MARK CRAIL
Sherlock Holmes would cast a cursory glance at the footprints left by a fleeing criminal before calmly announcing that the man would be found at Rotherhithe Docks aboard a Calcutta-bound tea clipper due to leave port on the next tide. And how did he know? Elementary, my dear Watson. -
We'll take the high road
Women healthcare managers embarking on their careers have formed a networking initiative. It's just as well, when of the 25 chief executives appointed to head Scotland's new trusts only one is a woman. -
Where are they now?
No 91 -
Wider Lib-Lab remit hints at joint health policy
Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown's decision to widen the remit of the co-operation between their two parties has given rise to speculation that Labour and the Liberal Democrats might at some stage work together on health policy. -
Willing to be a mentor All the way to the top
Ms Boyle started out as a nurse in Glasgow, worked in nursing personnel in Lanarkshire, and moved to Croydon as a personnel manager and then assistant unit general manager before returning as assistant personnel director for Greater Glasgow health board.
