Make your nominations for HSJ’s first Patient Leaders awards to identify and celebrate 50 foremost patient and citizen leaders, plus the rest of the day’s news and comment
1.50pm Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has used an interview with The Guardian to say that a Labour election victory would be followed by an immediate NHS cash injection as the “centrepiece” of a budget to fast-track the party’s key manifesto pledges.
The paper reports that no date has yet been fixed for a budget in the event that Ed Miliband becomes prime minister, but Balls is dropping hints that he would want to deliver a package before parliament rises for its summer recess.
12.16pm Since the start of the year, the NHS has been a crucial election battleground with the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all making high profile pledges on funding and the future of the service.
Ahead of polling day tomorrow, here are the must read HSJ interviews, analyses and polls from the campaign – and a look at what might happen from 8 May.
12.12pm The only way to close the NHS’s gap in funding is for the parties to close their gap in leadership. These decisions may increase pain now, but they will prevent a much greater hardship in the future, argues Harry Quilter-Pinner.
Mr Quilter-Pinner, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, writes that if the political parties think that delivering the extra £8bn that NHE England chief Simon Stevens has asked for puts them (and the NHS) back on solid ground, they should think again.
12.10pm A new chair has been appointed to West London Mental Health Trust.
Tom Hayhoe took up the post last month after previous chair Nigel McCorkell stepped down after six years.
The trust experienced significant governance problems over the past year.
Mr Hayhoe had previously been chair of West Middlesex University Hospitals Trust, which is due to be acquired by Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust later this year.
12.07pm With election day looming, we start with news that more than four in five GP practices rated by the Care Quality Commission have been judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, analysis by HSJ has found.
The ratings for GPs are substantially better than those in the acute hospital sector.
HSJ collated information from the 792 GP practice inspection reports published by the CQC since it began rating them in October.
10.30am Looking to this morning’s papers, The Daily Telegraph reports that NHS doctors may be deliberately driving up waiting times to attract more private patients, according to claims from a leading heart consultant.
John Dean, a consultant cardiologist at Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Hospital, said it was unethical for doctors to practice both privately and for the health service and they should give up one or the other.
He claims that there is a ‘perverse incentive’ for doctors to increase NHS waiting times so that patients will decide to go private to jump the queue, a practice he described as ‘the greedy preying on the needy.’
It is why, he says, there is little private work for cancer specialists, because the waiting times are too short to allow doctors to game the system.
10.15am Good morning and welcome to HSJ Live. We recognise leadership in all contexts within the health sector -be it female leaders, topmost provider chief executives, rising stars, clinical leaders, black and minority ethnic pioneers or top innovators.
HSJ, in association with NHS England, has launched Patient Leaders - a project to seek out and celebrate 50 patients, service users, or other members of the public who are playing a role in designing and delivering health services. The work will culminate in a celebration of the individuals in July.
The impact of patient leaders on health services cannot be overestimated. We need your nominations to recognise this contribution.
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