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Readers' Letters − 7 June 2013
Outgoing NHS chief guilty of “moronic excuses”, say UKIP
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Readers' letters - 17 May 2013
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Readers' letters – 3 May 2013
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Readers' Letters − 5 April 2013
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Readers' letters - 21 March 2013
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Readers' letters − 7 March 2013
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Readers' letters − 28 February 2013
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Readers' letters - 31 January 2013
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Readers' letters − 24 January 2013
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Readers' letters - 17 January 2013
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Readers' letters - 20 December 2012
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Readers' letters - 6 December 2012
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Readers' letters - 15 November 2012
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Readers' letters - 8 November 2012
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Readers' letters - 1 November
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Readers' letters – 25 October 2012
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Readers' letters - 18 October 2012
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Readers' letters - 11 October 2012
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Readers' letters - 20 September 2012
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Readers' letters - 23 August 2012
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Leader: should a clinician fill Nicholson’s shoes?
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Leader: Rivals battle to be the public's champion
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Leader: Nicholson urges NHS to begin creative phase
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Leader: NHS pay bill needs reform alongside services
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Leader: CCGs given the robustness to lead
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Leader: Francis demands more honesty from the NHS
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Trusts risk unwanted legacy with short-term savings
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Torbay presents a test for the new system
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We need a stronger prescription for medical leadership
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Updated: Investigators reveal CQC 'cover up' over Morecambe Bay
Its a shame no one is making the links on this one. Stafford the care home and now Morcome Bay does it not go all the way back to the" future lord" and his past appointments of his mates into these positions? How many more people will be allowed to die before these people stop saying "LESSONS HAVE BEEN LERNT"! The only lessons they have learnt is of how to cover up even more deaths.
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Tell us how the NHS can become a seven-day service
GPs will huff at being employed by anyone other than themselves. Corner shops in the 1950s. A4C won't be addressed because of the unions and professional infighting. Organisations can't integrate because they're all stuck at reasons why not rather than realising we have no choice if we want an NHS free at the point of delivery when we retire. People who have children or are careers are a burden not an asset. Lots of love from the UK Govt. And PS, hurry up and fill all these balloons.
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Health and wellbeing boards may control £1bn under integration plan
Let's just hand the whole budget over. All 107bn of it. Not just to councils, but completely random people. Walking your dog? Here, have a billion, run neurosurgery. Popping put for some milk? Great, here's a 100K, see if you can get a CT scanner or 3. Lost tourist with a map? Don't worry, here are some directions and a couple of million to run pathology. Child skipping? Have a few billion to run all our NHS estates. Hopefully someone will wake me up soon and tell me it's time for some more largactil.
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Exclusive: Surgeons may not be able to block performance data publication, NHS England believes
If I were looking into this I would want to see a copy of the legal advice it is claimed was originally received. The Data Protection Act contains nothing that would prevent this sort of public interest data to be published and it is hard to imagine that any QC would ever advise otherwise. So for me the questions are: - Can we see the original legal advice please? - If it does not exist, why did NHS England think it did exist and why didn’t anyone senior ask to see it before giving surgeons the right to opt out?
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Monitor launches study of small trusts' viability
Monitor are sounding as though there's an absolute definition of viability - and obviously a trust whose income and expenditure don't match and won't in the foreseeable future isn't viable. But Monitor has created its own tests of viability and they are a long way from that simple, which is why applications now take at least 2 years. These tests have also changed over time. When there was money in the system the tests mitigated against large trusts because complexity was more risky than simplicity. Now that the money is running out, big is beautiful because you can (apparently) mitigate the eye watering downside risks in more creative ways. I agree with the latter posts that the greater concern is that we now have a set of Monitor tests that will force mergers and acquisitions that are a bad idea for local services but that's OK because progress is being made towards getting the badge. This is clearly lunacy. The system doesn't seem to understand that economies of scale aren't gained in perpetuity as size increases - in the words of Nigel Edwards, beyond a certain size there is an increasing cost to complexity. So - agree - Monitor is asking the wrong question. The one it should be asking is whether the viability tests it sets for aspirant FTs will improve the NHS -or damage it.
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Can clinicians make good managers?
Some of the so called professional managers are no better than ex-clinicians. Good, indeed excellent managers can come from almost any walk of life providing they have the aptitude. It is time we stopped drawing arbitrary lines. The main fault is possibly the old perennial of promotion beyond capability.
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Think tank seeks lifting of NHS ringfence
It's not the funding which needs ring fences removed from, it's the onerous and ridiculously protective employment conditions which are a barrier to progress. Too often unproductive managers and clinicians are left in place to stifle progress, block best practice, nurture pet projects or just simply to exist shuffling from one meeting to another without any true output aligned to 'making the boat go faster'. Far better to allow ineffectual individuals the chance to explore a more fulfilling career outside the NHS than allow them to drain resources away from patients.... A cheeper and faster way to move these individuals on is paramount.
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Husband and wife take over at troubled £1bn hospital trust
Just a minor point of Governance....does the Interim Cheif Exec hold his wife to account if she fails to deliver her objectives? Isnt that a bit too cosy when the organisation in question is facing such a huge challenge? Mr Reed may find that his `dinners in the dog` should he raise perfromance issues.
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Analysed: Poor performers on medical training satisfaction
The Health Service Journal has made a fundamental error in this Analysis of trusts performing poorly on trainee satisfaction ( HSJ 18.7.13). The Bottom 10 performers on Handover satisfaction contain 8 mental health trusts and 2 specialist trusts. The poor performance by these trusts on this specific question appears unrelated to overall satisfaction and can most likely be explained by the difference in on call and handover procedures compared with acute trusts. In line with most mental health trusts, our trust (Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust – 9th from the bottom on the handover rating list above) has non-resident junior doctor on calls. Therefore the two questions in the survey dealing with handover before and after night duty (GENHQ31 & GENHQ32) are not comparing us like for like with acute trusts. We don’t have face to face meetings before and after on calls because our trainees are on call from home. We also have a separate tier of service which does front line assessments run by experienced senior Home Treatment Team and Liaison Team nurses. Handover arrangements are therefore not a good indicator of trainee satisfaction and should not be included in an analysis like this without further explanation. Indeed our trust continues to score very highly on overall trainee satisfaction and in the 2013 survey, once again, scored above the national mean on this measure. Dr Martin Schmidt, Director of Medical Education Dr Rachel Hennessy, Medical Director Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
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Report: NHS to face chronic nurse shortage by 2016
Seems the delusional workforce planners are alive and well in HEE. You can never ENSURE the right numbers in the right place at the right time etc. When will they learn that workforce planning is an art not a science or a precise measuring instrument? HEE should welcome reports of this nature now that the £60m paid to Deloittes to develop a workforce planning tool does not work after 2 years of trying. The next IT scandal?
