All Acute care articles – Page 461

  • News

    Gateshead Health foundation trust: safety check on blood

    2007-01-08T00:00:00Z

    Mismatching blood in transfusion operations can be deadly. So when a national audit revealed some worrying gaps in safety measures, Gateshead Health foundation trust was quick to respond

  • HSJ Knowledge

    Helen Bevan on transformational learning

    2007-01-08T00:00:00Z

    Every so often, I come across research or evidence that gives me profound insight into why things happen the way they do. I experienced just such an epiphany in December, when I led a workshop on transformational learning at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Forum, the largest healthcare improvement gathering ...

  • News

    Reconfiguration could save £1bn a year

    2007-01-08T00:00:00Z

    Patients who stay in hospital longer than necessary are using 13,000 extra NHS beds every year, a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research has said. This could be slashed by providing specialist services in fewer places and transferring more care outside hospitals.Download the full report here

  • News

    Inpatient waiting times fall

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    The number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks for inpatient treatment in England fell by 22,500 from October to November 2006. Latest waiting time figures published by the Department of Health show that the median waiting time at the end of November was 6.9 weeks, with just 212 people ...

  • News

    Breast cancer drug Herceptin 'prolongs life'

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Researchers from the Royal Marsden Hospital in London have confirmed that giving Herceptin to women with certain types of breast cancer does prolong their lives. The study, published in The Lancet, followed women for two years after treatment and found a 2.7 per cent ...

  • News

    Heart disease deaths down 35 per cent

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Investment and reform in services to tackle coronary heart disease is saving lives, says a progress report on implementing the national service framework for CHD today. Shaping the Futuresays premature deaths from CHD are down 35.9 per cent since 1996, on course to meet ...

  • News

    £100m to help increase NHS energy efficiency

    2007-01-05T00:00:00Z

    Health minister Andy Burnham has announced £100m funding to help NHS trusts meet their energy efficiency targets. Seven out of 10 are already on track, he said, but more should be done to reduce carbon emissions and deliver savings that will be ploughed back into patient care.For more information click ...

  • News

    New grade: BMA backlash expected

    2007-01-04T08:00:00Z

    Government proposals to reduce a glut of over 3,000 consultants by creating a sub-consultant grade will be 'bitterly opposed' by the British Medical Association, the draft workforce strategy warns.

  • News

    DoH plans mark rewriting of relationship with professions

    2007-01-04T00:00:00Z

    If one image of the dole queue helped finish off Labour in 1979, just imagine what might happen if the jobless wore white coats. The prospect of making large numbers of consultant posts redundant is one rarely articulated in public. That changes this week with HSJrevealing ...

  • News

    Plans for consultants 'absurd', says BMA

    2007-01-04T00:00:00Z

    British Medical Association consultants committee chair Dr Jonathan Fielden has criticised the Department of Health’s draft pay and workforce documents, revealed in HSJtoday. He said: ‘It is absurd to suggest that the NHS in England needs fewer hospital consultants. ‘To suggest that there should be fewer consultants, and of a ...

  • News

    High take-up for optician training

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    More than 90 per cent of opticians met the requirement for continuing education and training (CET) by the 31 December 2006 deadline.Final figures for the first cycle released by the General Optical Council show that 95 per cent of optometrists, 89 per cent of dispensing opticians and 86 per cent ...

  • News

    Sir Liam demands faster progress on safety

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    Chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson has called for more speed in improving patient safety in his newsletter published today.Although Sir Liam praised a 'greater awareness among clinicians, managers and policymakers that patients are not as safe as they should be', he said that the pace of change had ...

  • News

    Stomach pain tops Christmas complaints

    2007-01-03T00:00:00Z

    Stomach and jaw pain dominated calls to telephone helpline NHS Direct over Christmas, statistics show.Vomiting, toothache and diarrhoea were also among the top 10 reasons for calling the helpline in England.Over the whole of 2006 the service received around 7 million calls, while during the Christmas period there were a ...

  • Comment

    Martin Pearson on warm glows and icy winds

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    'Directors and managers of today's organisations need to recognise that they are there not only to create cost-efficient and financially successful health businesses but also to lead services in a way that saves the world from further degradation and climate chaos'

  • News

    Health figures honoured

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    Christie Hospital trust chair Joan Higgins has been made a DBE in the New Year Honours list. NHS Confederation chair Peter Mount, former Greater Manchester strategic health authority chief executive Neil Goodwin, Royal College of Nursing president Roswyn Hakesley-Brown and health economist Anne Mills have been made CBEs.To see the ...

  • News

    2007 a make or break year for NHS, says think tank

    2007-01-02T00:00:00Z

    A failure to tackle rising costs and to invest in modern services means that 2007 is a make or break year for the NHS, according to a report by think tank Reform. The report says the service's long-term strength has been sapped by the lack of an underpinning costed reform ...

  • Comment

    Simon Stevens on powering reforms

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Almost everywhere you look, it is possible to see the NHS equivalent of electricity transmission losses

  • News

    Radiation overdose triggers probe

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Immediate inspections of Scotland's five cancer radiotherapy centres will be held after a report into a radiation overdose found a catalogue of failings.

  • News

    Speak out

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    'Choice is more complicated for cancer care than for a single surgical operation'

  • News

    MPs to probe IT programme

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    MPs on the Commons health select committee are set to investigate the NHS IT programme later this year in response to a letter from 23 computer experts. MPs will examine the national programme and decide whether there is a need for an independent audit.