All articles by Alastair McLellan
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NewsGiving mayors NHS role ‘will challenge founding principle’
The government is launching an experiment that will pitch local government and NHS-led models against each other to see which is the most effective in improving a population’s health and wellbeing, Wes Streeting has told HSJ.
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NewsCEOs of struggling trusts are worth their salaries, says health secretary
Wes Streeting has defended the salaries paid to chief executives of struggling trusts, arguing they could earn “a lot more” if they chose.
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NewsStreeting: ICBs should ‘take a bit longer’ to get reorganisation right
The health secretary has admitted the rationalising and refocusing of integrated care boards has not gone smoothly, and that “taking a bit longer to get it right [is] a good thing” where required.
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NewsNational trust recovery programme reset after three weeks
Five trusts have been included in a new “intensive recovery programme” which is expected to replace a “national provider improvement programme” launched just weeks ago.
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LeaderThe NHS must invest in AI before ‘more doctors and nurses’
Almost every British political party with the tiniest chance of getting anywhere near power has pledged to employ “more doctors and nurses” should they be elected – and they mostly followed through.
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LeaderDo ICBs have a future?
To which question, many of you will respond “of course” and point to the repeated statements by ministers and national leaders that integrated care boards have a vital role to play.
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LeaderThe Streeting/Milburn era must end to give the NHS a fresh start
It has now been exactly a year since Labour began its reform of the NHS, and the succeeding months have proved a poor advert for its central idea of giving government more control over the service.
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LeaderThe NHS is too reliant on resident doctors
As the dust settled on the latest resident doctors strike, a group of medical and managerial senior executives met to review how their London acute trust had fared.
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CommentThe 10 best HSJ comment pieces of 2025
HSJ published more than 150 comment pieces from external contributors this year. These are chosen – and occasionally commissioned – by me
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LeaderWho should be the next chief executive of the NHS?
Sir Jim Mackey formally signed on as the “transition chief executive” of NHS England earlier this year. His job was three-fold: to stabilise the service’s finances, to speed up the elective recovery and to help ease operational control of the NHS back into the Department of Health after its 13-year ...
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NewsBMA says trusts must cancel electives if they want help during strike
The British Medical Association has said it will not let striking doctors help under-pressure trusts unless they have already cancelled elective activity and “incentivised” other medics to cover.
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NewsNHSE tells trusts to deliver 95% of planned activity during doctors’ strike
Trusts should deliver at least 95 per cent of planned elective activity during the forthcoming five-day resident doctor’s strike, according to NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey.
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NewsNHSE push for FDP adoption sparks concern over ‘costs and benefits’
NHS England has stepped up its campaign to get trusts and integrated care boards to use the national Federated Data Platform, sparking further concerns from technology leaders that the centre is overriding the wishes of local organisations.
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NewsNHS’s minority ethnic leaders, finally, have real power in their hands
The snowy white peaks of healthcare leadership are at last beginning to show significant signs of diversity.
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LeaderUsing the patient to smash the NHS begging bowl
This government’s reform of the NHS is best understood as a drive to reconfigure the economics of the public sector – which is increasingly dominated by healthcare spending. This will give the campaign of change a distinctly different flavour to the recovery mission Labour undertook during the first decade of ...
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LeaderThe government will pay for its mistreatment of ICB and NHSE staff
If you are a) an NHS employee who works as a commissioner or in a system role, and b) have been only moderately unlucky, you might have spent a good part of the past 15 years wondering if you would still have a job in a few months’ time, inundated ...
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LeaderWhat the centre really expects of ICBs, trusts and regions in 2026
If HSJ were in a betting mood, we would lay a large sum on the re-organisation of integrated care boards stretching on well into 2026-27.
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NewsExclusive: Mackey’s trust gets league table upgrade after last-minute data correction
The trust led by NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey was promoted from the third to the second “segment” of the new provider league table following a last-minute correction to one of the data points which underpin the rankings, HSJ can reveal.
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NewsNHSE now ‘treating us like grown-ups’ say leading trust CEOs
A group of the country’s leading trust chief executives have praised the approach taken by the new NHS England leadership but have warned that unrealistic expectations about financial performance may sour the relationship.
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NewsTrust CEOs ‘unshackled’ by reduction in ICB role
Leading trust CEOs have welcomed the greater role given to providers in the wake of the decision to narrow the focus of integrated care boards but questioned whether ICBs have a long-term role.