All articles by Alastair McLellan – Page 36
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LeaderLocal performance is the key to the future of the NHS
Since May the spotlight has been resolutely on changes in national health policy. The entry of the Health Bill into Parliament marks the beginning of the end of that phase. What will matter increasingly is how the NHS at a local level deals with the twin challenge of reform and ...
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LeaderIf accountability counts, its value must be recognised
Should we worry that some primary care trust chief executives who are offered more junior roles in PCT clusters, losing their accountable officer status in the process, cannot opt for redundancy instead?
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LeaderIs a narrative for complex health reform impossible?
Two snapshots from a day in the life of one A Lansley, health secretary.
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LeaderThe NHS might be being rewired, but its electricity runs to much the same effect
The Health Bill has set a new record as the largest piece of NHS legislation ever tabled. Health secretary Andrew Lansley described it as “evolutionary” – the mind boggles at what he would consider “revolutionary”.
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Leader‘Brave’ Sir David stresses freedoms and delivery
As the NHS drowns in reform, the danger of distraction grows.
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NewsCommissioning board should run large scale 'experiments' - UnitedHealth head
The NHS Commissioning Board should run a series of large scale “experiments” designed to test solutions to the growing burden of chronic disease, UnitedHealth’s president of global health Simon Stevens claimed this week. Successful programmes should be made “part of the NHS benefits package”.
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LeaderPrivate sector takeover not as imminent as some may have it
The week began with a media feeding frenzy around the government’s NHS reforms created by the imminent publication of the health bill. Dire warnings were ten a penny, while the PM adopted a Thatcherite “no alternative” stance.
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Leader'Conspiracy of silence hides true extent of poor GP performance'
Andrew Lansley claims primary care trusts had to be abolished because they failed to commission effectively - an arguable accusation.
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Leader'Now with 25pc more reason to believe'
“Hope is a key differentiator between those NHS organisations that succeed and those that don’t,” says the NHS Institute’s Helen Bevan. She adds, “the driving force of hope is belief” - belief that things can be improved.
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LeaderNicholson is master of all he surveys after surprise decision
Did you declare yourself unsurprised by the appointment of Sir David Nicholson as the first chief executive of the NHS commissioning board just before Christmas? Then you were either fibbing or Andrew Lansley.
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Leader'Lansley may play down his reforms' radicalism, but this does not involve big changes to his plans'
“Some have argued Liberating the NHS constitutes an unwise distraction from the quality and productivity challenge facing the NHS.
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LeaderBattleship Lansley ploughs on through the fog of reform
HSJ readers will be familiar with the tensions inherent in the government’s reforms which are now beginning to leak into the public ken.
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LeaderWhite paper let down by speedy schedule
The public health white paper is something of a an anticlimax. Government plans for improving the country’s wellbeing may well prove to be significant, but we will have to wait until well into 2011 to find out.
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LeaderCircle’s success at Hinchingbrooke is more likely to be cultural than commercial
What will we learn from private provider Circle’s success in becoming the preferred and only bidder for the contract to manage Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust?
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LeaderGPs and government battle for custody of white paper reforms
The struggle for the soul of the reforms is intensifying as the outline shape of the new landscape clarifies.
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NewsCommissioning board chief exec not in post until October
The chair and the chief executive of the proposed independent NHS commissioning board are unlikely to take up their roles until autumn next year, HSJ understands.
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LeaderWhat Dorrell says matters, and his message to the NHS is clear
House of Commons health committee chair Stephen Dorrell made an electrifying intervention into the NHS reform debate last Thursday.
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LeaderAn American Dream we should believe in
The NHS too often looks to the US for inspiration, encouraged by a shared language and the size of the American healthcare system.
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LeaderLansley accelerates his plans as Labour’s opposition falters
The government’s reforms are picking up pace.
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LeaderThe new mortality indicator suffers from mixed messages
The debate over how hospital mortality should be measured and whether those measures reveal anything useful has rumbled on for the last decade.