All Health Service Journal articles in Blogs
View all stories from this issue.
-
Blogs
Competence or expertise – you choose, if you have a choice
Workforce planning is an ambiguous art made yet more ambiguous when set on a national scale with its unconnected, conflicting and changing priorities – still, we try.
-
Blogs
Death in Swaziland
Death is a funny thing. In almost four years as a performance manager and information manager in the NHS, I never really experienced death.
-
BlogsWhat went wrong at Mid Staffs?
Yet again we have a badly under-performing hospital, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of, mainly elderly, patients.
-
BlogsBack in the saddle
Far be it from me to tell Babs and Cynth how to run their new gaff, but if there’s one baby they don’t want to throw out with the HCC/CSCI merger bathwater it’s that CSCI website.
-
BlogsSurviving another recession
Just as trees can be aged by their rings, people can now be aged by how many recessions they have survived.
-
BlogsTreasury tricks and accountancy acronyms
I have a strange fascination with NHS accountancy. I don’t know whether it’s the edge it gives me over my colleagues every time we play NHS acronym bingo (their PBCs and WCCs are nothing to my IFRICs and EBITDAs) or just the opportunity to try and talk sagely about the ...
-
BlogsPre-Budget predictions
It’s dangerous I know, but I’m going to stick my neck out and make my Big Budget Prediction for 2009: Alistair Darling will use the term “confidence”, oh, let’s say, at least five times. Hmm, maybe I should hedge this a bit. Alistair Darling, or someone else from government, or ...
-
Blogs
Real terms cuts of 2.3% a year from 2011 onwards?
Just got back from the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ annual post-budget briefing. Scary stuff… They reckon real terms cuts of 2.3% a year are looming
-
Blogs
The blood and guts of cuts
How well will managers cope with a spending cut? Hardly any NHS managers have been around long enough to experience government imposed cuts like this before.
-
Blogs
Why did Rose Gibb lose?
There is considerable surprise at the high court ruling against Rose Gibb in her claim for breach of contract.
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: NHS governance 'reduced to paper chase' - Audit Commission
Many NHS trust board members cannot be sure whether or not their hospital is operating within the law, the Audit Commission has found.
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: PCT poll backs Alan Johnson on swine flu pandemic
NHS organisations are backing up health secretary Alan Johnson’s assertion this week that the UK is one of the countries most prepared to deal with a flu pandemic.As cases of swine flu were confirmed in the UK, an HSJ straw poll of 15 primary care trusts this week revealed that, ...
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: Monitor appoints new chief and chair to 'challenged' foundation trust
A foundation trust has been assigned a new chief executive by Monitor for the second time in eight months.The regulator has appointed Kirsty Matthews as interim chief of the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases foundation trust, in Bath, it announced yesterday.The regulator hired Ms Matthews as interim chair of ...
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: Confed proposes peer review to avoid Mid Staffordshire repeat
The NHS Confederation has called on hospital trusts to invite others trusts’ directors to inspect their services to help prevent failures such as those at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust.The confederation has proposed a series of steps that should be take voluntarily in response to ...
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: DH publishes criteria for defining failure
NHS providers with even small deficits or which get their financial forecasting wrong risk being placed “under review” through the Department of Health’s new criteria for its failure regime.The regime – published last year and now part of the Health Bill currently going through Parliament – sets out how a ...
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: NHS culture stifling innovation, Confed warns
The NHS is stifling innovation through an organisational culture that places barriers in the way of staff with good ideas, the NHS Confederation has warned.In a report timed to coincide with the launch by Lord Darzi of a £220m fund to boost innovation in the health service, the confederation said ...
-
Blogs
NHS news blog: Dental surgeries could extend opening hours
Primary care trusts are to begin a £150m procurement process which could see dental surgeries opening outside normal hours.National director for GP and dentistry access Mike Warburton said contracts for new work should focus on quality and access rather than activity and consider extended hours. PCTs would decide what hours ...