All Health Service Journal articles in Blogs – Page 9
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Blogs
Your 18 week waits: September 2013 data
Interactive maps of local NHS waits around England, showing the pressures and one year waits, with links to all the detail by organisation.
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Blogs
The menace of the salami slice
The image of salami slicing has long haunted public servants as they have seen their budgets whittled down over successive years.However, last week’s HSJ Summit event was treated to a new metaphor, that of sausage making. End Game was slightly baffled at the time but we believe it to have ...
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Blogs
Waiting times steady in September
The position on English waiting times remained steady in September. But nearly half the country’s one year waiters were reported at just one hospital.
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Blogs
Stony silence
Savings plans! Contentious stuff! What do we cut, sorry, do more efficiently?Each year HSJ asks each of the 140 general hospital trusts in England about the size and shape of their savings programme.What, then, are we to make of our interactions with one trust that will remain nameless (not really, ...
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Blogs
Why do we keep paying off the same senior managers?
Making managers redundant over and over again is costing the NHS a fortune
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Blogs
Gallic abstraction
Few NHS England board members are better versed in the pithy soundbite than the exuberant Tim Kelsey.Getting your message across to Fleet Street means talking in simple, grandiose terms and repeating your main points in case the dozy journos are a bit hungover and slow on the uptake, as Mr ...
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Blogs
Vote of confidence
Complaints, as we all know, are taken extremely seriously in the NHS as they are a valuable and cherished source of information from the people who matter most.So we were intrigued to read the Department of Health’s latest report on complaints it has dealt with over the past few years.In ...
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Blogs
Absolute gibberish
End Game will normally rush to defend ministers against accusations that they inhabit a mad parallel universe, but we did have to concede the carpers might have a point when we read a recent Department of Health diary of forthcoming press events.There were the usual speeches at worthy events, but ...
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Blogs
Halloween is over, so stop the witch hunt
Calls to introduce laws for prosecuting people for failing to report abuses misses the point – people in positions of authority are not being held accountable for cover-ups.
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Blogs
The C word
End Game realises that, broadly speaking, it is out of order to make observations about very successful women by reference to their husbands – or to intrude into family life (Press Complaints Commission code point 3, for media regulation fans).But we do feel the need to highlight one tweet by ...
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Blogs
Change the 'delay, deny, defend' complaints culture
A new report following the failings of Mid Staffs should force NHS organisations to confront patient complaints
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Blogs
Rite of passage
Congratulations to Julian Hartley, formerly of the NHS Improving Quality parish, on getting a real job as chief executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, where he began work on 14 October.As if the trust’s challenges – ahem, opportunities – were not sufficient, Mr Hartley received a baptism of fire when, ...
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BlogsParliamentary cycle
End Game was pleased to see care and support minister Norman Lamb having such a lovely time in his constituency, modelling this weird bike/cross trainer hybrid.But we couldn’t help but notice that the machine was static. Should we take pedalling furiously and going absolutely nowhere as a visual metaphor for ...
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Blogs
News you can confuse
The appointment of Simon Stevens as NHS England chief executive was greeted with near-ubiquitous ecstasy in health policy world.However the mainstream media was more circumspect, perhaps unsure as to whether to paint him as modernising visionary or private sector villain.Thank goodness then for Top News, the international English language service, ...
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Blogs
War on Jargon
This column’s protracted War on Jargon has often felt like a futile battle.But great warriors thrive in the face of adversity and evidence this week that new NHS “partner” organisations were introducing their own management piffle to our already linguistically sullied sector has only strengthened our resolve. The latest crime ...
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BlogsMan management is a funny old game
Managing conflict in the team and the art of getting rid of those who just won’t play ball
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Blogs
Do the CQC and Monitor understand 18 week waits?
The regualtors are applying the target in ways that deter hospitals from treating long waiting patients. Let’s hear the reasons why.
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Blogs
Doctors do it best
Word reaches End Game of an opulent evening out hosted by the Royal College of Physicians.The “Harveian Oration and dinner” is an annual feast to celebrate the memory of the college’s 17th century benefactor Dr William Harvey. Guests are treated to a look inside the RCP’s cubist-influenced headquarters, and a ...
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Blogs
Everybody hates a tourist
End Game was wearied to hear of the Department of Health’s latest publicity wheeze, which this time involved coming up with a new number to do with health tourism (£2bn, except really it’s £300m max) and acting all tough and resolute about making that number smaller in the future.We were ...
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Blogs
Customer added value
Word reaches End Game of a happy example of NHS leaders recognising that the wider public is a valuable source of information.An NHS England case officer had received a somewhat baffling request for information from a member of the public about whether retired GPs are able to work in private ...