Comment archive – Page 355
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CommentYour Humble Servant: health mogul
‘Family doctor to health mogul? It’s what my patients want for me’
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CommentNoel Plumridge: saying the unsayable
A section of the Health Bill that hopefully won’t often be invoked applies commercial insolvency law to foundation trusts. Section 113 places broke NHS hospitals under broadly the same winding-up regime as bankrupt companies. With falling tariff prices and rigid hospital cost structures, it will probably be tested before long.
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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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CommentBailouts, arbitration and postcode lotteries in London
The higher than expected workload of the capital’s acute trusts has now seen bailouts, at least one arbitration and an intra-London postcode lottery as primary care trusts struggle to cope.
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CommentMidlands 'yet to be won over by GP commissioning'
Some providers and commissioners in the Midlands are yet to be won over by the managerial talents of local GPs, it seems.
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CommentMichael White: opposition's political artillery fire rings hollow
A barrage of political artillery fire preceded Monday’s Commons second reading of the Health and Social Care Bill.
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CommentMedia Watch: Cameron and Lansley spring into action
The week kicked off with the health secretary and prime minister both going into action to defend the Health and Social Care Bill, ahead of its second reading in parliament on Monday.
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CommentPublic health tremors could unleash a monster
The double whammy of setting up a new national public health service (Public Health England) and returning responsibility for health improvement to local government is the most earth-shaking shift in public health since the abolition of medical officers of health in 1974.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the DH's fistful of figures
The Department of Health’s intent to maintain “grip” on NHS performance during 2011-12 is plain in the technical guidance to the NHS operating framework, issued in late January.
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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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CommentSuccessful healthcare mergers, like marriages, need a lot of hard work
Mergers and acquisitions of healthcare organisations in the developed world have become much more commonplace over the last decade.
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CommentThe Health Bill - rising to the challenge
The Health Bill sets out a vision for commissioning where innovative consortia of GPs take the lead in transforming our health and social care systems from being demand-led and provider-oriented to being patient-centred and outcomes-focused.
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CommentMichael White: like a civil war, the Health Bill has divided political families
Reading in last week’s HSJ how Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill will combine NHS decentralisation with powerful regulation from Whitehall, I was reminded of the label once attached to the Chinese communist party’s controlled introduction of capitalism: “market Stalinism”.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the prospective pinch on pensions
The government is doing all it can to reduce the value - or, in Treasury-speak, the “burden” - of public sector pensions.
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CommentMedia Watch: health bill reaction reiterates 'chorus of concern'
Perhaps the most noticeable thing about the national media’s coverage of the Health Bill was its apparent reluctance to really analyse the detail and instead focus on the responses from the various detractors among the unions and interested parties.
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Comment
The NHS Commissioning Board: biggest of the big spenders
The NHS Commissioning Board’s greatest influence on quality will be through how it splashes its cash
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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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CommentAn open letter from David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS
‘We will be showcasing what is brightest and best about the NHS and healthcare in the UK’
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CommentWhat happens if the health reforms work?
Anyone looking at the future of the government’s reforms is always interested in the question: “What happens if this doesn’t really work the way the government wants it to?”