All Comment articles – Page 291
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Comment
PCT rebrand will help end identity crisis
Public sector rebranding exercises are often seen as a costly and pointless distraction. But the proposal to rebrand primary care trusts - so Oldham PCT would become NHS Oldham, for example - makes a great deal of sense and does not need to cost money.
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Doubts over super-regulator
You do not mention an important question for the new super-regulator, writes Don Redding. Will it exist to serve patients and service users, and if so, how will it engage with them?
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Media Watch: drug maker under scrutiny
Being accused of 'cheating the NHS' is enough to give anyone heartburn. So bosses at Reckitt Benckiser, makers of indigestion treatment Gaviscon, may well have sought comfort with a taste of their own medicine this week.
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Use it or lose it: freedom from Whitehall is a two-way street
At last week's Primary Care Trust Network conference, the discussion with NHS chief executive David Nicholson revealed how hard it is for the centre to let go - especially when local health services won't release their grip on the Department of Health's hand.
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Malcolm Lowe-Lauri on the role of FT governors
Foundation trust governors can and should exercise their influence in the wider community to benefit service users
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Gill Morgan's great legacy
When we appointed Gill Morgan as chief executive of the NHS Confederation, we knew we were recruiting a very competent person - but we had no idea how widely valued and supremely effective she would become, writes Dianne Jeffrey
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GP hours - what a mess
Well, well, well. What a shock the National Audit Office has stated that GPs earn lots more money for working fewer hours. This is something that has been widely known for some time, writes Les Collister
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Guarantees are vital to ISTC success
Your piece on independent sector treatment centres, 'ISTC contract guarantees will saddle NHS with £187m bill', misses some fundamental points, writes David Worskett
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Political opening hours
As a medical student, I sat in on GP clinics and recall whole mornings with patients seeing their charming GP, chatting, then leaving the room reassured but without a new diagnosis or treatment, writes Jake Low-Beer
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Tackling violence
Despite the lack of a national standardised training scheme for dealing with violent patients, there are developments taking place in managing violence, writes Rob Grant
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AIDS: getting the word out to diverse communities
Educating immigrant groups about the AIDS epidemic in the UK must be treated as a key public health priority, as Hazel Barrett explains
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All Our Yesterdays
March 19, 1948, Public Assistance Journal and Health & Hospital ReviewJobs advertised this week: A resident nurse (female), who should be aged about 45 to 50, was required in an almshouse for men at Trinity Hospital, Greenwich. Applicants should have experience in home nursing and be used to treating elderly ...
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13 minutes to answer the phone? Life in the DH press office.
The Department of Health press office was mysteriously not answering the phones the day the BMA revealed that 92 per cent of GPs had voted in favour of the directed enhanced service on extended hours. It took HSJ journalists a bind boggling 13 minutes to get through. Perhaps they were ...
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Andrew Jones on extending primary care
As I opened the envelope from the British Medical Association, I found myself reflecting on a tumultuous few months. The envelope in question contained a justification of the GPs' committee's negotiating stance on extended hours and a form for voting on enhanced payments options.
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Premises buy-back is yet more ammo for anti-private brigade
Our revelation this week that the government made deals with the providers of the independent sector treatment centres to buy back their premises is another blow to a controversial policy. According to a document unearthed in the House of Commons library, the bill could reach £187m.
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Comment
'Robust' arthritis guidelines ignored
It came as little surprise that National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines for the care and treatment of osteoarthritis in adults were published to a fanfare of deafening silence from the press, writes Neil Betteridge
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Media Watch: nurses under attack
It seems it's fine to rant about lazy, greedy doctors, but dare to criticise nurses and all hell breaks loose.
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Occupational health doctors get people back to work
The British Medical Association is right to say that GPs alone cannot reduce employee absence due to ill health (news, page 8, 21 February). Occupational health doctors are specialists trained to work with employees and employers, to rehabilitate people back into work, writes Gordon Parker
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Michael White on health budgets
Opposition spokesmen as energetic as Andrew Lansley tend to respond to breaking news rather than to make it. It's the curse of opposition. When they're in the headlines it's usually bad news. The Tory health spokesman has been making headlines.
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Noel Plumridge on topping up NHS care
It is a long time since NHS care was unequivocally free. Over half a century ago, in the final days of a post-war Labour government that was proud to nationalise not just healthcare but the 'commanding heights' of the British economy - coal, steel, the railways - a certain outspoken ...