All articles by End Game – Page 12
-
Blogs
The Bristol stool tart
Readers who work in a clinically-focused setting will be familiar with the Bristol Stool Chart – a table which helps doctors and nurses understand digestive health by setting out seven distinct categories of human faeces.Sometimes a pictorial version can be seen on wards or in staff rooms.Well, presumably concerned that ...
-
Blogs
A touching message
It is gratifying to discover that the NHS in Warrington continues to nurture bold and experimental approaches to the English language.Regular readers may recall that the commissioning support unit for Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral last year won one of the Plain English Campaign’s Golden Bull awards – given for the ...
-
Blogs
The DH's epic quest
The government’s Care Bill “will give people peace of mind in hospital, care homes and their own homes”, trumpets the headline of a recent Department of Health press release.Excellent. End Game is all in favour of peace of mind. How are ministers going to impart it to the nation?Helpfully, a ...
-
Blogs
Little known FoI exemptions, from CSU Cassander
End Game’s esteemed colleague CSU Cassander identifies some little known exemptions to the pesky Freedom of Information Act
-
Blogs
Startling openness from NHS England
The latest “bulletin” for clinical commissioning groups out of the Quarry House Quango In the Sky may have been a little bit too open.NHS England’s deputy chief executive Dame Barbara Hakin, writing about patient safety, writes: “Dr Don Berwick, in his advisory role as chief inspector of hospitals, spoke at ...
-
Blogs
Big Brother is Monitoring you
Now that the NHS has been wrested from the cold dark hands of Whitehall civil servants (allegedly) the Department of Health’s surveillance function appears to have turned its evil eye to social media to keep track of what is going on out there.A few startled members of the NHS Twitteratti ...
-
Blogs
Worskett case scenario
End Game received an email a couple of weeks ago that filled us with admiration for the hard work and long hours put in by NHS Partners Network chief executive David Worskett, who represents the views of private providers to the NHS.It was the night of the Lords debate on ...
-
Blogs
Seddon joins the Downing Street inner Circle
End Game’s congratulations to Nick Seddon, who has been propelled from introspective think-tankery as the deputy director of Reform, to the heady position of advisor on health and social care policy to the prime minister.Mr Seddon – a former communications director for private health provider Circle – is media savvy.We ...
-
Blogs
Hunt performs first u-turn
Speaking to clinical commissioning group leaders at a recent conference in London, Jeremy Hunt admitted he had made at least one about-face since taking over the role of health secretary.It turned out that, en route to the Tottenham Court Road venue, he’d gone in the wrong door and found himself ...
-
Blogs
Politics and the English language
End Game has been a fan of minister for laughs Anna Soubry maverick style ever since she arrived at Richmond House.She’s a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm and she’s peppered her latest interview with hearty profanity.Limbering up, she declared a builder’s sign to be “fucking useless” ...
-
Blogs
Absurdism and the CSU project
End Game will not hear it said that the new NHS commissioning system is exactly the same as the old one, except with less money and a few doctors getting in the way for the first year or so.Commissioning support units, for example, are nothing like anything that existed in ...
-
Blogs
The new culture of openness in action
End Game was delighted to discover that as part of NHS England’s ongoing commitment to transparency, one of its senior managers has apparently started her own blog.It comes from Samantha Riley, the organisation’s director of insight. Title: “Samantha Riley’s Insight Blog (Which is Hopefully Insightful!)”Yes, hopefully it is.Actually, End Game ...
-
Blogs
Wicked whispers
Which outspoken advocate of accurate data turned up late to a seminar recently because they wrote down the wrong time?End Game would love to tell you, but the event was held under solemn Chatham House rule conditions.
-
Blogs
My trusty little revenue raiser
End Game is all for NHS hospitals diversifying as the squeeze on their traditional sources of income continues, but we’re starting to wonder just how far this is going to go.In a flurry of entrepreneurialism, Salisbury Foundation Trust has launched a line of moisturising creams, based on one used by ...
-
Blogs
Virtual public relations
Being a web-savvy lot, End Game readers will have heard of Second Life, the online role-playing game that was big in the giddy, wasteful days before the recession.For those who were doing other things, we will explain. The game allowed players to design an outlandish character (or “avatar”) and stroll ...
-
Blogs
NHS England's self fulfilling policy
We at End Game know you’re terribly busy and don’t always have as much time as you would like to leaf through the latest 25 page drone-fest from NHS England.So we do it for you – and we were pleasantly surprised to find a little light relief tucked away in ...
-
Blogs
The Facebook metric
It’s hard to know if health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s performance is best assessed by his level of popularity, or whether his preferred measure of success is how obscure he can remain by keeping the NHS out of the news.If the latter is best, he seems to be doing very well ...
-
Blogs
Jeremy Hunt's first hand NHS experience
All the old cynics who dismissed ministers’ plans to spend time working on the NHS front line as a cheap and stupid publicity stunt were confounded this week by Jeremy Hunt.Reflecting on the time he spent on an accident and emergency department in Watford, the health secretary noted the “dramatic” ...
-
Blogs
Dogged display from Peedell poodle
The National Health Action Party, set up in response to last year’s Health Act, is going from strength to strength, End Game is pleased to report.First came their stunning by election performance in Eastleigh in February, where they won 392 votes, way out in front of the rest of the ...
-
Blogs
Nightmare on Harley Street
Unedifying news reaches End Game from Harley Street.It appears that the illustrious London thoroughfare has been the site of some rather unsavoury discoveries. The street is home to an array of medical clinics famous for charging loads of money to rich people who are unable to confront their own mortality ...