All articles by End Game – Page 13
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Blogs
After the transition, the anticlimax
The transition is complete – primary care trusts and strategic health authorities are dead, making way for a clinically led insurgency that will sweep through the NHS like a wildfire of transparency, patient-centredness and integrated working.So get ready! Or, if you live in Wigan, don’t.The town’s new commissioning group tweeted ...
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Blogs
A picture is worth 1,000 hours of consultation
End Game is fully supportive of the creative arts, and loves it when complex health policy is expressed in simple, visually appealing forms.So in theory we full approve of the whimsical cartoons that the Healthier Together reconfiguration programme’s Twitter account uses for its background.The programme is reviewing hospital services across ...
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Blogs
NHS England's Twitter handle tangle
Jubilation rang out from Quarry House in the week before Easter as the government announced (curiously, in its response to the Francis report), that the NHS Commissioning Board would be allowed to drop its yawn-inducing title and be known henceforth as NHS England.Those running the self-described “biggest quango in the ...
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Blogs
Health policy for young people
The long standing complaint that the central management of the NHS is no good at talking to ordinary people can finally be banished forever, End Game is thrilled to report.Someone has invented a learning tool that turns civil servant speak into young person speak.You type a web address into www.gizoogle.net ...
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Blogs
Tee tweets cockadoodledoo
It is a little known fact about Matt Tee – the NHS Confederation’s soon to be chief operating officer – that he was once interviewed by David Frost as a child.Mr Tee, the former all-sorts-of-things in and around the NHS and current boss of something called “Reputate”, took to Twitter ...
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Blogs
Dr Dan's achievement map
Since a disastrous appearance at Unite’s health visitor conference and THAT flu jab photo back in November, things have been pretty quiet from junior health minster Dan Poulter.Aside from continuing to practice part time as a medical doctor, health policy fans might be wondering what the MP for Central Suffolk ...
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Blogs
Pestilence and the art of public relations
Heatherwood and Wexham Park Foundation Trust’s public relations people got in touch today to inform us that the trust “takes the issue of pest control very seriously”. Fantastic! Because so many other trusts treat pestilence as a great big giggle.“Any large organisation, including hospitals, will experience infestations on occasions, and, ...
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Blogs
Supporting failure
The tendency to support failure: A common theme in the health service’s ritual hand wringing about why it fails to stimulate radical changes and new market entrants. It was one inevitably raised at the Healthcare Innovation Expo this week, the bonanza of idea exchanging - and product flogging - held ...
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Blogs
Questionable aroma
Hearty End Game congratulations go to the team of volunteers who achieved a “professional relaxation qualification” via George Eliot Hospitals Trust.A graduation ceremony took place in February to recognise the team, who work on the trust’s Oasis Project, all of whom received an A grade in the diploma assessments.The project ...
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Blogs
Too many chiefs
At the excellent health policy wonkathon (TM: Dr Phil Hammond) that is the Nuffield Trust summit, talk turned to the impending arrival of a chief inspector of hospitals.As night follows day, the delegates then began debating what other areas of the service needed a chief inspector and which members of ...
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Blogs
Double fantasy
End Game has come across a rather confusing account of subversive activity on the site of Lewisham Hospital.The hospital has been the subject of intense debate this year due to plans to downgrade its facilities to help solve financial troubles at neighbouring South London Healthcare Trust.Weirdly named local paper the ...
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Blogs
How PR works
It feels like a long time since we had a horrendously opportunistic press release to marvel at.Maybe the public relations industry is getting the hang of judging the boundaries of taste, or perhaps we’re getting better at hitting “block sender”.Anyway, the drought is over. Within a couple of hours of ...
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Blogs
Little known FoI exemptions, from CSU Cassander
This is the latest installment in End Game’s occasional series, in which the ever-resourceful CSU Cassander identifies some little known exemptions to the pesky Freedom of Information Act.Section 66: Archives hauntedSection 71: Information eaten by catsSection 75: NHS will be privatised from 1 AprilSection 84: We’ve always been at war ...
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Blogs
Tory press caught napping
A special End Game hat tip goes to Jayne Morris today, for causing a media ruckus with some harmlessly irrelevant workplace tips.Both the Daily Mail and theDaily Telegraph carried a story this morning referring to Ms Morris as an “NHS ‘life coach’”, and quoting her as saying workers should have ...
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Blogs
Howe's that
The latest summary of health ministers’ meetings and hospitality – covering July to September 2012 – emerged from the Richmond House fortress last week.
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Blogs
Little known FoI exemptions, from CSU Cassander
Fed up answering troublesome Freedom of Information requests? Worried that the old “commercial confidentiality” excuse is wearing a bit thin? Don’t worry - help is at hand. In this new occasional series, CSU Cassander points you towards some little known exemptions that can help you get on with your job ...
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Blogs
Bunga-blunder
Twitter has provided a little nugget of proof that the old order of strategic health authorities – among other things – is now disintegrating in real time before our eyes.Tweeting from a Reform event on “healthy innovation”, Robert Harris said he had asked the chief executive of private provider and ...
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Blogs
The Soubry channel
It’s the Friday before the Oscars which can only mean one thing: another moving picture from those prolific film makers at Richmond House.Last week we were treated to a film about any qualified provider. This week health minister Anna Soubry shows off the skills which once landed her a gig ...
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Blogs
Hospital inflicted virus
University Hospital of South Manchester Foundation Trust have been so overwhelmed by the positive feedback they’ve had from patients that they felt moved to produce a video about it.“Viral video launch”, a press release proclaims. End Game humbly submits that might be a little presumptuous, since it’s not up to ...