All articles by End Game – Page 7
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Blogs
Wicked whispers
So called “pace setting” leaders – who, according to convention, get results but leave underlings quivering and broken in their wake - have fallen out of favour in the NHS. Well, most of them are still in post but they’re all desperately unfashionable post-Francis.At the recent chief nursing officer’s summit, ...
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Blogs
Doctor Bruce
The NHS and Doctor Who have much in common, as long-running national institutions committed to decent moral values. Both have seen much-loved figures struggle to cope with budget cuts and wonky backdrops over the decades, and both were revived by massive injections of cash in the noughties.So End Game ...
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Blogs
Power games
End Game has learned Sir David Nicholson has been broadening his cultural horizons as his period in charge of NHS England draws to a close.In recent weeks the big beast has apparently been absorbed in Game of Thrones, the glossy American fantasy TV series.The show has been described as “The ...
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Blogs
Taxi for none
A patient who recently had cause to visit a West Country hospital recently regaled a tale to health chiefs about how, when told they needed to visit another trust an hour down the road, they were initially pleased to learn a taxi would be called so their records could be ...
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Blogs
Don't believe everything you read...
Thumbing through the Department of Health response to Francis, End Game was shocked to learn that the government had lost all confidence in the General Medical Council and was proposing to transfer the medical revalidation programme to NHS England.“We are now at the right point for transferring the programme to ...
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Blogs
A chicken and horse situation
Whenever there’s a big policy announcement, End Game always gets deluged with preposterous responses from PRs keen to get a mention on these pages.This week the honours go to the union Unite, for the superb mixed metaphors contained in its verdict on the government’s response to the Francis inquiry.Head of ...
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Blogs
Profound disappointment
HSJ hacks were eagerly awaiting the final version of guidance on safe staffing levels from the chief nursing officer and the National Quality Board, despite obtaining a draft almost a week before publication.You see, the leaked version ended with a tantalising question from one anonymous editor: “Do we need to ...
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Blogs
Flailed hedges
It’s every NHS chief executive’s worst nightmare: becoming embroiled in a local scandal where vulnerable local residents have come to harm in an obscure bit of their organisation they probably haven’t thought about in while.Spare a thought then for the folk at Devon Partnership Trust. The Plymouth Herald reports that ...
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Blogs
Party time
Special End Game love goes to the comms firm which got in early with our first Christmas party invitation this year. In the seasonal spirit of goodwill, we won’t name it.Their bash takes place on 26 November – for those of you who are no good at maths, that’s very ...
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Blogs
Monitor-vember
End Game has little interest in charity, so don’t try it on.But we were forced admit that Monitor press officer Sonya Cullington brightened up what may otherwise have risked being a turgid morning press conference about the regulator’s review of walk-in centre closures by wearing a moustache.What japes! It was ...
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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
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
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
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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News
An early spring
NHS England’s ambitious plans to link patient information across all care settings and build a powerful database are laudable – but its communication about the care.data project, somewhat less so.Following GPs getting quite uppity about data being taken from records before they had been given a chance to warn their ...