All articles by End Game – Page 8
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Blogs
Doctors do it best
Word reaches End Game of an opulent evening out hosted by the Royal College of Physicians.The “Harveian Oration and dinner” is an annual feast to celebrate the memory of the college’s 17th century benefactor Dr William Harvey. Guests are treated to a look inside the RCP’s cubist-influenced headquarters, and a ...
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Blogs
Everybody hates a tourist
End Game was wearied to hear of the Department of Health’s latest publicity wheeze, which this time involved coming up with a new number to do with health tourism (£2bn, except really it’s £300m max) and acting all tough and resolute about making that number smaller in the future.We were ...
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Blogs
Customer added value
Word reaches End Game of a happy example of NHS leaders recognising that the wider public is a valuable source of information.An NHS England case officer had received a somewhat baffling request for information from a member of the public about whether retired GPs are able to work in private ...
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Blogs
Horror movie
Oh good, an NHS trust has produced a video in an attempt to be funny while imparting an important but humdrum message.You may remember last year Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust had a hit with their flu fighters campaign video, which featured a normal bloke called Phil getting a hero’s ...
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Blogs
Campaigning journalism
End Game is delighted to trumpet an unequivocal campaigning journalism win!Last week we welcomed Incisive Health into health policy world. The new organisation, spun out of MHP Health Mandate, is led by three well known health policy luminaries including Health and Social Care Bill, aka Bill Morgan, End Game’s favourite ...
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Blogs
Dive! Dive! Dive!
A feat for fans of convoluted or plain worrying metaphors at this year’s Foundation Trust Network conference.Jeremy Hunt urged people to join the boards of troubled NHS organisations by citing the advert the explorer Shackleton is supposed to have placed in The Times.You know, the one with reference to danger, ...
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Blogs
Laser guided surgery
End Game was excited to read of a clever new cancer intervention being pioneered by University Hospital Birmingham.It’s called “CyberKnife”, but less scary than that sounds because it is actually a tiny beam of radiotherapy, and not a grudge-bearing robot with a blade.According to the blurb, “it uses technology similar ...
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Blogs
Monitor's new home
Monitor! Dynamic, inspiring and unleashing the invisible golden hand of the market into fusty old healthcare!End Game’s favourite disruptive innovators have now largely moved from boring, civil servant-ridden Westminster to energetic, mould-breaking Waterloo.Round the back of the Old Vic and opposite a soup kitchen on Webber Street, since you ask.But ...
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Blogs
'Health and social care' Bill
We learn of tectonic movements in the exciting world of healthcare public affairs.Three consultants who developed and have recently left the successful MHP Health Mandate - Mike Birtwistle, Bill Morgan and Sarah Winstone – have formally launched their start-up rival, called Incisive Health.If Mr Morgan’s name rings a bell, he ...
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Blogs
Dirty work
NHS England chair Sir Malcolm Grant possesses many of the characteristics which allowed former BBC presenter Des Lynam to be widely viewed as the suavest man in public life for a good couple of decades.He’s well groomed, sports a dashing ‘tache and always shows a good half an inch of ...
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Blogs
Minister for innuendo
End Game was saddened – well, ruddy gutted if we’re honest – to learn of the departure of Anna Soubry from our lives.After just a year of saying whatever came into her head about public health, prime minister David Cameron was so impressed that he moved her to the even ...
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Blogs
He likes to boogie
It sounds like Sir Malcolm Grant’s leaving bash, to mark his departure as University College London provost, was a night to remember.Local hacks reported that the NHS England chair spent the evening last June boogieing to Bjorn Again – the world’s premier Abba tribute band. They were supported by some ...
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Blogs
Blackberry Cumberlege
End Game was a little bit bemused to discover that Baroness Cumberlege – the former Tory health minister who holds paid positions at the King’s Fund, KPMG and PWC – prefers blackberries to Black History Month.Bear with us, we realise that reads oddly. We were not aware that you had ...
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Blogs
Hunt for answers
Following his 10 minute row with pugnacious former Care Quality Commission chair Baroness Young at a Conservative conference fringe event, End Game could have forgiven Jeremy Hunt for going back to a darkened hotel room for a large brandy and a lie down.But credit where credit’s due, the health secretary ...
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Blogs
Lights, camera, cliche
Drumming up support for worthy causes is a good thing – but that doesn’t give PRs carte blanche to write complete twaddle.The press release promoting the 75th birthday of the British Polio Fellowship is a case in point.“Lights, camera, Polio, action!” parped the headline on the release which went on ...
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Blogs
Running prize
End Game was delighted to see the famous runner Clive Peedell at the recent HSJ Efficiency Awards in London.He was being honoured with a gong for devising a time-saving route from Nye Bevan’s birthplace to Jeremy Hunt’s constituency (or something). Inevitably, the co-leader of the National Health Action Party, who ...
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Blogs
Stock punishment
We are pleased to report that Heatherwood Hospital’s fete went brilliantly and everyone had a jolly nice time - including Heatherwood and Wexham Park Foundation Trust chief executive Philippa Slinger.This was despite her being put in the stocks and pelted with wet sponges.End Game has decided not to worry about ...
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Blogs
Revolutionary measures
NHS England last week trumpeted that it had “launched a package of revolutionary measures to ensure the voices of patients, their carers and the public are at the centre of healthcare services”.“Transforming participation in health and care,” the media release continued, “is online guidance to commissioners that aims to put ...
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Blogs
MP for barnet
Never let it be said that politicians don’t do anything during their endless summer breaks. Those attending the Liberal Democrat conference noticed that care services minister Norman Lamb has been very busy in recent weeks growing his barnet.Regular readers will doubtless remember that about a year ago End Game compared ...
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Blogs
Bottomley's legacy
End Game has recently returned from the Labour Party conference in Brighton, where Andy Burnham wasn’t the only former health secretary exercising the comrades.Virginia Bottomley, who served as John Major’s health secretary during the 1990s, got a number of mentions. Current Richmond House incumbent Jeremy Hunt was variously described by ...