External contributors – Page 215
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CommentSouth West aiming to take harder line on 'urgent' care
No more Mr Nice Guy for patients turning up without bona fide conditions. That is the message coming from Weston Area Health Trust, following the recent opening of their nice shiny new accident and emergency department.
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CommentMedia Watch: Cameron's speech grabs headlines, but offers little more
The papers all had a bit to say ahead of prime minister David Cameron’s speech about how reforming the NHS is apparently the only way to save it.
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CommentCommissioning debate centres on the South
NHS Surrey this month found itself at the centre of the debate on commissioning reform.
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CommentMichael White: who's the one to watch?
I must admit that the first thing I looked for in Monday’s newspapers wasn’t Cameron’s big NHS speech. It was to see whether weekend reports of boastful remarks about “big opportunities” for the US private sector in Britain’s healthcare market had gained much media traction.
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CommentFewer managers won't mean fewer problems
The popular wisdom that the NHS needs fewer managers is the opposite of what will save us, argues Centre for Innovation in Health Management director Becky Malby.
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CommentBritnell: the NHS performs amongst the best but it can be better
Just over two years ago, as some people knew, the NHS saved my life. My family and I shall always be grateful to it and will always support it.
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CommentMedia Watch: Clegg back in the spotlight after veto pledge
Unsurprisingly one health story dominated the papers at the start of the week.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: a cunning plot, outed
The conspiracy theorists were busy earlier this month proposing that Monitor had deliberately “buried” its updated financial assumptions over the bank holiday weekend.
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CommentMichael White: mixed-market debate feels like déjà vu all over again
“John Redwood is right” is not a sentence I try to utter very often. The Tory right winger is brainy and high minded, but he places too much faith in markets and lacks political sense.
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CommentEast of England PCT scrapes together year-end surplus
NHS South West Essex predicted in the autumn it was heading for a £43m overspend on its budget, but it limped over the year-end line with a small surplus. How did it manage it?
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CommentClamour for local involvement rising in North West
The question of how much influence local people should have on changes to NHS services is concentrating minds in the North West.
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CommentThe listening exercise needs to reach grass roots voices
The government appears to be listening hard in a bid to appease opposition to the health service reforms - but, as Asthma UK chief executive Neil Churchill explains, some patient groups’ concerns are still not being addressed.
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CommentMark Britnell: the NHS funding model is no longer 'resilient'
A sophisticated discussion on how – and how much – the health service should be funded is badly needed to avoid undoing two decades worth of progress.
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Comment
Ben Gowland: changing the minds of managers in a clinically led NHS
In all the talk of radical health service reforms, one of the factors which has almost been forgotten is the revolutionary shift in mindset required of the NHS manager in primary care.
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CommentMichael White: despite distractions, the focus remains trained on reforms
Did you catch that row over the NHS at prime minister’s question time? No, I thought not. What with the royal nuptial and the killing of Osama bin Laden we have all had a lot on our media plate.
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CommentPassing judgement on Lansley's vision
A year after the general election, Andrew Lansley and his controversial reforms are under fire. HSJ asks four leading figures - Stephen Dorrell, David Kerr, Alan Milburn and Bill Moyes - to hand down their verdict on Lansley’s vision.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: calling any qualified commissioners
Last week’s public accounts committee report on the NHS landscape states: “Most important, the department has not yet got a framework to deal with failure in the system, be it on the provider side or the commissioning side”.
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CommentSeeking sustainability on the South Coast
News that Portsmouth Hospitals Trust is one of 22 predicted to struggle to gain foundation trust status because of a hefty private finance deal would have come as little surprise to the local health economy.
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CommentNorth East on course to meet targets, but some regions are still feeling the heat
With the financial year ended, overall performance during 2010-11 is becoming a bit clearer. Both NHS North East and Yorkshire and the Humber appear to have met headline targets, but Yorkshire is showing signs of strain.
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CommentScaling up collaboration: the public health manifesto
I recently had the privilege of attending a lecture by Sir Michael Marmot, the guru of health inequalities and public health.