External contributors – Page 256
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Maggie Rae on the role of GPs
Yes, they have won again. The GPs have excelled in our local area survey. Each year, like the rest of the country, we participate in what is known as the place survey.
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Jenny Rogers on friendships
A holiday in deepest Norfolk has brought home some lessons about friendship. In a village you do not have the lazy luxury of making friends who are identikit portraits of yourself: same profession, age, income, newspaper - and prejudices.
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Hilary Thomas on clinical-managerial networks
I have had the worst cold I can remember for some years - and every time I get on the Tube somebody sneezes on me. The economy is depressing, the weather has been depressing and the built-in obsolescence of collapsible umbrellas convinces me their manufacturers did not consider the eventuality ...
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Sandy Watson on NHS performance management
NHS boards have very clear roles. They must ensure governance arrangements are sound, probity and propriety are to the fore, a strategic steer is given to the executive team and staff, the executives are held to account and supported, and there are clear and effective performance management mechanisms.
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Your Humble Servant on NHS co-payments
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: Co-payment cunning
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Sophia Christie on becoming a world class commissioner
Every primary care trust is participating in the first stage of the world class commissioning assurance process. World class commissioning is not the little brother of foundation trust development, or even Big Brother, although it can seem like that.
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Comment
Media Watch: public health budgets
Those seeking to defend public health budgets amid financial turmoil were unlikely to take heart from the press this week.
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Michael White on the NHS in recession
A rough old trade is politics, as most MPs can confirm. All the same, I felt a bit sorry for Andrew Lansley the other week when he was beaten up for saying 'on many counts recession can be good for us'.
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Improving patient safety: advice for NHS boards
Institute for Healthcare Improvement president and chief executive Donald Berwick talks to Stockport foundation trust chair Robina Shah about the role of NHS boards in improving patient safety and quality of care
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Comment
A future for general practice
Issues such as GP extended hours (where clumsy government handling of the issue and stubborn BMA behaviour pushed the issue to the wire) and the procurement of GP-led health centres (GPLHCs) encapsulate the tensions from which GP services will be shaped in the next 10 years.
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Ken Jarrold on Barack Obama the manager
For students of leadership and management, these are interesting times. Two very different people, in very different worlds, have been teaching those open to learning.
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David Lee on the prison mental health dilemma
Not only do mental health trusts work with some of the most vulnerable members of our communities, it sometimes falls to us to support unfashionable causes too.
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Neil Goodwin on coping with recession in the NHS
Recession. It's what everyone is talking about and it will affect you at some point. The boom years are now drawing to a close and public sector budgets are about to see their biggest squeeze in more than a decade.
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David Woodhead on an NHS revolution
'All that is solid', wrote Marx in 1848, 'melts into air'. He was reflecting on what happens when the certainties that give our life structure and meaning are inverted.
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Noel Plumridge on commissioning for quality and innovation
We now know the 'road test' phase of tariff setting for the English NHS begins on 8 December, when the draft tariff for 2009-10 will at last be published.
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Comment
Media Watch: Andrew Lansley's recession comments
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley does not make headlines that often, but this week he had no shortage of coverage after he wrote on an official Conservative party website that recession 'can be good for us' because people tend to smoke and booze less, eat less rich food and spend ...
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Comment
Michael White on the public sector workforce
'Welcome to Soviet Britain,' the Daily Mail's headline roared this week. What on earth is the scourge of the NHS complaining about this time? I murmured, flinching over my first cuppa of the day.
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Simon Jones on improving the NHS
This will be my last piece for hsj.co.uk. After 20 years serving on health authorities and trust boards, I am leaving for pastures new.
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Comment
Lisa Rodrigues on achieving NHS equality
This year, 5 November was a very special day. The world woke up to find that the people of the United States had voted for the best presidential candidate, who also just happened to be black.
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David Amos on developing the NHS workforce
Into media coverage dominated by world events has crept something intriguing about bees. Scientists at Queensland University have used nectar-drenched markers in a tunnel to show that the insects can count up to four.