Monitor

'Sharing good practice' is a wondrous thing - indeed, Monitor has found it a convenient explanation for occasional infidelities. Nonetheless, news that the light that burned so brightly suddenly burns so pale leads one to wonder if it is time for a new approach in a bid to speed enlightenment in the NHS. Back to basics, then, with Monitor's guide to learning from others' mistakes.

But the Department of Health is greedy in its attempts to hog this week's column. First off, a worthy welcome from Babe Cooper to research which suggests that smoking isn't good for you (they'll be saying it doesn't look cool next). But while Monitor is all in favour of one-stop shops and fasttrack clinics, isn't it alarming to learn that smoking causes 82 per cent of 'lunch cancer deaths'?

Meanwhile, advice on cot death seems a similarly unlikely target for gags. But when the DoH is in charge, anything can happen, and hilariously, almost anything does, this time in a statement advising pregnant ladies to resist the advances of their lascivious hubbies.

That's right - 'do not smoke or let your partner near you when you are pregnant', caution the uptight civil servants.

But DoH staff do more than manufacture strange variations on the facts in press releases. Sometimes the specially trained ones are allowed to pick up the phone and say whatever they fancy to journalists. The risks are obvious. And sometimes the jokers reveal depths of ignorance which even Monitor's colleagues can't match. Pity the senior press officer fielding calls on the departure of Sir Alan Langlands. The poor chap had no idea that big Al had a deputy; nor did he recognise the name of one Neil McKay, appointed just two months ago.

Meanwhile, colleagues on the social care desk reveal frightened rabbit tendencies (see picture). One of HSJ 's hackettes was at her most reassuring while trying to persuade them to provide info on the boundaries of health and social services. But Berlin walls don't come down overnight - except in Berlin, and that's different - as a hapless minion revealed, stammering: 'But you're a health service management magazine and I'm on the social care side so we're not really supposed to talk to you .'

Back to beacons. For the benefit of those working in the department that launched them, beacon status means that 'innovative' GPs and hospitals with pretty waiting rooms get extra money as long as they let jealous rivals have a nose around and steal their best ideas. Not to be confused with belisha beacons. So when a reporter asked the DoH press office - sorry media centre, darling - for details of the beacon scheme, how perturbing to be pushed in the direction of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Monitor hopes that communications managers among you are learning some hard lessons - and warns the press office at the Royal Brompton and Harefield trust to pay special attention. When its press office was asked for the names of their local CHCs, the response - 'what's a CHC?' - took our mighty organ aback. Monitor hopes the trust takes seriously the statutory responsibilities of independent watchdogs representing the interests of local people. What do readers think?

Some say there's more to life than snickering at others' misfortunes. So let's turn now to the website of the Institute of Healthcare Management, where what they do on purpose is just as funny as what they do by mistake. The financial troubles of IHM's predecessor organisation have been well documented, and Monitor can't help but wonder if that's what is behind the decision to offer fridge-freezers and 26 types of hostess trolley online. A quick click on www.ihm.org.uk leads quickly to offers of cut- price white goods now that 'the IHM has teamed up with Value Direct'. What's next? Will Stuart Marples be doing a nice sideline in dodgy motors?

Finally, back to the DoH press office, whose transformation into a media centre witnessed the introduction of whizzy IT, including an answerphone message with a rasping Scottish accent causing trouble in the friskiness department for journalists of a female persuasion. Monitor must confess to a licking of lips at the idea that the cash-strapped NHS had spent literally POUNDS hiring a SEXY actor to keep journalists away from the whinier tones of real press officers. And as the press office tried to stall HSJ with cries of 'Is this a genuine media query?', suspicions grew. Until the truth emerged in the shape of a real live press officer so discreet his voice had ne'er been heard before. Take comfort, bunglers and incompetents among ye, for Monitor nearly got it wrong once, too.