Latest news – Page 1989
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Health Foundation extends Safer Patients Initiative
Twenty hospitals will today receive £165,000 each under a scheme to improve patient safety. Funded by the Health Foundation charity, the Safer Patients Initiative will see a tailored package of support for each hospital including access to international experts. The four hospitals in the scheme since its launch in 2004 ...
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5,000 'social enterprise pathfinders' come forward
Care service minister Ivan Lewis used social enterprise day to announce that more than 5,000 people have shown interest in becoming 'social enterprise pathfinders' in health and social care by looking at the application pack.The £1m pathfinder scheme is intended to support social enterprises that want to develop innovative services ...
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Northern Ireland smoking ban begins 30 April
The legislation allowing Northern Ireland to introduce a ban on smoking in enclosed public places has completed its progress through parliament and will come into effect on 30 April next year.Northern Ireland health minister Paul Goggins said his office would work to build support for the legislation and issue guidance ...
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Pay rates for PCT public health directors published
The Department of Health has issued supplementary guidance to its pay framework for very senior managers, covering director of public health posts in primary care trusts.The guidance pegs PCT public health directors' pay at 70 per cent of the pay of their chief executives, but says other arrangements may be ...
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NICE faces judicial review on Alzheimer's drugs
Two drug companies have threatened to take the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to judicial review.Eisai Limited, the licence holder for Aricept, and Pfizer Limited, its 'co-promotion partner', claim the process that led NICE to refuse to endorse the drug's use for NHS patients with mild Alzheimer's disease ...
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Mental Health Bill introduced
The government has moved swiftly to introduce the mental health bill announced in the Queen's Speech.Health minister Rosie Winterton and Home Office minister Gerry Sutcliffe published the bill yesterday, highlighting its provisions to provide 'more protection for the public and patients'.The bill will introduce a new definition of 'mental disorder', ...
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Youth offending
The continual inability of the NHS to engage with this group of young people is a core reason why inequalities will never be adequately tackled (HSJ 9 November). The NHS is governed by moral choices and offenders do not score highly on the morality stakes.
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Turnaround help for a third of acutes as deficits reach £1.2bn gross
More than one-third of all acute trusts and a quarter of all primary care trusts are receiving turnaround support as it was revealed that deficits in the NHS are climbing again.
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A formula for unfairness
With a significant proportion of NHS trusts in financial difficulty and many of those reporting ward closures and job losses, the financial health of the NHS emerged as one of the key political issues of 2006.
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Medics warned off community work by cash-strapped trust
A financially troubled hospital trust is warning consultants not to carry out NHS work in the community unless there are guarantees that payments stay with the trust.
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Government passion cools on £50m safe-sex drive
The government appears to have abandoned its pledge to spend £50m on safe-sex campaigns.
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Trusts warned not to axe acute beds prematurely
Mental health trusts have been warned not to cut acute beds until their community services are fully developed.
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Healthier lives but ever-widening inequalities: what price progress?
While London's spearhead primary care trusts look likely to meet their national targets on inequalities, there is a growing differential in specific disease areas and between geographical areas which threatens to undermine long-term advances. Daloni Carlisle reports
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Service-line economics goes to the heart of patient care
As we reveal this week, foundation regulator Monitor will be consulting trusts on compliance guidance to push the adoption of service-line economics (feature, page 22).
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Doctors urged to discuss electronic records with patients
The British Medical Association is encouraging doctors to start talking to patients about the new NHS care record service being developed by the national IT programme.Connecting for Health, the agency that runs the programme, is planning its own information campaign. But BMA chair James Johnson has written to doctors to ...
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NHS complaints up
The Information Centre for health and social care has released figures showing a significant jump in the number of written complaints received by NHS trusts.The figures show that 95,047 complaints were registered during 2005-06, compared with 90,413 the previous year, and only three out of four were resolved locally within ...
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Diagnostic waiting times down
The Department of Health has issued diagnostic waiting times data for September, showing that the average length of time that a patient can expect to wait for a test has fallen from around seven weeks in April to around five-and-a-half weeks now.The DoH started collecting monthly waiting time information for ...
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Sophia Christie on helping the NHS to learn
'The Canadian system rather than the NHS may benefit from our learning about the value of purposeful development'
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PCTs pull plug on £550m hospital for Hertfordshire
Plans for new hospitals in Hertfordshire were in tatters this week after a £550m scheme to build a hospital and cancer centre in Hatfield were axed.
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Queen's Speech reignites row over mental health legislation
The government used yesterday's Queen's Speech to confirm that it will introduce a bill to reform mental health legislation, following its decision to abandon plans for a new mental health act in March.The bill will introduce a new definition of 'mental disorder', a new 'appropriate treatment test' and supervised community ...