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LeaderEmbarrassing Thirlwall is wrong about NHS management
The Thirlwall inquiry may be of some use to the families involved, but its summary findings and recommendations are patronising, confusing and in some cases plain ignorant, says HSJ editor Alastair McLellan.
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LeaderHospital groups are falling out of fashion
Just under a year ago, HSJ reported that nearly two in five trusts shared a chair and/or chief executive – and that this represented significant growth over the previous 12 months.
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LeaderWe must abandon the myth that inquiries work
“I don’t think people do get closure [from inquiries]… It’s a myth, and I don’t think that we should dangle the prospect of it as something that we can achieve.” Dr Bill Kirkup speaking on last week’s HSJ podcast
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LeaderWhat a Burnham premiership will mean for the NHS
HSJ has spent the past few weeks talking to those in and around the “Burnham camp” in an effort to answer this question. Some consistent and significant themes have emerged.
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LeaderStuck in the politician’s waiting room
Once again, the NHS is waiting. Waiting to see if there will be a new prime minister, waiting to see if they will appoint a new health secretary, waiting to see who that health secretary will appoint as Sir Jim Mackey’s successor. Waiting to see if the new leadership will ...
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LeaderWhen is a cover-up not a cover-up?
The answer to the question posed in our headline is apparently: “When the decision to keep something quiet is based on clinical advice.”
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LeaderWaiting for the great leap forward
2026-27 is intended to be the year the NHS’s performance curve bends, but the reforms that are needed to deliver are stuck in the planning phase, says Alastair McLellan
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LeaderThe NHS must invest in AI before ‘more doctors and nurses’
Almost every British political party with the tiniest chance of getting anywhere near power has pledged to employ “more doctors and nurses” should they be elected – and they mostly followed through.
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LeaderDo ICBs have a future?
To which question, many of you will respond “of course” and point to the repeated statements by ministers and national leaders that integrated care boards have a vital role to play.
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LeaderThe Streeting/Milburn era must end to give the NHS a fresh start
It has now been exactly a year since Labour began its reform of the NHS, and the succeeding months have proved a poor advert for its central idea of giving government more control over the service.
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LeaderThe NHS is too reliant on resident doctors
As the dust settled on the latest resident doctors strike, a group of medical and managerial senior executives met to review how their London acute trust had fared.
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LeaderWho should be the next chief executive of the NHS?
Sir Jim Mackey formally signed on as the “transition chief executive” of NHS England earlier this year. His job was three-fold: to stabilise the service’s finances, to speed up the elective recovery and to help ease operational control of the NHS back into the Department of Health after its 13-year ...
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LeaderUsing the patient to smash the NHS begging bowl
This government’s reform of the NHS is best understood as a drive to reconfigure the economics of the public sector – which is increasingly dominated by healthcare spending. This will give the campaign of change a distinctly different flavour to the recovery mission Labour undertook during the first decade of ...
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LeaderThe government will pay for its mistreatment of ICB and NHSE staff
If you are a) an NHS employee who works as a commissioner or in a system role, and b) have been only moderately unlucky, you might have spent a good part of the past 15 years wondering if you would still have a job in a few months’ time, inundated ...
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LeaderWhat the centre really expects of ICBs, trusts and regions in 2026
If HSJ were in a betting mood, we would lay a large sum on the re-organisation of integrated care boards stretching on well into 2026-27.
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LeaderWhy Claire Murdoch quit
It is to the former national director for mental health Claire Murdoch’s credit that she stuck with her role for more than a year under the current government.
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LeaderCSUs are dead, long live the SSU
The commissioning support unit (CSU) has had a strange history – it has also lasted much longer than your average non-hospital NHS organisation.
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LeaderWe have seen the government’s 10-Year Health Plan: it is a mess
The latest draft of the government’s 10-Year Health Plan is based on weak assertions about funding, and fails to address the practicality of reform, says HSJ editor Alastair McLellan.
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LeaderThe NHS reformers must now prove their case
To visit the 2025 NHS ConfedExpo was like attending the kind of music festival which seeks to celebrate a previous decade – in this case, the first of this century
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LeaderThe return of NICE
Amidst the state of permanent revolution which has afflicted the NHS in the 21st century, there has been one constant: the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.