All Leader articles – Page 2
-
LeaderThe NHS is not living with covid, it’s dying from it
Some of the covid control measures taken in the past two years need to return, argue Dr Kamran Abbasi, editor of the British Medical Journal, and HSJ editor Alastair McLellan.
-
LeaderSteve Barclay is NHS leadership’s worst ‘nightmare’
Never has a politician arrived in the post of health secretary trailing a worse reputation among NHS leaders than Steve Barclay, writes Alastair McLellan.
-
LeaderThe stubbornness of covid leaves the NHS with brutal choices to make
In the last six months of 2021, just over 5,000 people who tested positive for covid were admitted to English hospitals each week on average.
-
LeaderThe Messenger review is a con
“NHS to face biggest shake-up of leadership in decades”, declared the Financial Times – the paper with perhaps the most stringent editorial standards in the world – of Wednesday’s Messenger review. The Daily Telegraph also hailed it as “a landmark report”, while the BBC described how health and social care ...
-
LeaderPritchard’s NHS England: A stocktake
A stocktake of NHS England and its leadership, 10 months after Amanda Pritchard took over as chief executive.
-
LeaderDr Fuller sets out ICSs’ inheritance, and it’s tough
Claire Fuller seeks to underline a new era for primary care under integrated care systems — and it’s going to be a difficult one.
-
LeaderICSs face irrelevance unless the devolution frenzy is curbed
Integrated care systems face becoming lost in a jungle of Byzantine governance – and becoming irrelevant to current challenges – unless the current mantra of devolution and subsidiarity is curbed.
-
LeaderThis Easter will be worse than any winter for the NHS
Two years ago the first wave of the covid pandemic reached its peak. The NHS had reacted with impressive speed to prepare for an influx of patients with an infectious disease that few knew much about, had no cure for, and for which there was no known vaccine.
-
LeaderSorry, not sorry
The non-apology has arrived to squat on British public discourse like a particularly ugly and unwanted toad.
-
LeaderThe U-turn on covid vaccination will leave a toxic legacy of mistrust
‘We’ve broken the social contract between the NHS and its people’. That was the blunt conclusion of one senior NHS figure surveying the aftermath of the government’s U-turn on the mandatory vaccination of staff.
-
LeaderWhat the rejection of ICS jobs by acute chiefs tells us
Cast your minds back five years. Sustainability and Transformation Plans are a relatively new thing and NHS England has announced the leaders for the new powers in the land.
-
LeaderThe NHS’s ‘greatest generation’
The Americans have a name for those who were born between 1901 and 1927. Those who endured the great depression, fought the Second World War and then forged the economic miracle that enshrined the USA as the world’s leading power.
-
Leader‘I have heard you’ on service pressures, Pritchard tells NHS leaders
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard today told NHS leaders that she has ‘heard’ the concerns they have raised about the intense pressure on services, and claimed it was ‘unfair’ for staff to continue working so hard.
-
Leader‘This is far worse than January – the vaccine hasn’t saved us this time’
“We should all be rated inadequate.” The call HSJ received on Sunday lunchtime from one of the most respected chief executives in the NHS carried an air of desperation.
-
LeaderNHS leaders hold ministers’ fate in their hands
When push comes to shove, this delivery-focused government knows that NHS leaders and the wider managership cohort are essential to driving down waiting lists (and building ‘new hospitals’).
-
LeaderStevens has been the most important figure in NHS history since Bevan
When Sir Simon Stevens was appointed chief executive of NHS England in the autumn of 2013, HSJ commented – tongue-in-cheek – that he now had the chance to save the NHS for the second time.
-
LeaderThe government must not be allowed to rewrite history on its failure to protect the NHS
Let us lay to rest the assertion that the government acted quickly to stave off the threat from the new coronavirus variant.
-
LeaderWill the public sector take back control of Test and Trace?
There is still an opportunity for the public sector to take back NHS Test and Trace.
-
LeaderNot before time the covid testing programme finds proper purpose
The success of the test and trace programme is the cornerstone of both the NHS’ ability to increase the amount of care it can provide, as well as the continued unlocking of the economy and guarding against a second peak.
-
LeaderThe NHS in the time of covid: what happens next
What will the next six months bring for the NHS? HSJ has spoken to the service’s most senior figures and makes the following predictions.