All articles by Noel Plumridge – Page 4
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the true cost of training
In a transparent, rules based funding system like payment by results, how can we ensure a steady flow of financial goodies to the deserving rich in the London teaching hospitals?
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CommentNoel Plumridge: saying the unsayable
A section of the Health Bill that hopefully won’t often be invoked applies commercial insolvency law to foundation trusts. Section 113 places broke NHS hospitals under broadly the same winding-up regime as bankrupt companies. With falling tariff prices and rigid hospital cost structures, it will probably be tested before long.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the DH's fistful of figures
The Department of Health’s intent to maintain “grip” on NHS performance during 2011-12 is plain in the technical guidance to the NHS operating framework, issued in late January.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the prospective pinch on pensions
The government is doing all it can to reduce the value - or, in Treasury-speak, the “burden” - of public sector pensions.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: SHAs need to decide their priorities, and soon
One of the more dramatic parts of the 2011-12 operating framework is the withholding, by strategic health authorities, of 2 per cent of primary care trust funding.
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Comment
'Is the long stay trim a haircut too far?'
With payment by results, the devil is sometimes in the detail.
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CommentAre NHS efficiency savings a dead dog?
In the golden years of transatlantic airfreight, a turboprop landed in Newfoundland to refuel.
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CommentSharing healthcare costs, pooling healthcare risks
Size seems to be back in vogue. There are two main reasons for the “big is beautiful” organisational trend, and it is important to distinguish between them, as their impacts on that overriding £20bn NHS savings target are quite different.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: Must no deficit mean saying no to delivery?
According to the recently published Department of Health report on the first quarter of 2010-11, no primary care trusts are forecasting a deficit this financial year.
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CommentParliament, prudence and productivity
What Commons health committee chair Stephen Dorrell said to HSJ last week was not symptomatic of a tiff between him and Andrew Lansley. More significant issues are coming into play.
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CommentHealth insurance is a game of poker, against an expert
“NICE is accountable to the public,” Lord Crisp - the former NHS chief executive - advised Parliament last week. “What we don’t need is to import American style private sector rationing where individuals find themselves the victims of decisions made in private by individual insurance companies where nobody is accountable.”
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CommentTreading softly on cancer's dreams
It is good to see old fashioned centralisation is alive and well in sensitive matters.
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CommentIndependent contractors and the NHS
Are independent contractors really part of the NHS? The answer, traditionally, has been “yes, when convenient; no, when not”.
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Comment'Major NHS reforms are driven by the heart, not the calculator'
Two things become apparent from recent parliamentary exchanges on the cost of anticipated large scale NHS redundancies.
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Comment
NHS underspends under the microscope
It is one of the most common dilemmas of NHS financial management. The trust sets an annual expenditure budget. A budget holder underspends - no doubt for excellent reasons - and wants to carry the unspent balance forward into the following financial year.
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Comment'Who will own the NHS?'
Somewhere between this week’s spending review and the parliamentary debates on the Health Bill, we will learn where the real balance of power between the commissioning board and GP consortia will lie.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on axes and accountability
A useful little word the French have borrowed from English in recent times is un tilt. Derived from pinball, a primitive pre-Super Mario form of entertainment now virtually extinct, it denotes in French a sudden, unforeseen and complete disruption of previous plans. Game over.
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CommentA nervous kind of NHS reorganisation
It’s only a reorganisation, right? Anyone who’s worked in the NHS for a few years has been through reorganisations before.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on NHS pay and pensions
The extra £6bn of spending cutbacks in 2010-11 announced by George Osborne in May appears to have had only a marginal impact on NHS spending, but is unlikely to be true of June’s emergency budget for 2011-12. It’s going to hurt in the months and years ahead.
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HSJ KnowledgeCapturing the costs of community services
Evidence is essential to designing community services that truly transform care delivery rather than simply shift vulnerable budgets, warns Noel Plumridge