All articles by Noel Plumridge – Page 5
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CommentNoel Plumridge on the NHS budget
Here’s a summary of the financial plan for the English NHS.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on the rules of payment by results
A rules-based system. That was the aspiration in 2004 when payment by results was introduced to England’s NHS.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on cutting the NHS cost base
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines displacement activity as “the performance by an animal of an act inappropriate for the stimulus or stimuli that evoked it.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on medicine’s gender balance
Supposing it were possible for an observer from 50 years ago to be miraculously teleported into one of today’s NHS hospitals - what would seem most different?
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CommentNoel Plumridge on no-frills healthcare
Who actually likes Ryanair? For the benefit of sustainably minded readers who would not dream of blowing their hard earned moolah on a cheap weekend in Bratislava, the Ryanair pricing model starts with an unfeasibly small headline fare, supplemented by an increasingly imaginative list of charges.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on NHS cash in a cold climate
£15bn - the “efficiency savings” the NHS is being asked to make over the coming three year cycle - is an unimaginably huge sum of money.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the optimism bias uplift
The crowd from the finance department were relaxing in the Rat and Weasel musing on life’s three inevitables: death, taxes… and the private finance initiative.
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CommentNoel Plumridge on caveats for consolidating mental health spending
A question for commissioners: what is the “right” proportion of your annual funding to spend on mental health?
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CommentNoel Plumridge on expenses and exploitation
It was a cheap Chinese restaurant, just near the bus terminal in a quiet Northern town. Now, I’m partial to Chinese food when away on business, not least because the single male traveller can usually eat a plate of chow mien or special fried rice without feeling awkward and without ...
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CommentNoel Plumridge on foundation trusts
Are foundation trusts here to stay? Five years have passed since the prototypes first saw the light of day. Once controversial enough to bring the government’s very survival into question, how far has this radically new and politically controversial way of organising NHS hospitals simply become normal?
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on the grim reality of NHS finance
'Look out, not up' is a phrase currently being muttered in the corridors of power at the Department of Health.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on security under threat
'What I'd really like for 2009,' said my friend Kate, 'is a man with an enormous pension.'
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on commissioning for quality and innovation
We now know the 'road test' phase of tariff setting for the English NHS begins on 8 December, when the draft tariff for 2009-10 will at last be published.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on a family's care crisis
On Friday morning, Mum was readmitted to hospital. She is 85 years old and vulnerable to infections, with a provisional diagnosis of leukaemia.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on a family tragedy
When the mobile phone leaps into life before 8am, it's usually ominous. Yesterday was no exception, with a text from my sister Amy: 'Tony has been in a terrible accident and is fighting 4 his life. Everyone pls pray 4 him.'
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on problems with PFI accounting rules
Rules, they say, are made to be broken. There was never anything sacrosanct about Gordon Brown's fiscal rule, which has restricted public sector debt to less than 40 per cent of national income.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on community tariff appeal
'The biggest black box in the NHS' was how my fellow columnist Simon Stevens last month described the £10bn or more spent by English PCTs on district nursing, therapies and other mainstream community healthcare.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on why safety is just a ritual
A Flybe flight from Southampton to Leeds-Bradford. Through security and reunited with belt and shoes. The flight is called. Walk across the tarmac, climb the stairs and claim seat 4A.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on boardroom drama
The setting: A hospital boardroom. A meeting of the executive team of an NHS trust is about to take place.
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News
Noel Plumridge on Darling's discipline
Yesterday's Budget announcement held few surprises for the NHS. As expected. Nowadays, the important public finance figures are published in the autumn, and it would have been disappointing indeed if chancellor Alistair Darling had revisited the NHS assumptions in last October's spending review.