All Noel Plumridge articles – Page 2
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CommentNoel Plumridge: is local pay a fair deal everywhere?
George Osborne’s stated purpose in opening up the issue of local pay rates is to ensure “public sector pay does not distort local labour markets”.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: this holiday's must-have NHS reads
For the fast approaching season of peace and goodwill, it’s customary for columnists to offer their reading recommendations for the holiday period.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: increased demand is the answer, not the question
In 2009 the UK spent 9.8 per cent of its GDP on healthcare. The equivalent figure for 2008 was 8.8 per cent. Such a year on year increase shows theimpact of continuing investment in the NHS even as the recession took hold.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: PbR is becoming increasingly irrelevant
The strategic direction of tariff funding used to be steady expansion of scope and steady growth in sophistication. In time, it was understood, payment by results would cover virtually the entire English NHS.
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Comment'A new procurement model could fall foul of inertia'
Despite talk of opening up NHS procurement, the same old system looks unlikely to be phased out just yet, writes Noel Plumridge.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: new faces for financial frugality
There are essentially three approaches to the branch of corporate governance that is concerned with ensuring compliance.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge: savings are not surpluses
Before we called it “the recession”, it was known as “the credit crunch”. Trading confidence drained away, the banks stopped lending, and anyone with cash held on to it.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: checking up on the Nicholson challenge
Pressed on where the £20bn productivity gain that is now known as the “Nicholson challenge” will actually be found, the top of theDepartment of Health cites a ratio of 40:20:40.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: will the government help write trusts' shopping lists?
Two recent public accounts committee reports suggest the NHS may still have a thing or two to learn about shopping.
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CommentDebate: is general practice pulling its weight in the efficiency challenge?
On 30 June, HSJ columnist Noel Plumridge suggested primary care should carry its share of the £20bn Nicholson challenge, alluding to the Nuffield Trust’s March recommendation that primary care “should become a key focus of the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention agenda”. Noel’s article led to this correspondence with Pat ...
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CommentNoel Plumridge: inflation is set to inflame the pension problem
The most important economic indicator this autumn is an old friend, reappearing like a toothache you’d forgotten about. It’s inflation.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: changes to charitable funding risks donators' benevolence
If, when the time comes, you leave a share of your worldly wealth to your local NHS, that’s entirely up to you. After all, it’s your money.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the price of reputation
How would you feel about a health insurer that took your premium payments and then turned down your claim, not on the basis of an alleged pre-existing condition, or something in the contractual small print, but simply because it considered your illness a low priority?
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CommentNoel Plumridge: the finance director's job interview
“May I recap,” she said. “If I’m appointed finance director of the trust, my main deliverable is a financial strategy for foundation trust status within two years?”
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CommentNoel Plumridge: time for primary care to shoulder its share of the savings burden
Around 20 per cent of the entire NHS budget is currently spent on primary care.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: breaking up is hard to do
Hanging on to the title deeds of the community estate must have seemed such a neat idea last year, as primary care trusts pondered the future of their soon to be departing provider arms.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: parallel process in danger of doubling costs
First, in April, came the “pause” in the passage of the Health Bill. Then the “listening exercise” and the appointment of the NHS Future Forum. And, along the way, the Liberal Democrats’ humiliation in the May elections.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: Monitor is showing a truer picture
“Breathtaking insensitivity” is the alleged failing of David Bennett, Monitor’s new chair, for daring to suggest the 4 per cent target efficiency gain required of the NHS this year, under the Department of Health operating framework, may be just a little understated.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: calling any qualified commissioners
Last week’s public accounts committee report on the NHS landscape states: “Most important, the department has not yet got a framework to deal with failure in the system, be it on the provider side or the commissioning side”.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: PFI pipe dream turns sour
Within the EU, the talk is now of a periphery and a core. Peripheral countries that the international bond market no longer loves – Greece, Ireland and now Portugal – have to borrow large sums of money from the core merely to stay afloat.
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