All Noel Plumridge articles – Page 3
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CommentNoel Plumridge: RIP, payment by results
After nearly a decade, it’s time to say goodbye to payment by results.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: shouldn't specialist services be cheaper, not dearer?
The value of specialist top-ups under the NHS tariff is falling. Specialist children’s hospitals had 78 per cent additional funding compared with the standard tariff, but from April their uplift will only be 60 per cent.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: what will the year end yield for trust finances?
Ever wondered why financial years begin in April? It’s the crop cycle.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: when it comes to GP income, how long is a piece of string?
Just how much does a GP earn? The NHS Information Centre estimates average GP income in 2008-09 (the latest figures available) as £105,300. But any average conceals variations.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: feeling the squeeze
Dupuytren’s contracture is a condition that causes fingers to bend towards the palm. Named after the French surgeon who first described the condition in 1834, it mainly affects men - a reported one in five men aged over 60 - and is most prevalent among people of northern European descent.
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CommentNoel Plumridge: trapped in PFI purgatory
Of the 16 pages of last week’s Managing the Transition letter from Richmond House, the provider side of the NHS occupies a mere three paragraphs. One about the foundation trust “pipeline”, one on separating primary care trusts from their former provider arms and one on encouraging the independent sector.
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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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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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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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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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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
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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