All Opinion and blogs articles – Page 70
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Blogs
The strikes don't mean staff don't like doing their job
Generally across the public sector, staff remain committed to providing a high standard of service to the client or end user. Keeping morale high should be a line manager’s priority in a time of organisational cuts and structure changes.
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CommentMichael White: freedom to choose doesn't stop bad decisions
Reading recently about the difficult transition from Oliver Cromwell’s 11-year republic to the restored Stuart monarchy of Charles II in 1660, I came across some wise words by the great aristo-scientist, Robert Boyle.
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CommentCould a public cycle network cut down inner city obesity?
This year’s Faculty of Public Health award for innovation went to an idea for cycle networks that mirror public transport routes. With obesity already costing the NHS £4.2bn annually, this radical idea could be a valuable long-term investment. Geraint Lewis explains.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: shifting the goalposts on NHS spending
One of the more intriguing lines in last week’s NHS operating framework is about how primary care trust recurrent allocations for 2012-13 will be reviewed in the light of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecast.
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Blogs
How hard is the new 18 week target?
The new 18 week target can be achieved. In a few places it is going to be difficult. But most of the NHS could achieve it by improving patient scheduling alone.
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CommentDoes the NHS really believe information technology can improve healthcare?
I doubt that anybody within airlines, financial services, or manufacturing goes to meetings to debate whether information technology can improve what they do. It already has, and continues to. Why, then, have we in healthcare grown very sceptical about information technology, asks Richard Smith.
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CommentMichael White: ministers' fears of a CQC tick box regime
Hurt feelings are easy to detect in the system as the winter nights draw in. Officials at the Care Quality Commission sound hurt at what they feel is unfair media treatment of their efforts to ensure the super-regulator is fit for purpose.
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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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Blogs
The pressing case for linking physical and mental health
The link between physical and mental health is one all too often missed. But the example set by an acute hospital in Birmingham that has invested in high quality liaison psychiatry shows that integrating physical and mental health services has efficiency and financial benefits waiting to be discovered.
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Blogs
When customer care alone is not enough
Apparantly the saviour of public sector finances is better customer care. Is that really enough? Please hold while I connect you to an advisor.
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CommentSally Gainsbury: just how much does the NHS cost?
How much does the NHS cost? It is a surprisingly philosophical question as the answer depends on whether or not you believe foundation and NHS trusts exist.
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CommentMichael White: private sector concerns going round in circles
Days before the conclusion of Circle Health’s long negotiation to take over the running of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust I encountered some research about the private sector’s parallel march through Britain’s prison management system. It struck me forcefully.
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CommentDevloping new structures for improved service delivery
Now is a golden opportunity to start developing guidelines and principles to inform better healthcare delivery, says Paul Zollinger-Read
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CommentMichael White: let's back the public sector plan B
At the weekend I rang an old trade union friend, a veteran of countless public sector negotiations, disputes and occasional strikes, to hear him contradict my own excessively rational view (“don’t do it, comrades”) of the pensions dispute which threatens NHS services this month.
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Blogs
Macho macho management
Three quarters of the NHS workforce is female, half of GPs are women but commissioning is man’s work, according to workforce figures. Is this consciously unfair, or a simple by-product of the current climate?
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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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CommentIs the GP contract a barrier to integrated care?
There is a serious need to look at how GPs operate if integrated care is to successfully make the difference the government, and the sector, is pinning its hopes on, says King’s Fund director of policy Anna Dixon.
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CommentMichael White: don't bank on blaming Brussels for the NHS's ills
I was nursing a cold and watching the Commons EU debate on the telly at home when I was startled to hear David Nuttall, the Tory MP leading the anti-European charge, blame those wily foreigners for the imminent closure of the maternity ward and special care baby unit in his ...
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CommentSally Gainsbury: pain for providers - and the poor
It’s the time of year when minds turn to the contents of the next operating framework – currently scheduled for publication on 24 November.
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Blogs
Dancing with the devil? Exorcism in the NHS
A blog about the revelation that the NHS uses exorcism as an alternative form of treatment for some mental health patients.