All Health Service Journal articles in Opinion – Page 11
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Comment
Unity will unlock gateway to success
Sir Ian Carruthers' two-month review of England's reconfiguration proposals urges much greater co-ordination of effort - a more united front to replace a series of skirmishes.
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News
Chiefs reveal frustrations over doctors' contracts in HSJ survey
Most chief executives would cap GPs' pay, abolish clinical excellence awards for consultants and write off historic debts if they had the power.
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Comment
Disaffection rules as chiefs mourn Alan Milburn's vision
Alan Milburn is the most popular New Labour health secretary, according to HSJ's survey of trust chief executives - not surprising when the same survey reveals the light that still burns brightly in people's hearts for the NHS plan.
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Comment
Water fluoridation
I was interested to read that Jessica Crowe uses water fluoridation as an example of a public health intervention that might provoke local protests, and that therefore overview and scrutiny committees (OSCs) might assist.
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News
Trusts may lose secure hospitals
Control of England's three high-security hospitals could be removed from local NHS control, HSJ has learned.
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Comment
Top thinkers hail power of imagination
If clinicians are the likely generators of the ideas that will transform NHS performance, managers need the confidence to create the space for them to blossom. Our main feature this week looks at a group of very different ideas with the potential to make a huge difference locally and nationally.
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News
Monitor criticised for data demand
The foundation trust regulator Monitor must not seek to 'enhance' its regulatory role, Foundation Trust Network director Sue Slipman has warned.
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News
PCT network to 'manage creative tensions'
Tensions between acute and primary care trusts could be soothed by the new NHS Confederation PCT network, its chair has said.
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News
Hewitt confirms orthopaedic 'free choice'
Patients waiting for orthopaedic operations will be able to choose to have their operation at any acute trust, foundation trust, or independent sector provider in the next few months.
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Comment
Breaking even must not mean trusts losing focus on money
The NHS should manage to hit its forecast position of a small surplus at the end of this year, according to this week's Department of Health figures. Not that it will be thanked or even believed. Within a few hours of the report being released on Tuesday, the protests began ...
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News
NHS set for £13m net surplus despite rising levels of debt
The NHS is predicted to make a £13m surplus this financial year, according to the latest Department of Health forecasts.
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Comment
To solve a problem, first you must admit you have one
Managing demand will be a major issue this year and also a major test of the maturity of relationships between acute and primary care trusts. Variability is an acknowledged reality but poor access to and grasp of information means that it too often remains amorphous.
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Comment
MPs cannot be beaten, so try taming them
Whether they are sat on Commons select committees or stood outside your offices with a banner, MPs can seem like fierce and unpredictable beasts. Many seem to take unwholesome delight in raking their claws across health service plans, particularly at a local level, and even when they have secretary of ...
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Comment
Giving patients the cost of treatment
Having had first hand experience of this in the USA, when my father lay dying in ITU and we kept getting bills from the insurance company 'for information only' I would urge the Minister to give this proposal serious consideration.
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News
NAO and Dr Foster
Your editorial ('Criticism of Dr Foster JV masks the real story about poor data', 8 Feb) portrays the National Audit Office as worrying over a relatively technical issue of competitive tendering when the real story is about the lack of good data in the NHS. This is to misunderstand our ...
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Comment
Model contract and foundation trusts
Two issues highlighted in HSJrecently - the model contract ( HSJ, page 5, 1 February 2007) and an NHS charter ( HSJ, opinion, pages 18-19, 2007) - show how current NHS reform is engendering contradictory expectations.
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News
Use of management consultants
I always enjoy the wit and irony of the inside back cover. How delighted I was to see that you have now carried it into the body of your journal under the headline 'SHA pays £2m for firm to size up PCT commissioning' as the independent and objective firm chosen ...
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Comment
David Peat on choice
I suppose it's a generation thing. Choice, that is. And come to think of it, consumer power in general.
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Comment
Peter Penson on one way to cut the NHS drugs budget
In recent months, the media has reported numerous cases of patients campaigning to be given expensive anti-cancer drugs such as Herceptin by the NHS despite a lack of NICE approval. Difficult decisions must be made about how money should be spent and where economies can be made.
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Comment
Criticism of Dr Foster JV masks the real story about poor data
The National Audit Office report on the Department of Health joint venture with health information provider Dr Foster does little to combat the notion that government is still feeling its way when doing deals with private companies.