All Health Service Journal articles in Opinion – Page 23
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: disaster planning
‘Four black Mercedes limousines with police outriders screeched to a halt outside trust HQ heralding the arrival of the McKashsky consultants’
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Comment
Angela Coulter on the national patients survey
'Access to GPs has dramatically improved!' claims the government. 'Nonsense, it's got worse!' yells the Daily Express.
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News
Lack of can-do exposed by Sir Gerry
Clive Savory makes some valid points about Sir Gerry Robinson's much-publicised troubleshooting visit to Rotherham General Hospital.
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News
Closing the skills gap with the private sector
Just a quick feedback on the excellent article by Neil Goodwin which made points that need to be explored by NHS managers when providing patient-led services.
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News
Job cuts at Hillingdon
Having seen your article today, I am sure I am not going to be the only person sounding totally aghast at what is being proposed in Hillingdon PCT.
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News
Transplant dilemmas
Chris Rudge writes of the need to increase donors for organ transplants, yet 20 years ago the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital was successfully doing this and the process was stopped.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on reconfiguration and supercasinos
So far this year I've enjoyed a strange mixture of speaking to the public about the case for change; getting involved in what I might loosely term 'people processes' - all of which has been a rich source of learning; and finding myself in a new-found role of professional patient.
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News
Time to break the circle of negativity
There's no row like a family row and the NHS family is not an exception. It has long been recognised that the NHS's own staff can often be the worst ambassadors for what is happening in the service, nationally and locally.
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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.
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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
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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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
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
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
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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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
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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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
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
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.