All Health Service Journal articles in Opinion – Page 9
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Comment
Andrew Jones on aligning incentives
'After a few cycles in the policy washing machine, you would have thought we would all have come out looking the same colour and trying to iron out the same creases'
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Comment
Adrian Ashurst on making a real difference
'In order to make a real difference, managers and staff need to make a personal commitment to their customers. It is worth remembering that we are all customers - we should be prepared to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.'
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Comment
Whitehall shake-out rumbles more change
'The DoH will not comment on whether posts such as director-general of commissioning will disappear rather than be filled, but is it likely that much of the spate of high-profile leavers, so far and to come, is part of a coming restructuring.'
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Comment
Pioneers race on but progress is measured by the backmarkers
'It is notable that not one of the 13 early achiever sites comes from NHS London or NHS East of England'
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Comment
Primary care: what will improve discharge summaries?
GPs are complaining this week that they are 'plagued by delays' and errors in the quality of discharge summaries many of them are sent by hospitals (see news story). According to an NHS Alliance survey, almost 60 per cent say clinical care has been compromised as a result and almost ...
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Comment
A 'fixed' financial system will bring a legacy of control
One of the worst-kept secrets of the last few months has been that the much-despised resource accounting and budgeting system, which penalised trusts twice for their deficits, would be scrapped at the end of the financial year.
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News
Separating provision and commissioning
Jennifer Taylor's piece entitled 'PMs unit pushes more, but 'fairer', competition' was an important news article however does raise a fundamental question about whether entrenching a more explicit separation of commissioner and provider functions is indeed the right policy.
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News
Asset-sharing will limit the scope for dispute between the NHS and local government
'The commissioning process must have an injection of public involvement at every stage but particularly at the very beginning when need is assessed'
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Comment
Consistency and agreement are needed to spread success
'The MPs' committee calls for lessons learned from the turnaround programme to be shared. But evidence for its effectiveness is opaque'.
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Comment
Ruth Harrison responds to Healthcare Commission on C-Dif
I am writing with reference to your article on Healthcare Commission.standards published on the 15 March 2007 on page 5 that referred to me by name.
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Comment
Mental health farce cannot go on
The present deplorable state of affairs in mental health facilities is easily explained. Between 1970 and 1999 some 87,000 mental health beds were closed, according to the Department of Health.
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News
Ipswich's spinal success story
I applaud the work undertaken in Ipswich in transforming services for people with spinal pain. It demonstrates the real success of multi-disciplinary working across organisations' boundaries in quality and efficiency of care.
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News
Inequalities: the plain truth
Thank you Ruth Hussey for your plain speaking about tackling inequality. Commissioners need to take note, but we need to innovate not replicate.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: life on Mars
‘The ambulance would be at least an hour and that they should do what first aid they could until the paramedics arrived’
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News
With friends like Milburn...
I have some sympathy with the chief executives of acute trusts surveyed in your report. The Department of Health.may end up paying a high price for its game of 'central credit and local blame'.
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Comment
There's life in patient forums yet
The patient forum concerned in the North Eastern Derbyshire primary care trust.versus Pam Smith, is far from dead or in danger of passing away ('moribund' is your term for it).
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Comment
Is flu testing really necessary?
I have to question whether the Department of Health's flu pandemic testing is really the best use of UK.taxpayers' money.
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Comment
Doctors have feelings too
I read Anna Donald's article on doctors' motives with interest (opinion, page 17, 8 March 2007). In terms of what doctors need, it is about finding an acceptable means of emotional release.
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Comment
Dispatching the New Labour ideal
As a participant in the Dispatches programme The NHS - Where did all the money go?, may I offer the following reflections to your correspondent Donald.Reid. He is right that there have been improvements in key areas, including waiting times.
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Comment
New day, same old reforms
I haven't had any first hand experience of this latest round of organisational change in the English NHS, having left it to work in Scotland some years ago in horror at the Tory internal market 'reforms' that resulted in the mass-sacking of almost everyone I respected in NHS administration.