All Policy articles – Page 215
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News
DH appoints autism adviser
Elaine Hill has been appointed as the specialist adviser for autism at the Department of Health.
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News
Maternity services growth fails to keep up with births
Maternity services faced growing pressure on capacity and staff last year despite government commitments to improve safety and choice.Newly released reports from regional midwifery officers show midwife numbers in many areas failed to keep up with the rising birth rate in 2007-08.
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Comment
Mark Goldman on a happy ending for NHS top-ups
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin. Once upon a time there was an elusive apostrophe. He lived in the NHS and was always causing mischief with his friend 'patients'. Together they would hide from the managers and clinicians.
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News
Scotland unveils cancer care plan
The Scottish government has published an action plan for improving cancer care and support.
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News
Bill Moyes warns against clawing back foundation trust surpluses
The head of Monitor has warned it would be 'completely bizarre' for the Department of Health to claw back foundation trust surpluses.Executive chairman Bill Moyes' comments came after HSJ revealed the Treasury was considering holding on to all or part of the surplus to ease the financial crisis.
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HSJ Knowledge
NHS rationing: the time of their lives
An ageing population means the question of whether some patients have more right to treatment than others will increasingly cause financial and moral conflicts. So whose quality-adjusted life year is it anyway, asks Alison Moore
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News
Over 90 per cent of patients treated within 18 weeks, new figures show
Referral to treatment times for August show that 90.3 per cent of admitted patients and 95.3 per cent of non-admitted patients completed their journey within the 18-week target.
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Comment
Media Watch: patient referrals
A US pilot sent to shoot down a UFO on a dark night in East Anglia some 50 years ago only to find nothing but, well, dark night, recalled in Monday's Guardian that it 'was like being a one-legged man sent into an ass-kicking contest'.
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Comment
Michael White on keeping patients out of hospital
It is not often you read of a new controversy in the Sunday papers and stumble on what looks like the answer in Hansard before bedtime. It happened this week. Here goes.
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News
Hold-up: Treasury eyes NHS surplus
The Treasury is in talks with the Department of Health over the NHS's £1.7bn surplus and when the service will be able to spend it.
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News
New formula spells end for minimum practice income guarantee
GPs and NHS Employers have agreed a formula that could phase out the minimum practice income guarantee. The guarantee has been strongly criticised, as it means GP practices suffer no financial penalty if patients choose to go elsewhere.
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HSJ Knowledge
Dying: open debate on the last taboo
Dying is a part of the life cycle yet many health professionals are afraid to discuss it. We must start talking about this if we are to give patients the best chance of a good death
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Leader
Constitutional rights in danger of smothering local NHS values
The proposed NHS constitution is drowning in a sea of indifference.
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News
NHS constitution fails to fire public's imagination
The NHS constitution is failing to attract public interest amid criticism that it is unclear about patients' rights and will not abolish the postcode lottery.
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Comment
Nigel Edwards on NHS exceptional case panels
Over the summer no media report on the state of the NHS was complete without mention of the postcode lottery in treatments, either through challenges to primary care trust exceptional case panels or the perceived ethics of the current rules on top-ups.
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News
Trusts too optimistic over annual health check scores
Some trusts are disputing their annual health check scores as figures show many were highly over-optimistic about their performance.
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Leader
Annual health check: pedantry gets the better of common sense
The Healthcare Commission is under attack. In the aftermath of the annual health check, its data has been fired on by trusts and the Department of Health.
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News
Hospital security fears after patient suicide
Northampton General Hospital is reviewing its security procedures after a patient shot himself dead on a ward.
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News
Scotland moves to stop GP 'commercialisation'
The Scottish government is today launching a consultation on the eligibility criteria for providers of GP services in a bid to stop the 'commercialisation' of GP practices.
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News
Patients get right to self-refer to physiotherapists
Patients will be able to self-refer to allied health professionals such as physiotherapists, speech therapists, dieticians and podiatrists, health secretary Alan Johnson has announced.The British Medical Association warned that although the move could improve access it could lead to services being overstretched.