All Primary care articles – Page 222

  • Comment

    Michael White on keeping patients out of hospital

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    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.

  • News

    Why a health service redesign hit the rocks

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    With controversial reconfiguration plans in Sussex appearing shelf-bound, Alison Moore looks at the lessons for other trusts and asks whether changes on that scale are just too unwieldy to succeed

  • News

    Hold-up: Treasury eyes NHS surplus

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    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.

  • News

    New formula spells end for minimum practice income guarantee

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    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.

  • News

    Patient choice at risk from healthcare monopolies

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    Primary care trusts may need to find new methods of protecting patient choice if integrated care organisations become monopoly healthcare providers.

  • Comment

    Nigel Edwards on NHS exceptional case panels

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    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.

  • News

    Alan Johnson orders trusts: cut waits for speech therapy

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    NHS organisations must work with allied health professionals to bring down 'unacceptable' waiting times for services such as speech therapy, health secretary Alan Johnson has told them.

  • News

    NHS absence from individual budget trials was 'missed opportunity'

    2008-10-23T09:00:00Z

    The failure to involve the NHS in individual budget pilots was a 'missed opportunity' and deeply regretted by the social services staff who took part.

  • Comment

    Lisa Rodrigues on the financial crisis and the NHS

    2008-10-20T01:00:00Z

    We live in strange and worrying times. As I write, another building society has been nationalised.

  • HSJ Knowledge

    Focusing on health inequalities

    2008-10-17T01:00:00Z

    Bristol primary care trust is using an enhanced equality impact assessment to reduce health inequalities by transforming the way it allocates funds

  • HSJ Knowledge

    Advice for PCTs on managing provider arms

    2008-10-17T01:00:00Z

    Managing PCT provider arms is not a straightforward matter, as Jeremy Roper explains

  • News

    NHS Alliance rallying cry for social enterprise

    2008-10-16T11:43:00Z

    The NHS Alliance has begun its annual conference in Bournemouth with a call to arms for the social enterprise movement.

  • News

    Treasury eyes hidden PCT surpluses

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    Increased demand for health services as recession bitesTwo-year timetable for service reconfiguration and investmentSurpluses vulnerable

  • HSJ Knowledge

    Widening gap in life expectancy

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    Inequalities in health are a key concern for health policy in all five countries of the UK and Ireland.

  • News

    Public LINks hit by delays in networking

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    Public and patient involvement in health and social care has been seriously set back by widespread delay in establishing local involvement networks, a report claims.

  • News

    City shockwaves threaten NHS budget

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    Economists are warning this week's£38bn rescue plan for UK banks creates a "structural hole" in public finances that will make NHS funding cuts and claw-backs inevitable.The government has insisted the bank bail-out will not affect public finances. A senior Treasury source said there were no plans to revisit the commitments ...

  • News

    GP practice fights PCT over branch surgery

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    A GP practice is fighting a primary care trust, claiming it stopped its planned branch surgery because it would compete with another new practice.

  • Comment

    Media Watch: binge drinking

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    Unlike so much else in the past seven days, the value of a drink is on the way up. The Department of Health's next attempt to reduce binge drinking will include curbs on free samples and happy hours, according to press reports.

  • News

    Foundations bear brunt of crisis

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    £7.5m lost in Icelandic banking collapseFears over the safety of surpluses from Treasury claw-backsBut opportunities for vertical integration

  • News

    Annual health check: quality leap sees PCTs drag behind

    2008-10-16T09:00:00Z

    More than half of NHS organisations are now providing excellent or good services, according to the third annual health check.But the annual assessment scores, published today by the Healthcare Commission, expose a widening gap between the performance of steadily improving trusts and floundering commissioners.The proportion offering excellent services has leapt ...