Archive for category Health
Probophilia
Posted by James Gubb in Education, Health, Politics on 18/08/2010
In this article, written for Civitas, Dr Peter Davies and Dr Adrian Kenny, two GPs from Yorkshire, draw on an amusing medical analogy – probophilia – to describe a painful affliction across UK public services today – not least the NHS. ’The probophile’, Davies and Kenny write, ‘ places false confidence in numbers , and uses these as his focus for justification of activity, whilst losing sight of what the organisation is actually set up to deliver. The sufferer is either oblivious to his affliction, or if aware falls into learned helplessness and just does what the organisation demands (and sometimes cynically pockets the cash). Fundamentally it is based on the ability of spreadsheets to analyse data without any matching ability going into primary thought about what data is being measured or why it counts for anything’. Have a read: it is unnervingly widespread and surely represents one of the biggest challenges the Coalition Government faces.
The NHS: going Dutch?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 16/08/2010
Good article in the FT today by Nick Timmins on possible future direction of NHS… competing health insurers (or GP consortia) along the lines of the acclaimed Dutch health system. For a bit more flesh on the bones as to how such a transformation could be achieved have a read of this book and article published by Civitas 3 years ago. This article by Gwyn Bevan of the LSE is also worth a scan.
Narayana Hrudayalaya: a lesson for the NHS
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 11/08/2010
Long has this blog argued the benefits of increased specialism in the way health care is delivered; that is, for example, for focused centres for operating on particular conditions and disease-specific networks that treat and help people manage chronic diseases. Evidence, contained particularly in Clayton Christensen’s brilliant book The Innovator’s Prescription, has long suggested such centres offer better and cheaper health care than the 19th century district general hospital model of every hospital trying to do everything. Senior clinicians also appear to agree.
Free milk hasn’t worked
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education, Health on 09/08/2010
Fairly extraordinarily, the white stuff at the top of the contentious topics list has proven to be milk. Barely out of the ‘breast is/isn’t best’ debate reignited by a militant supermodel, and we’re onto the next milk row: free milk for under-fives.
The Big Care Society
Posted by Zenobe Reade in Health on 06/08/2010
The government’s rhetoric of the ‘big society’ dominated the comment pages of late July: discussion focused on how the concept could be substantiated, on what alchemy would realise the Conservative’s envisaged utopia. Yet no one questioned what this philosophy – to save money, to deliver better solutions and local ownership – would imply for the biggest social problem of our era.
A dog’s breakfast or radical reform?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 13/07/2010
Yesterday, Civitas released a brief commentary on the NHS White Paper published by the Coalition government. I’m happy to repeat congratulations to the Coalition government on moves to introduce greater competition in the NHS by expanding choice and supporting a genuine ’social market’ through the introduction of meaningful competition law.
Recent evidence on the impact of the competition that already exists in the NHS suggests this is the right course of action to drive value in tight financial times.
However, I want to devote the time and space of this blog to analysis of the more fundamental proposals on the purchasing side of things. That is, moves to transfer responsibility for commissioning from PCTs to GPs. A number of concerns: