Archive for category Health
All I want for Christmas is an escape route, an ice-pick and a moisturizing lip balm
Posted by Annaliese Briggs in Environment, Family, Marriage and the Culture, Health on 17/12/2010
Bing Crosby may have dreamt of a white Christmas; but, as festivities approach a climax, bringing with it a band of rain, sleet and snow, the reality of spending another year cooped up at home like a turkey in a battery farm rapidly moves down the list of seasonal aspirations.
An innovation or a waste of money?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 09/11/2010
This makes me laugh… a foundation trust that is prepared to think outside the box. An innovation: putting cancer patients up in hotels, rather than in hospitals: saving some £200 a night, dramatically improving patient experience, no doubt reducing the chance of catching some nasty infection and, from reports of consultants there (to me, admittedly) significantly shifting power from doctor to patient… and get slammed by the TPA for wasting taxpayers money. Hmmmm… maybe a better price for the hotel bed could be negotiated (though it includes fast emergency links to the hospital etc.) but, come on, I know what I’d want as a patient and it’s not the hospital.
A better direction for NHS commissioning?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 29/10/2010
Yesterday, Civitas, in conjunction with the Manchester Business School, published this report, looking at the relationship between the size and performance of commissioners in the NHS. It found none, although both the domestic and international trend is towards larger commissioners, covering larger populations: the direct opposite to what is likely to happen under the Coalition Government’s White Paper on the NHS with the proposed move from PCTs to GP consortia. The evidence, in other words, doesn’t provide much in the way of support for the reforms to commissioning: reforms that are likely to be costly with uncertain outcomes.
Refusing treatment: the NHS and market-based reform
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 04/10/2010
Today, Civitas publishes the findings of a year-long study into the effectiveness of the market in the NHS: whether and why it has driven the performance of providers as was intended.
Based on in-depth interviews with executives at NHS (foundation) trusts, PCTs, practice-based commissioners and private sector providers across three health economies in England, the study finds isolated examples of the market having significant positive effects on quality, efficiency, innovation and patient-focus.
Baby On Board
Posted by Annaliese Briggs in Education, Health on 27/09/2010
“For two marks, spell and define ‘pre-eclampsia,’ and a bonus point for anyone who can explain the difference between a breech and normal delivery,” instructs a midwife from a blackboard to a small class of two pregnant girls and a young boy who would otherwise be sat outside the headteacher’s office (the absentees were either suffering from morning sickness or male and in a maths lesson).
Mergers offer no guarantee of ‘savings’ for NHS
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 23/09/2010
The HSJ revealed yesterday that eight London Primary Care Trusts, under guidance from NHS London and the Department of Health, are to effectively merge to ‘save £48m’. This comes after Sir David Nicholson, NHS Chief Executive, last week wrote to NHS managers effectively encouraging Strategic Health Authorities, such as NHS London, to ‘direct’ PCTs to share management functions and merge in all but name.
Such a move is understandable in light of the Coalition Government’s plans to disband PCTs from 2013 and hand over commissioning powers to new consortia of GPs, but is likely to add to the chaos of reorganisation rather than diminish it. It may be effective in London, where PCTs have for sometime collaborated in the commissioning of secondary care, but elsewhere,where they have not, past evidence suggests big problems: reduced financial control and lower quality care.