Posts Tagged bureaucracy
What the NHS did on April Fool’s Day
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 02/04/2009
1st April. April Fool’s Day. A day for multiple press releases from the Department of Health. The new super-regulator, the Care Quality Commission comes into force. New Integrated Care Organisation (ICOs) pilots are announced. The Performance Framework is announced: minimum standards of quality, safety and financial management that patients can expect from the NHS. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are to be collected. The National Quality Board meets for the first time. A new, ‘simpler’, complaints system is introduced. And the payment framework for Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) starts life.
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Money matters
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 15/09/2008
The EU is eager to prove itself as a geo-political force, most recently by leading negotiations to appease the troubles between Russia and Georgia. (That is if you discount the genius of the original peace deal constructed to enable Russia to legally continue its military force…)
But there is certainly a new, closer-to-home, battle which the EU still has to negotiate its way out of – it’s the economy stupid!
Bureaucracy: the new psychiatric illness
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 04/07/2008
It was a theme that ran throughout Lord Darzi’s final report, published earlier this week. ‘High quality care cannot be mandated from the centre – it requires the unlocking of the talents of frontline staff….where change is led by clinicians and based on evidence of improved quality of care, staff who work in the NHS are energised by it and patients and the public more likely to support it’, he wrote. Never a truer word.
But this is precisely what the system doesn’t like to countenance.
IPPR’s school prescription: more management
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 07/05/2008
IPPR’s latest report, ‘Those Who Can’, accurately highlights many of the new pressures that are now impacting on teachers, including a greater demand for skilled school leavers in the economy, changes in family structure and even artificial pressures generated by political agendas. The funny thing is their solution for dealing with these pressures is not the common sense approach: to set teachers free from these bureaucratic and political demands so that they can deal with the genuine needs of children. Quite the opposite!
Sizes of bottles, lengths of bus journeys
Posted by Nick Cowen in European Union on 26/03/2008
The EU: is there anything it cannot regulate? As Cato alerts us, apparently not. This week a wine business faces costs of £30,000 to comply with one of latest petty regulations while a bus route has to be artificially cut in three in order to comply with another, pointlessly wasting passenger time.