Posts Tagged nhs reform
More funding for hospitals with happy patients
Posted by Laura Brereton in Health on 14/09/2009
Health Secretary Andy Burnham is preparing to announce plans to reward hospitals for high patient satisfaction, according to The Guardian. Potential ratings under consideration include those on the bedside manner of doctors, cleanliness of lavatories, quality of food, and helpfulness of receptionists. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomorrow’s Doctors and YCfM
Posted by Laura Brereton in Health on 07/09/2009
Embedded deep within the sub-bullet points of the General Medical Council’s updated version of Tomorrow’s Doctors—the publication outlining the skills, abilities and values UK medical schools must instil in students before graduation—is something especially significant. Read the rest of this entry »
How Hospitals Can Survive the Budgets Cuts
Posted by Laura Brereton in Health on 10/08/2009
England’s 115 foundation trust hospitals have been told by Monitor, the organisation responsible for their regulation, that the three-year budget forecasts they submitted are overly optimistic, considering the NHS’s tightened funding in the coming years. They have now been given until the end of September to re-submit their financial plans. Read the rest of this entry »
Quite like heaven?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 29/11/2007
In an important new report for Civitas, Nick Seddon argues compellingly that it is out of respect for the founding principles of the NHS – to provide universal and comprehensive health care – not to mention better care, that it must embrace fundamental, market-based, reform.
Described in a foreword by Mr Bernard Ribeiro, CBE, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, as ‘an excellent analysis’, Seddon picks apart the recent NHS reforms and shows:
Civitas Health Unit
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 03/05/2007
Since 2000, the NHS has witnessed a huge, and unprecendented, increase in funding. Public spending on the NHS has risen from £46.0bn in 2000/1 to an estimated £84.4bn in 2006/7, representing an increase of 83.5% in cash terms and over 50% in real terms.
This has been accompanied by reforms that on the one hand point towards a more patient-centred and primary-care led ‘internal-market’ for healthcare. Primary Care Trusts and GP practices now purchase secondary care from NHS Trusts (or private providers) on behalf of patients, who can exercise some choice over where they are treated. NHS Trusts will be paid for the work they carry out; money should in theory follow the patient. But on the other hand, the government has created a whole raft of central bodies to provide ‘the impetus for reform’ and, more often than not, set targets that NHS bodies are expected to meet on anything from patient records to waiting times.