NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans
Local NHS areas have til June to try and submit convincing plans to dramatically improve healthcare whilst saving large sums of cash. But the decision making is secretive and dysfunctional. Predictions that the NHS is facing disaster have been issued...
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On Brexit, Hamsters & Hungry Pythons!
As we move towards the referendum on membership of the EU, British citizens face a bewildering array of claims and counterclaims. The conventional wisdom is that the voting public will favour the ‘status quo bias‘. Unfortunately, we seem to be...
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A ‘tour de force’ of obfuscation
A note on Sustainability and Transformation Plans in your brand new NHS Obfuscation is the obscuring of intended meaning in communication, making the message confusing, willfully ambiguous, or harder to understand. It may be intentional or unintentional (although the former...
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Jeremy Hunt’s solution for cash-strapped NHS trusts – cut 375 nurses each?
Jeremy Hunt talks of patient safety – but his NHS cash ‘solutions’ risk repeating the mistakes of Mid-Staffordshire The systematic and deliberate cash starvation of the NHS by Tory-led governments since 2010 has opened up an increasingly visible crisis, now...
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2+2 equals 5
The unilateral imposition of a new contract is the latest instalment in the ongoing junior doctors’ dispute. This is the most recent development in a long line of NHS reforms which stretch to the limits the standards of credibility, objectivity...
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Is the NHS really suffering a crisis of compassion?
When Robert Francis published his report on the ‘systemic failings’ identified in Mid-Staffordshire in 2013 the report was a damning indictment of management practices and unsafe staffing policies. But is also raised concerns about a lack of compassion on the...
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Going Private
Should we worry about the rise of fee-for-service general practice? Paying for GP services is back in the news. New models of private health care are being launched, and commentators are calling for NHS patients to make co-payments to visit...
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Why cutting spending on public health is a false economy
Public health spending is under threat. This despite the fact that increasing investment in prevention is the foundation of a sustainable NHS. Cutting these budgets is alarmingly short-termist and indicates a fundamental failure of the government to understand the changing nature...
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Why do older British ex-pats trust Spanish health care?
When we went to talk to British ex-pats who’d retired to Spain, it was not surprising to find them enjoying the ‘good life’. Sun, sea and the ready community of other British retirees all made Mallorca or the Costa Blanca...
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On euphemism & sheer cloudy vagueness: the case of tax credits
In his celebrated essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell talks about politicians calculated use of purposively vague language. Last week’s vote on tax credit reform, if you listen to Tory commentators, has precipitated a constitutional crisis in the UK....
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Economising the social; a comment on the utility of social value
There is a prevailing policy imperative to produce evidence about the social impact of public spending interventions. Whilst on the face of it this may appear to be a sensible development, the ubiquity of notions like social value, social enterprise,...
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An NHS gone rogue?