‘Serving the Public?’ Media, Politics and The NHS
We have medical programmes to suit our every taste. Currently viewers can choose high drama with Channel 4s’ ’24 Hours in A & E‘ filming around the clock in Kings College Hospital, London or everyday stories of sore throats, stress...
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NHS 111 – Improving efficiency or destroying the ‘brand’?
NHS 111 need not necessarily be the calamity it has become. This calamity is driven more by financial under investment than a more pervasive crisis of care.
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Is skewing the data any different to juking the stats?
Media representations about NHS scandals focus on ‘bad apple’ professionals, and ignore the crises caused by current government policy, and the commercialisation of UK statutory healthcare.
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On trying to do therapy when your patient has no food or money
Last week, I called someone I was due to see that afternoon to remind them I was coming round (standard practice in learning disability, and good practice in general). ‘How are you?’, I asked. ‘A bit pissed off’, they said....
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For integration, read fragmentation
Integrated care as a panacea for all that ails the NHS masks wider processes of privatisation in the English healthcare system. Debate about the shape and tenor of integrated care is needed to reverse the ongoing marketisation of statutory English...
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Letter from America
A visit to the ‘land of freedom’ with its catastrophic health care costs is a warning not to be complacent about the NHS … Where it’s brushed against poison ivy, Kelly’s skin is badly blistered, a rash slowly spreading down...
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A&E crisis is a symptom, not a cause
Contrary to popular belief, attendances have stayed static since 2003 in what the Department of Health calls type 1 units – the big hospital-based A&E departments. Indeed, not a week passes without a news story about A&E departments: seven threatened...
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Twitter analytics, sociology and #SaveOurNHS
The global interconnected network of computers known as the Web offers opportunities for new forms of social analysis – not least the possibilities offered by ‘big data’ – digital data sets so large they require novel computer processing and software....
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Action and Foresight Sociologies – Urgent!
At the BSA’s Medical Sociology Group conference in York this year the ‘Cost of Living’ group (@Cost_ofLiving) organized a symposium to address the coalition government’s attack on the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It was a privilege, if a...
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From “doctor knows best” to “market knows best”
We are consistently told by this government that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient and that the private sector offers much better value for money for the ‘Great British Taxpayer’. The evidence for this is scant to say the...
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Obamacare, Individualism v Solidarity, and the NHS
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came into force in the USA in June 2012 to regulate health insurance and curtail some of the worst practices engaged in by the for profit health care industry. The aim was to make affordable...
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“crisis, what crisis?”