As I arrived in Salzburg at Schloss Leopoldskron, globally prominent because of is role in the “Sound of Music,” I wondered if it would be possible for people from 29 countries, ranging from Uganda to the USA, to hold mutually useful conversations on health system reform. In particular, would a hard boiled, cynical, globe trotting […]
England is said to have 30 hospitals that are failing so badly that they may be taken over by the private sector. So there might be a lot of interest in a case study posted this week on the Health Foundation website that describes how a major academic hospital in Boston was saved from failure. […]
The King’s Fund paper “How cold will it be?” published in July 2009, discussed three financial scenarios for the NHS. The toughest was a 2% reduction in funding for 3 consecutive years. Of course that hasn’t happened, has it? The comprehensive spending review protected the NHS with a 0.1% increase, an option described in the […]
Although undoubtedly a fine publication, I think it is probably fair to say that it is not every day that the Journal of Medical Ethics puts in an appearance in a major work of contemporary fiction. Imagine my delight then, mid-way through Philip Roth’s torrential late novel Sabbath’s Theater, when the following appeared, attributed to […]
The number of diseases seems to be increasing dramatically with the arrival of conditions like social phobia, attention deficit disorder, chronic procrastination syndrome, and female sexual arousal disorder. Now this progression has reached its logical conclusion—with the proposal that happiness be classified as a disease. […]
If geriatricians had a pound for every time an adult child said that it wasn’t safe for their older parent to go home from hospital, their financial standing would improve enormously. It is an almost daily occurrence for geriatricians to mediate between older adults (who tend to value independence and embrace risk) and their adult […]
The reports that NICE is to be stripped of its powers to recommend against NHS use of drugs prompts questions about the Coalition Government’s health plans. Some indication of what these might be can be gleaned from the current “Consultation on the cancer drugs fund” and its linked impact assessment. By having to frame the […]
Informed consent has degenerated from an important and respectful act to a cumbersome, meaningless regulatory process that impedes research. That bluntly is the opinion of many researchers, and so a large group of them started listening with scepticism to a talk on informed consent from a bioethicist from the National Institutes of Health, Joseph Millum, […]
We are all more interested in the conflicts of interests of others than we are in our own, and editors are no exception. Having preached to authors and reviewers on conflict of interest, editors have largely neglected their own, but an important and fascinating paper in PloS Medicine shows how editors can be exposed to […]
Now that I am out of the closet about being a Cochrane reviewer, I will further come clean on the fact that I have attended the Cochrane Colloquia for the last three years as well as the last Campbell Colloquium held in Oslo in 2009. More than just a fabulous networking opportunity, the meetings represent the […]