Alongside thousands of other trainees, over the past months I have been partaking in the core training application rigmarole. And it is exhausting. For example the process of compiling a portfolio of academic self worth for a 10 minute flick through, is simultaneously self assuring and depressing. The need for a quick and effective selection […]
Category: NHS
Martin Caldwell: My concerns about care.data
Over 212,000 people have signed a SumOfUs.org petition calling on the government and NHS England to think again about selling access to our personal medical information to private companies. Our members are very worried about the government’s proposed collection and sale of patient data held by GPs. They are deeply concerned about who will have […]
John Appleby: Care.data—your bits in their hands
Over the past few months there has been considerable debate and argument about plans by the NHS to collect and centrally collate details of individual patient records from general practice for the first time. Many have expressed worries about the care.data initiative and how potentially sensitive patient information will be used, who will have access […]
Clare Gerada: Why care.data will be transformational to the NHS
If I learnt anything about myself while being chair of Royal College of General Practitioners, it’s that I am not one to shy away from giving opinions that are out with the views of “establishment.” But even for me, it’s strange to find myself arguing against many of those whom I admire in the health […]
David Lock: Do CCGs have the power to pay out for past PCT NHS continuing care errors?
The NHS has paid out vast amounts—probably hundreds of millions of pounds—in recent years as a result of decisions that patients were not entitled to NHS Continuing Care (where the NHS meets the costs of a package of social care and accommodation outside a hospital). Mostly these are claims by relatives of deceased patients who […]
Richard Smith: Will digitisation transform the NHS as it has much else?
Digitisation of the NHS will both save and improve it believe Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for health, and Tim Kelsey, national director for patients and information at NHS England. Both were youthful, bubbly, and even charming as they did a double act last week at the Cambridge Health Network, although Kelsey had to perform […]
Elin Jones: Recruiting an additional 1000 doctors for Wales
In recent years the problems of appropriately staffing the NHS throughout all four nations have become more widely known, whether it is the impending timebomb of GP retirement, the problems highlighted by the Francis report in relation to safe staffing, or the challenges posed by the European Working Time Directive and stricter immigration controls. In […]
Catherine Foot: Can the Care Quality Commission live up to expectations?
This week marks one year since Robert Francis published his second report into failures of care at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust. Mid Staffs director of quality and patient experience, Julie Hendry, gave a moving presentation at a conference at the King’s Fund in November summarising the journey that the trust have been on since 2009, […]
Billy Boland on quality improvement at the NHS Leadership Academy
The first residential for the NHS Leadership Academy felt barely five minutes ago, so I balked as I realised how much there was to do for the next. The reading list and exercises laid out for me on the online campus disappeared off the bottom of my computer screen. An unwelcome yet horribly familiar feeling […]
David Lock: Should accident victims who get a payout be entitled to free NHS care?
At a time when NHS bodies are under more financial pressure than ever before there is one anomaly which is worth highlighting. Personal injury victims can be paid damages on the basis that they will claim the cost of private medical care, but then such a person is entitled to keep the damages and demand […]