Whose consortium is it anyway? – our take on lay involvement in authorisation

How can local lay people be engaged with the authorisation process for commissioning consortia?  The Bill is silent on this point (which speaks volumes in itself), so we thought we’d fly a kite for our thoughts  on how the National Commissioning Board (NCB) authorisation process with consortia... 
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Just saying “no” won’t do

Yesterday about 85 people from around Wandsworth gathered with our pathfinder consortium leaders to discuss what good commissioning and meaningful patient and public participation could and should look like locally.  There is no doubt local people are keen to be involved from the outset in the changes... 
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Citizen Concerns – Health trails Economy

Just a reminder that there is a world outside health with stuff going on that worries people far more than Health Issues      Read More →

Controlling the NHS – a new prescription for A. Lansley

We think we have found a solution that will bring the NHS under control. Nature magazine has picked up some work done by people at MIT and Northeastern University which shows how to control complex networks. Their computer model can take a look at complex networks and reveal which are the critical points... 
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LINks to Health Watch – hey presto?

Does it matter that England’s Local Involvement Networks (LINks) are in a transition period lasting at least twelve months to turn themselves into shiny, new organisations called Local Health Watch? Assuming we can avoid a re-run of discontinuity, demoralisation and loss of organisational memory... 
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Patients as customers Prof Field?

Just spent a frustrating couple of hours watching a live Q&A session on the NHS reforms and possible changes to the Health and Social Care Bill with Prof Steve Field (who started off by being an hour late arriving at the Guardian office venue).   How depressing to hear him more or less dismiss patient... 
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HMS Health and Social Care Bill – dead in the water?

The effects of recent broadsides of scorn and abuse appear to have dismasted HMS HSC Bill. What happens next?  Will the whole Health and Social Care Bill be shoved over the side?   Despite the shrill noises off, in and outside of Parliament, I think not.  There is wreckage on the deck, but the risk... 
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RCGP gags patients and public

We did warn people that the NHS was too important to be left to the doctors.  Now with the publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners’ memorandum of advice (aka demands) to the Prime Minister about what must be changed (or else?) in the Health and Social Care Bill, we see more... 
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Signing up for Complaints

Just before the nation closed down for an extended period to enjoy a heady cocktail mix of secular and religious celebration, eight of the G&G (the Great and the Good) as seen from the perspective of the corner of the universe we work in, signed up to a declaration that meaningful, comparable complaints... 
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