Involvement sell-out gathers pace

Most patients will give a big yawn to the 2012-13 NHS Operating Framework for England. Unwise. Buried in an appendix is the game plan for completing the sell-out of genuine patient and public involvement.  This started in the summer with the launch from NHS CEO David Nicholson of the innocuously named... 
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Decommissioning lessons: accept the anger – and the impact

If you are sitting comfortably, then we’ll begin with the lesson on “decommissioning for GPs”.  When resources are finite –shrinking in real terms given NHS inflation – commissioning to achieve quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) can only happen in parallel with decommissioning... 
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A halting step towards choice of GP

Remember all the trumpeting about being able to choose GPs, being able to control of our own records and all those good things  that were just around the corner when Mr Lansley announced the liberation of the NHS in England in mid 2010?  The public’s response to the consultation on being free... 
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Pulling strings at the NCB

While their Lordships sweated over amendments to the the bells and whistles juggernaut that is the Health and Social Care Bill, in another part of the Westminster Village, Chair-designate at the National Commissioning Board (NCB), Prof Malcolm Grant, told the Health Select Committee’s pre appointment... 
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Simple things don’t have to be difficult

In an overkill 70 page missive to his colleagues in the Lords about the merits of the “reformed reforms” in the Health and Social Care Bill, Earl Howe helpfully restated that the user and public involvement duties of Section 242 of the NHS Act will not be – in his phrase – “diluted”.   That’s... 
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The biggest something-or-other in the world

Remember the Government’s  rather breathless aspiration back in the summer of 2010 to turn the NHS into the biggest social enterprise sector in the world?   If you work for Central Surrey Healthcare -  the social enterprise owned and run by 770 entrepreneurial community nurses, therapists and... 
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Authorisation about us, but without us

Small may be beautiful, but “size matters”. That’s is the inescapable conclusion of the news that 1 in 7 CCGs (clinical commissioning groups, formerly known as GP consortia) are too small for authorisation.  Health Service Journal reckons that 47 CCGs have fewer than 50,000 patients; some... 
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The throttling season

The dog days of August have been anything but torpid, and not just on the streets.  In the policy arena the Department of Health continued to tighten its grip around the throat of any meaningful patient and public involvement.   It’s the throttling season.  The most recent example was the launch... 
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The Big Beast sells out public involvement

The Big Beast in the NHS jungle Sir David Nicholson has decreed that the new PCT “clusters” will take responsibility for public involvement in the “shared operating model” the Department of Health released on 28th July.  ”Shared” in this sense means everyone doing things... 
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Pinhead dancing angels

In their defence, mediaeval scholastic philosophers never postulated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  If they had it would have made about as much sense as the debate about whether the NHS is  ”affordable” now or in the future.   “Affordability”, that inelegant neologism,... 
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