The Invisible Hand

These huge hands have become very fashionable – seen most recently by me in Birmingham New Street station concealed for the most part behind the backs of rather embarrassed and giggling teenagers presumably there to give the newly arrived a clue in the chaos of the current works how to find their... 
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Too good to be true – says who?

Sainsbury’s has come up with the bright idea of offering GPs free premises in their stores or on their property.  Currently there are 27 such surgeries across the country and there are more to come.  The Man from Sainsbury’s has been asking people what they think of it so far: “Customers... 
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Don’t poison the wells of public engagement

Is Lewisham Hospital a victim of what might be called “mission creep through the back door”?  It certainly looks  like it.  It was never part of the remit for sorting out the bankrupt and non-viable South London Hospital Trust (SLH) – which in retrospect should never have been created... 
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Dispensing Futurehealth – from vision to action

James Fearnley has lots of ideas and unlike the rest of us, he generally does something about them. He lives his projects – from the survey unit of Which?, the Reichian orgone box in the corner of the Kennington flat, the pottery in Suffolk and then Yorkshire: the Mustard Seed co-operative in Whitby... 
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CCGs “hungry for metrics” to measure engagement

What do you get from in-depth interviews with clinical, management and lay leaders of six 2nd and 3rd wave CCGs about embedding patient and public involvement in their work and what they need to achieve this?  Here’s the answer we  came up with when we did just that in tandem with InHealth Associates.... 
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Doing the right thing wrong

When in doubt about health, “who you gonna call?”  It should be NHS 111. But this communication from the new Wandsworth CCG, launching the new service in mid December makes me doubt that the public will understand what it is and how to use it.   We’ve commented before on the need to “do... 
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Data “sense makers” needed – why not patients?

The big hit of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics was undoubtedly the “games makers”.  Those big purple pointy fingers were everywhere.  We need something like that – knowledgeable, readily identifiable, accessible, customer facing –  to help people through the coming data deluge... 
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The Slough of Representativeness

“Representativeness” is an ugly word.  I stumble over pronouncing it. I don’t like hearing it, especially in the mouths of people in the new CCGs who are supposed to be taking patient and public involvement seriously.  It signals what I think is a “thought affliction”... 
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Integration for whose benefit?

It’s great to learn from the HSJ’s “CCG Barometer” that CCG leaders are up for change and particularly enthusiastic for integration. So are we, once there is a clear answer to a key question: “who is meant to benefit from integration?” It can’t be only, or even... 
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Stormy Autumn Newsletter

It wasn’t that Storm Sandy was particularly violent. Apparently it was just big and slow and coincided with cold air from the Arctic and some very high tides. It was the combination of factors that hit so hard. Just like the NHS? The NHS is big and slow – it covers the whole country and seems... 
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