Not at the heart of neurological commissioning

MAC submitted a memorandum of evidence to the Public Accounts Committee for its session on 18 January 2012 considering services for people with long term neurological conditions. Read it here.  It reflects our views on the shortcomings around neurological commissioning and integration of services for... 
[Continue reading]

Rx: Urgent -get out of the Dark Ages

Future Forum 2 – not a sequel but the next round of recommendations from the great and the good that began last summer – has reported, with further insights on integrated services (along with information, by far the most important theme), education and training for the healthcare workforce, information... 
[Continue reading]

Integration Holy Grail could be wishful thinking

Integrated services reflecting individual needs and marshalling skills and resources across the health and care sectors for the right people in the right place at the right time.  That’s what we should have now after 60+ years of a nationally funded health service.  But we don’t have it... 
[Continue reading]

GP Federations: win-win for patients, public and frogs

The healthcare trade papers report that the RCGP and BMA (GPC) are pushing the GP Federation idea again, this time as a way to escape what they see as the problems with the commissioning reforms and the vulnerability of Clinical Commissioning Groups.  We welcome that as something that GPs can unite... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

Next Page »