The September Newsletter: Births, Babies, Bathwater

A frenzy of procreation and parturition has characterised the MAC Partners’ and the nation’s life over the summer. I am exercising a grandfatherly role to Samuel who is 3 months old now, Mrs Cameron has someone extra to lug back from her hols, the new Government is experiencing a wave of... 
[Continue reading]

Ownership Matters in Foundation Trusts

Creating “the largest and most vibrant social enterprise sector in the world” particularly by giving more freedom to Foundation Trusts is a key objective of the policy blitz known as Liberating the NHS (in England).   Mr Lansley has also said FTs would have ‘characteristics’ of social enterprise,... 
[Continue reading]

The Wrappings on Local Health Watch

Thanks to Jeremy Taylor for raising in a comment on the LINks and Healthwatch post the thorny issue of Local Health Watch (LHW) and the proposed relationship to local authority funders.  He said: HealthWatch should be funded through local authorities but not accountable to them. How can you be accountable... 
[Continue reading]

That’s the way to do it?

A debate is ramping up in the GP press – Pulse online is required viewing – about how (or even if) GP commissioners can make savings by doing things better vis a vis secondary care (aka hospitals) than PCTs generally manage to achieve.  Everyone knows that acute trusts are past masters at maximising... 
[Continue reading]

Liberation root and branch style

Liberating the NHS the new Health White Paper on “equity and excellence” could turn out to be, in Chris Ham’s prophetic words today, the “biggest organisational upheaval in the health service, probably, since its inception”.  This is about England only of course: the contrast with... 
[Continue reading]

Stronger and more accountable Foundation Trusts needed to avoid “Staffordshire 2”

At least 400 died needlessly “These patients were not simply numbers: they were husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandparents. They were people who entered Stafford Hospital and rightly expected to be well cared for and treated. Instead, many suffered horrific experiences that will... 
[Continue reading]

« Previous Page