Reducing Complaint Escalation in the NHS

Too many NHS complaints which could be resolved locally get referred up before local resolution has really been tried.   Andrew Craig is sure that introducing an independent lay voice at local level can help. The MAC Partnership has submitted a paper to the Clwyd/ Hart complaints review making a case... 
[Continue reading]

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... 
[Continue reading]

Time to FaceTime the practice nurse

Roy Lilley nailed the problem in his usual way:  I think it is only a matter of time before the public starts to say; ‘Why do I have to queue on the phone to get an appointment with my GP?’ ‘Tell me why I have to have a day off to speak to someone I can talk to on Skype from my desk?’... 
[Continue reading]

Habemus Epistola Pascha

Perhaps the time is overdue for the eminences of the national religion that is our NHS to retire into a conclave and finally decide who is in charge. We won’t be holding our breath for the white smoke – those of us left with functioning lungs. We will have staggered away – our walking... 
[Continue reading]

Complaints Too Difficile for NHS

The duo of Ann Clwyd MP and Professor Hart, a Francis Enquiry advisor, are tasked with coming up with recommendations on complaint handling in the NHS and the MAC Partners have sent them an email wishing them well. We added a link to our complaints report dating back to 2006 or so. I was reminded that... 
[Continue reading]

notalwaysaande, get it?

On first glance, I certainly didn’t get it.  I thought notalwaysaande was a word in a foreign language I didn’t recognise. Sort of Dutch, kind of maybe?  But then I saw that it was part of a web address.  Staring at it harder, I eventually deconstructed it to read “not always A&E”... 
[Continue reading]

Best Blog Awards – A Toot on Our Own Trumpet

We wrote almost 60 blogs in 2012 and we commemorate some of the most memorable with our very own BEST BLOG AWARDS. The January newsletter with which we kicked off 2012, eschewed prediction, preferring to go off on a riff about a Goon show, Simon Gray the late playwright, finishing with a reference to... 
[Continue reading]

December Newsletter – Vale Val

December saw the retirement after 10 years with MAC of founding partner Val Moore. Actually Val’s contribution predates MAC’s establishment in 2003 because as early as mid-2001 she and Andrew Craig were working as a team developing the NCC’s Stronger Voice consumer representative training package... 
[Continue reading]

Phlebotomy Phiasco Turnaround

Is it really more than two years since I last had a blood test? I set off at a dark and snowy hour (first of this winter in London) for my blood test at Dulwich Community Hospital. I got half way on my two bus journey and realised I had left the test form at home. Returned home (still snowing); arrived... 
[Continue reading]

Not Demanding Enough?

Interesting to see Ben Page writing about the NHS in the King’s Fund Time to Think Differently slot. In addition to making his usual point that people are more worried about the economy than the NHS, he says: one of the challenges for the NHS is that expectations of it are in some ways not high... 
[Continue reading]

Next Page »