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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Would you recommend a trip to A&E?

Dan Wardle is our survey guru – who better to ask about the ‘recommend’ question now being put about in the NHS as a key measure of user satisfaction. We have in the past been fans of an approach that uses this question and now we need to know how it stands up under this latest glare... 
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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?’... 
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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... 
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Patients must stop being just “patients”

I agree with the NHS Alliance’s “Manifesto for Primary Care” when it says  that it is time “for a true primary care led NHS”.  Indeed it is and has been really since 1948.  But what their manifesto doesn’t seem to get is that sharing decisions with communities... 
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Moving engagement and governance on from Francis

This is our view about what the Francis Report should have said about patient and public involvement and governance, but didn’t.  Mr Francis could and should have gone further.   We support the general thrust of Francis, but we are concerned that what the report says about involvement/engagement... 
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Care plans or A&E – your choice

I had a revealing encounter with Sir David Nicholson this week in the grand surroundings of the Royal Society in SW1. National Voices hosted a smashing conference there on “patients as leaders: how people power will shape the new health and social care system”.  (@publicinvolve  reported... 
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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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I’m an Expert: You’re an Expert

“Both are experts”. This is the change we need to see in the relationship between patients and clinicians. Only then will patients become “far more active participants in decisions about their health and healthcare.” This is a core message from another round of consultation in... 
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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... 
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