Have you déjà vu?

Add to your vocabulary with the rhyming phrase  l’arrière-goût de déjà vu – the after-taste of d v. This was my rather acid mood when contemplating what to say about the latest report from the Ombudsman on complaint handling in the NHS. Anything New to Say? Could there be anything... 
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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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Government Geek Squad for £1billion savings?

Making Government faster, smarter and more personal – sounds good? Even better when the promise is of savings and benefits of £1bn. This is the carrot dangled in the latest report from Policy Exchange on the opportunities for governments if they are better data users. The author sounds a note... 
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Evidence-based Policy Sham

We have been known in the past to bang on that patient involvement and engagement is more honoured in the word than the deed. Research studies, new guidelines, another collection of best practice – they pour endlessly from the presses and litter many a website including our own. We do have to... 
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Dull May Newsletter – GPs do something right: how boring is that?

We listed the names of 19 GP practices in a recent blog. – not the most riveting of reads but we believe in the dictum of noticing when people do it right. It is all too easy with the NHS and patient engagement to find fault – actually forget ‘find’ since that implies you have... 
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Give ‘em the DES cash – We name the Wandsworth practices who’ve earned it

Locally there is £407,000 worth of extra dosh available to the 46 Wandsworth GP practices this year and the same again next. All they have to do is demonstrate that they have got  some basic building blocks of patient engagement in place and they can collect £1.10 per patient.  Serious money in... 
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When Customer Satisfaction is just routine..

The Gas Man did cometh; Plusnet answered my question about not connecting to iPlayer; someone came to paint the front of the flat; John Lewis delivered on time and with the goods I ordered (at a cost considerably lower for both product and service than IKEA, btw). I feel nervous about admitting to this... 
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Data cut off or cut off data – making sense of it all

The news this week was of a 10 fold variation between PCTs (remember them?) in what the report called ‘major amputations’ for sufferers from diabetes. Not only diabetes sufferers – the rate of amputations was higher whatever your condition. You would appear to be least at risk from... 
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Mad March MAC Newsletter

We talked in the last newsletter of laughter and lunacy prompted by a 1956 Goon show and the goings on with the new NHS legislation. Things have got little better for patient or practitioner. The latest news is that Healthwatch is being stripped of its statutory status and so the patient voice is being... 
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Crowds of Patients Get It Right

It was in January 2006, exactly 6 years ago that I asked the question in a blog what the relevance of James Surowiecki’s ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ might be to the NHS. Now we have the data – patients generally get it right when they rate hospitals. The correlation is ‘far from... 
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