Christian GP gives it away really
February 4th, 2012Observing behaviour rather than advice
January 31st, 2012Were Massive Reforms necessary to Save the NHS? No.
January 29th, 2012“Summary
Overall, we concluded that the NHS did not need a wholesale restructuring. We were also oncerned at the cost of the reforms, 2-3billion (Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy at Manchester Business School) in light of the Government wanting the NHS to save £20bn by 2015,
However, with much of the reorganisation underway despite the Health and Social Care Bill still being debated, our recommendations are to minimise the disruption to NHS patients and we hope that what emerges from the reforms helps deliver a more efficient, patient centred NHS that is sustainable long into the future.”
All Parliamentary Group on NHS report (PDF)
Mind you, I thought the tumour of management was destroying it. Alas, I don’t see a reduction occurring, planned, or likely.
NHS: Health and Social Security Bill
January 28th, 2012FLOSS for Healthcare – links.
January 27th, 2012VistA on GT.M http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20120116/BLOGS02/301169914 and http://medsphere.com/news/885-Kern-Medical-Center-Awarded-Federal-Funds-for-Meaningful-Use-of-OpenVistar-Electronic-Health-Record
See also http://openvista.org
Understanding the Bill: Impossible
January 25th, 2012At one time the Health Bill seemed based on some coherent principles, but no longer. Martin McKee (professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK writing in the BMJ) can’t understand it, and is accustomed to teaching on such things. I can’t keep track of what the current situation is. One of my few rules of thumb, I’d hesitate to say principles, general or otherwise, but an idea I apply and await disproof of is that when people are making things more complicated, and I can’t keep track, it is because they are criminals if it is business, or generally dishonest or malevolent in some other way. And not people to trust or do business with if it is possible to avoid doing.
The Health Bill having failed is a distraction from pensions
January 24th, 2012Doctors – and nurses and midwives – being capable of holding more than one thought in our heads at a time are quite independently deprecating on the one hand the implementation, and the underlying coherence (there isn’t any left) of the Health Bill and on the other hand the raid on our pensions.
Our pensions were re-engineered 3 years ago, carefully, and taking time, and the scheme remains in surplus for the future.
Pensions are complicated, and not best fixed by liars or the innumerate.
And we have great sympathy for those whose private sector pensions were stolen by plutocrats, media moguls, fraudsters and the like, or turned out to have been based on wrong arithmetic and prospects, but we suggest fixing yours, not wrecking ours to match.
An egalitarianism where each of us does what he wishes, for about he same hours, and draws the same income and facilities from society while working and while not working has its attractions. But it doesn’t seem likely. As it is, we stash away a lot of our not inconsiderable income for a pension, and we don’t want it turned into a tax, thank you.
And if you think we’d be an exception, you are an optimist.
Breasts and money at the Open University
January 24th, 2012Cosmetic surgery tourism and anthropological thoughts on the institution of credit antedating that of money.
Meanwhile in London (Bevan’s Run)
January 15th, 2012Clive Peedell et al arrive in Whitehall protesting the mess being made of the NHS. I’d be there if I wasn’t a long way away.
Here we go again?
January 14th, 2012Gruaniad article by Cardiology Registrar on the badness of the Health and Social Security Bill.
I’m old enough to remember the previous time we had a Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity. It was split because, I think, it was too big and unwieldy. Are we better at handling such masses? Is the total amount of trouble to handle in it no larger? I think not. So is it going to work this time? Optimism would be nice, but realism seems safer.