Browse by Tags

Social media has the potential to improve communication between healthcare professionals and patients — but it also creates ethical issues. Where should the line be drawn? I love Twitter, some would say I'm addicted! To date I've tweeted more than 30,500 times. As a GP, I think it is an excellent way — along with other social media platforms — to debate and share thoughts and ideas about primary care and the NHS. I also think it has the potential to improve the communication healthcare professionals have with each other, with their patients and with the public. Communicating with my patients...

As a judicial review begins on proposals to close a number of units, Roger Boyle says pooling surgical expertise is a vital move Advances in medicine mean that many young babies with congenital heart disease are alive today who would not have survived treatment in the past. In fact most are going on to school, making friends and living into adulthood. But, with change, expert surgeons and their teams can save even more lives and prevent some of the life-long conditions, such as brain damage, that some children face after surgery. The landmark decision to improve children's heart services by...

Now is the time for everyone involved in health and social care to offer their opinions on how the CQC should work The Care Quality Commission (CQC) plays an important role in health and social care. I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead an organisation that drives improvements to care by regulating and monitoring the services that provide it. There's no question that CQC had a lot to deliver in its first three years, merging three organisations into one. We brought in a new system of regulation and registered 40,000 organisations that provide care. We introduced a new,...

There are signs local authorities will forge closer relationships with CCGs than they might have done with primary care trusts During this time of transition as public health moves into local government and GPs into clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), both sides are bound to bring some historical challenges to the meeting table. The NHS is a big, relatively well-funded organisation that historically does not always have a great record at looking outside itself. Local government, by comparison, is very externally focused. Some councils may have scars from earlier attempts at engaging with an NHS...

Following a conference on Telehealth, the Patient from Hell argues that clinicians who have tried it are quickly converted Dr Paul Rice summed up the HSJ's Telehealth 2012 conference last month with what I suspect is an old NHS chestnut, but I had never heard it before. It goes like this: "Managing change in the NHS is like dancing with a gorilla. You don't stop dancing when you are tired. You stop dancing when the gorilla is tired." Paul Rice should know. He is the director of Yorkshire and Humber Health Innovation and Education Cluster , and has been dancing with the gorilla...

Their new position dangles precariously between central and local government – yet despite this there is palpable optimism It is becoming increasingly clear that public health directors will need to exercise fine political judgment if they are to thrive in their new position dangling precariously between central and local government. In some councils their first job may well be to cut services. There are serious concerns that a toxic combination of the wrong amount of money being transferred from primary care trusts, and the new budget holders being locked into large, long-term contracts on everything...

New research maps the number of telecare users, and looks at how to maximise its potential Telecare has long been tipped as the future of social care. Yet little has really been known about who uses it, or who could in future. This gap in evidence is important: for all telecare's apparent potential, policymakers will struggle to realise the benefits across the care system without knowing more about who uses it. Recognising this issue, the Strategic Society Centre today publishes a major piece of quantitative social research – with the support of Age UK – to map users of personal alarms and...

Our new columnist asks whether old leadership can deliver a new culture that liberates healthcare managers More than most organisations, the culture of the NHS starts at the top. As implementation of the reforms gathers pace, can the old leadership deliver a new culture that liberates managers and clinicians? In the health white paper in 2010 the government promised to "free staff from excessive bureaucracy and top-down control". As the structure and processes of the new system have started to take shape, it has become clear that freedom is no longer on offer. The best the new clinical...