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The mental healthcare specialist discusses competition in the NHS, the government's reforms and spending a year at sea Describe your role in one sentence : I am a practising psychiatrist in the NHS and chief executive of Beacon UK , a new entrant to UK healthcare, working with the NHS to improve mental healthcare. Why did you want to work in healthcare? I always wanted to go to medical school but remember thinking from quite an early stage in my training that – as much as I love it - I would be unlikely to practise clinically full-time for my entire professional career. The best thing about...

Nothing less than a transformation of NHS systems, leadership and culture is needed if the Francis inquiry is to be acted on What do NHS leaders need to do to avoid repeating the shocking failings at Mid Staffordshire Hospital Trust ? This is the pressing question that we begin to answer in our new report published at today's King's Fund leadership summit . The challenge facing the NHS is how to create a climate that puts patients' needs first. To understand the state of play, we conducted a survey of more than 900 NHS professionals following the publication of the Francis report, asking...

The health service needs evidence-based decision making rather than being reactive to perceived need Once again, the NHS is back in the spotlight. Following the Francis Review into the failure of care in Mid Staffordshire, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has outlined plans to name and shame hospitals and has announced the introduction of an Ofsted style system of ratings . The NHS has many examples of good market research that has both saved money and shown the way to better patient delivery. It does need to find a way of keeping the knowledge it creates as a shared resource, not letting it...

Compared with normal care, telehealth can achieve better and faster health outcomes, better adherence to medication, and increased productivity The debate around remote care frequently stalls on the matter of expensive or complicated equipment, but often people have all the technology they need sitting in their pockets. While some healthcare providers use text alerts to remind patients about appointments or about submitting data, little use is made of responsive telehealth – the sending and receiving of linked information. Developed by the NHS as a simple telehealth application, Florence (or Flo...

Charities have been involved in providing and improving health and wellbeing services since well before the creation of the NHS Earlier this week Norman Lamb announced the government's ambition to make integrated care the norm in the NHS in the next five years. In his speech, he referred to the example of the 12th-century court jester who famously founded St Bart's hospital after realising he wanted to dedicate his life to caring for the poor. This hospital provided all services, and Lamb held this up as an example of a joined up care system provided to patients of the hospital. This goes...

No two days are the same working for a trust with a £100m turnover and 500,000 patient encounters My day is bookended with routine but most days are different, as you'd expect with a £100m+ turnover and 500,000 patient encounters. I'm from Lancashire, and Essex has not taken me from my roots of plain speaking, cheese and onion pies, Blackburn Rovers and punk! I tell staff about all kinds of things in my blog; being approachable means being visible on the front lines and inviting people to comment. I arrive at work at about 7am and the day starts with a bit of banter with the other directors...

News, comment, blogposts and tweets across the sector Clare Horton Claire Burke Sarah Johnson