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Tag Archives: Healthcare

Exploring the bus route from High Wycombe to Stoke Mandeville hospital


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This morning, I took the number 300 from High Wycombe bus station to Stoke Mandeville hospital, as if for a 10 am outpatient’s appointment or a visit to an inpatient. Via the Arriva site: Stoke Mandeville Hospital is now easily reached by two services making it easy to reach for meetings, work or appointments. Well, Arriva put on a good bus, but the experience at Stoke Mandeville left a lot to be desired. Add a bus journey in High Wycombe […]

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Written PQ on NHS service restructuring


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Via TheyWorkForYou, an answer to my recent written Parliamentary question on NHS service reconfiguration: Steven Baker (Wycombe, Conservative) To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will take steps to ensure health service restructuring does not occur where the public consultation process determines that the majority of local people are opposed. Simon Burns (Minister of State (Health), Health; Chelmsford, Conservative) The Government are clear that any changes to local health services should be locally-led, improve quality and with […]

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Lansley and Burnham on the NHS risk register


Guido Fawkes today reports what Andrew Lansley has recently said and what Andy Burnham said in 2009 about NHS risk registers. The quotes are eerily similar, as Guido puts it, “almost as if they had been written by the same civil servant”.  No wonder the public are inclined to say, “A plague on all your houses!”

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A brief history of Wycombe hospitals


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With another consultation in progress on proposals to change health services in Wycombe, I despatched my researcher to discover something of the history of our hospitals. It turns out Wycombe has had three main hospitals and two smaller ones since the 19th Century. As I have said before, I would like to see Wycombe Hospital return to direct community ownership and control. I believe that would end these cycles of disappointment and despair by bringing local healthcare under meaningful control. Foundation Trust […]

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The scandal of government dodging tax and employment law – in health


While consultants in the software industry have long had to worry about IR35 rules designed to promote employment and enforce higher tax rates, it seems the British Government previously chose to use just the arrangements it sought to stop. The Telegraph reports: Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the First Division Association (FDA) which represents senior civil servants, said pay among the highest-ranking staff needed to be more “transparent”. His comments come after it was disclosed that more than 25 senior Department […]

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Today, I raised Wycombe Hospital at PMQs


Today, I asked David Cameron about Wycombe Hospital during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons. The context is the Better Healthcare in Bucks consultation. On a day when PMQs were dominated by health service reform, I said I had visited the offices of the Bucks Free Press on Monday to see readers’ reactions to the proposed changes affecting Wycombe Hospital. I told the Prime Minister that Labour had left a tragic legacy of distrust and despair about the NHS locally and I […]

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Recommended reading: “Freedom for Public Services”


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The latest publication from the Centre for Policy Studies arrived today: “Freedom for Public Services” by William Mason and Jonathan McMahon. Better services at lower cost, and more fulfilling jobs for public servants, are quite possible. As ever, this CPS report is intelligent, brief, clear and insightful. The sheer scale of central regulation is shocking even as one who has begun to study the situation. Consider for example the list of regulators for the NHS: The Healthcare Commission Strategic Health […]

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FT.com / UK – Medicines shortage fears grow


According to the FT, a triple whammy of falling prices, falling exchange rates and British price controls means British patients face the prospect of drug shortages as it becomes more profitable for pharmacists and wholesalers to sell medicines abroad. Of course the Government is well-intentioned in trying to reduce the cost to the public of NHS medicines but, as ever, policies must be judged on their results not their intentions: going without would be a catastrophe in many cases. The […]

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The failure of Soviet polyclinics


According to an illuminating article in the BMJ: Polyclinics were a centrepiece of the Soviet model of healthcare delivery, but many countries of Central and Eastern Europe have abandoned them over the past two decades in favour of a system of general practice that draws extensively on the British model. Yet here we plunge. Oh, the waste! read more | digg story

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