Inbox

Greater Manchester: 30 years ahead

02.12.16: Jon Rouse, the new chief officer of Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, speaks to NHE’s Luana Salles about the region’s latest and forthcoming integration developments. Greater Manchester’s (GM’s)...

Inbox – September-October 2015

01.10.15: From: Morris Heseltine Subject: Revised contract to be given to all junior doctors – NHS Employers Perhaps Mr Mortimer [CEO of NHS Employers] would like to explain why these reforms are “essential”. As far as I can se...

Paramedic workforce crisis

19.08.15: If universities and governing bodies introduced more courses that allowed shortened courses for already skilled workers, for example nursing to midwifery or operating department practitioner to paramedic and vice versa, enabling roles to cross o...

Does CSUs' closure reflect their performance?

12.08.15: The failure of these two CSUs must surely be a reflection of how poorly they performed over the past few years? The organisational ethos many CSUs inherited from PCTs, and the view that they were there to ‘do it to the GPs’, was cont...

Working cultures in the NHS

05.08.15: The drive to change HOW staff work, the culture of NHS England, is as important as the remuneration packages. The Five Year Forward View sets out a challenge to us all to take part in a new type of conversation. One that involves partnershi...

Redundancies do not always save money

29.07.15: It would appear that this is a current trend over many companies in all sectors, where they think that by making staff redundant they will save money. However, had they taken time to work out how much the redundancies were costing, and how long...

Support and autonomy

22.07.15: Those of us providing services to the NHS can and will make savings on our services, but I agree wholeheartedly that we need support and autonomy in order to make services leaner and meaner, whilst still providing an excellence in the care and i...

Procurement teams keep making mistakes

20.07.15: No other organisation would tolerate this. All those involved should be held to account. We are all being asked to make cuts and efficiency savings: let’s start with those in procurement who seem to repeatedly get it wrong at a cost of mil...

Don’t let NHS staff work for external agencies

08.07.15: Perhaps we need to look at why staff join agencies in the first place. Could it be anything to do with the level of pay offered? Is it that they can have more control over their off duty? Agency staff are often on call and fill staffing gaps at...

CQC inspections of GP practices

07.07.15: How are CQC visits improving the care of patients in the 1 in 7 practices mentioned by Steve Field??  Re: GPs call for a halt to CQC inspections

Tackling rising agency spending

01.07.15: It’s nonsense to try to reduce agency bills by forced ceiling rates. Increase the supply of nurses by allowing English speaking nurses outside of the EEC to come to the UK and the rip-off agency rates will disappear. The government ha...

Not all qualified nurses provide an acceptable standard of nursing care

24.06.15: I have observed some poor nursing standards in the NHS and as a manager with recruitment responsibility I have interviewed some nurses who I definitely would not employ and wonder how they are employed by anyone. Just because someone is a qualif...

GPs should not be allowed to opt out of regulation

17.06.15: Frankly it makes me sick (no pun intended) that GPs want to 'opt out' of the oversight and regulation that the CQC conduct on every other healthcare provider. GPs earn a minimum of £100k per year yet when they were given control over their...

CCGs moving the goalposts

10.06.15: I agree that this is something that needs to happen and quickly as it feels like provider services are being held to account for non-achievement of contracts and KPIs, with the CCGs continually moving the goalposts. The CCGs should be worki...

Why nurses choose to work for agencies

03.06.15: Source: Jen They have to address why nurses are working for agencies in the first place. I have worked for the NHS since 1982. Things are SO different now. More staff are joining agencies to earn extra money that you cannot earn working for...