When the NHS is found lacking, think “Vive La France!”

eiffel tower, love, hands

A constant burning pain in my chest woke me from a deep sleep around 5 a.m. I got up and walked to the bathroom, tripping over my suitcase and wakening my sleeping wife. Standing in the bathroom I hoped the pain might lessen but it stubbornly remained. I had had some chest pain and was breathless walking back from the restaurant the evening before. Biarritz has a steep incline up from its roaring surf beaches but the pain had eased …

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Support nurses’ fight for safe and effective care in Northern Ireland…

If you have been stuck in traffic behind a bus somewhere in Northern Ireland this week, you may well have spotted an advertising campaign referencing Northern Ireland’s thousands of missing nurses. This relates to today’s launch, for the first time in its 103-year history, of a Royal College of Nursing [RCN] ballot of members in Northern Ireland on taking industrial action, including strike action, over the nurse staffing crisis in the Health and Social Care service. Nurses have been warning …

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‘Let’s create an all-island, integrated, health service, and let’s begin now’

There needs to be an all-island, integrated, health service, and its creation should not be dependent upon the agreement or timing of a united Ireland, argues Professor Jim Dornan – one of the architects of existing cross-border co-operation in health services.  Jim was interviewed in the latest Forward Together podcast. “In many ways Ireland is a Goldilocks sized country for health provision,” he explains.  “We can cherry pick the best of health provision throughout the world and let’s introduce it …

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Real politics prefers a health service Status Quo…

The media hype on our latest could-do-better Health Service report Systems not Structures:  Changing Health and Social Care, was more positive than I expected.  BBC wheeled out the usual pundits.  John Compton welcomed the report saying it was good to say things over and over again until the public finally heard the message.   Dr George O’Neill was unusually positive but that seems to be because his Accountable Care System (ACS) approach got a good airing.  At least George understands …

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It is time to take politics out of the day to day running of the health service. A guest post by Dr George O’Neill.

  All of the party leaders, before the recent election, committed themselves to taking politics out of health. Is that realistic? I would suggest not. But what we can do is we can take politics out of the day to day running of Health and Social Care. That is an entirely different prospect. Bevan’s original idea of the Health Service was that it would dramatically improve the health of the population. Demand would decrease and cost would be reduced. This …

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Are some NHS surgeons on a go slow to boost their private work?

The NHS is in the headlines once again for all the wrong reasons. Here is a personal anecdote. My uncle has been in hospital for the past six weeks while he waits for a heart operation. He can get up and walk around but he needs to be in a ward for monitoring. As you can imagine he is going stir crazy. One reference puts the bed day cost to the NHS as £255, so that is 47 days x …

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The solution to hospital bed crises: not necessarily more beds

The problems surrounding the Emergency Department at Antrim Area Hospital have made the news several times this week and led to one general practitioner stating that he would not want to go there as a patient (well no one actively wants to be an A+E patient as no one wishes ill health on themselves but his point is well made). There are actually two different problems regarding A+E departments which have occurred in the last few weeks. They often occur …

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Thoughts on Prescription Charges

Hidden away amongst the discussion of the Compton Review Edwin Poots again mentioned the prospect of reintroducing prescription charges. There is a certain irony in this in that although it was Michael McGimpsey who ended prescription charges the DUP repeatedly claimed this move as one of the successes of devolution and claimed much of the credit for that decision. More recently, however, Poots has repeatedly proposed reintroducing the charges in order to pay for cancer drugs and the like. Part …

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Godot arrives: Compton Review delivers

Last week I suggested that Northern Ireland health reform was like waiting for Godot. Now Godot has arrived, told us he is sorting out major changes and that he will be back soon. The Compton Review (pdf) is a large and highly impressive document. Despite having been carried out in only a few months it has clearly been well researched with examples taken from best practice throughout the UK. There are twenty one chapters which detail everything from maternity to …

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