This blog reports on the third workshop held by the Department of Health on the methods being planned for value based pricing, due to start in January 2014. Previous workshops […]
Columnists
David Kerr: Driving in the (near) future
The Department of Health has just written to GP’s to encourage them to stop being so mean when it comes to providing blood glucose testing strips to people living with […]
Richard Smith: Non communicable disease and sustainable development
There is a sense that if you are not working at something that helps counter climate change (or climate disruption, as it should be called) then you are wasting your […]
Richard Smith: Should hubris be a disease?
Should hubris be a disease, asks my friend Faith. After a second I conclude, “Of course. It’s perhaps the most dangerous disease of all in that it destroys not just […]
Penny Campling: What does apologising for a dysfunctional culture really mean?
The Francis Inquiry report rightly focuses on the need to transform the healthcare culture. It has made it clear that fault lines run throughout the NHS, from top to bottom, […]
Tiago Villanueva: Poverty and hunger in Portugal
Some time ago a patient told me that he needed to borrow money from a neighbour to buy a train ticket to come to his appointment at the practice. At […]
Julian Sheather: Should doctors make moral judgments about their patients?
Thou shalt not judge. There are times when it feels like our eleventh commandment. In our liberal, offence-free world there are supposed to be no good and bad choices, no […]
Richard Smith: Syria, now’s top sorrow
Climate change will soon destroy us. Global poverty is increasing. Non-communicable disease is sweeping the planet. Communicable disease is far from defeated and may re-emerge in new and terrible forms […]
Desmond O’Neill: On transport as a contributor to economic, social, and personal wellbeing
Transport is the invisible glue that holds our lives together, an under recognised contributor to economic, social, and personal wellbeing. Unfortunately, in public health terms, our profession has allowed itself […]
Richard Smith: A paperless NHS by 2018?
Cognisant of the short time that ministers are in post, Jeremy Hunt, decided when he became Secretary of State of Health, that to make a difference he should have only […]