Health Matters | Paul Corrigan's blog
My mission statementThe times we are working in now need a great deal of accelerated change and there must be no negotiating that down. So my mission statement for this part of my consultancy career is to be clear that there needs to be and will be a lot of change from the work that I do with individuals and organisations and if organisations don’t want that, then it is probably best to go somewhere else.
Markets, business and the creation of innovative value for money health care for NHS patients.Filed Under (Creating public value, Health Improvement, Innovation, Private Health Care) by Paul on 10-11-2011A small story last Friday exemplified a much bigger issue. The story concerned the results of research from the University of Birmingham on how the effectiveness of different weight loss schemes. Read the rest of this entry » Centralisation, grip and improving NHS efficiencyFiled Under (Creating public value, Expenditure, Health Policy, Reform of the NHS) by Paul on 06-07-2011One of the outcomes of the Government’s June 2011 reform of its July 2010 NHS reforms has been the increased centralisation of Government control. As I will explore later in the week, the first set of reforms that was intended – in the heady days of July 2010 – to liberate the NHS and localise decision making is now set to provide much more national centralisation of commissioning than has ever previously existed. Read the rest of this entry » Disruptive innovation and the NHS – better outcomes with less resource.Filed Under (Creating public value, Culture of the NHS, Innovation) by Paul on 09-06-2011Yesterday I spoke at a conference organised by Reform – the think tank that argues for better and faster reform of the NHS and other public services. It highlighted the ways in which different aspects of the NHS and other health services can make disruptive innovations to improve their outcomes for fewer resources. Of course much of the conference spoke about specific innovations that could both save money and improve outcomes. One of the most inspiring for me was an example from India which I quote at length below. Read the rest of this entry » So what is the nasty party going to do to NICE?Filed Under (Conservative party, Creating public value, GP Commissioning, NICE) by Paul on 04-11-2010Monday’s post raised the issue of the future of NICE’s powers to say whether drugs were value for money for the NHS. Then I was unsure whether the issue had been floated by the Government to see what would happen – or if this was the announcement of a new policy. On Tuesday in the House of Commons at Health Question Time the current Secretary of State clarified what he plans for NICE. Read the rest of this entry » The NICE debate – some clarificationsFiled Under (Creating public value, GP Commissioning, NICE) by Paul on 03-11-2010I have been asked to clarify my thinking on how I see the new system for deciding on value for money working once NICE has been removed from the system. At the moment NICE decides on the cost effectiveness of drugs for the NHS based on formulae about their cost in relation to the quality of life years that they provide. If a drug is expensive and provides a small amount of quality of life years then it is unlikely to be cost effective. Conversely if it is cheap and provides a lot then it will be. This means that the NHS has a great interest in using drugs that are available at a price that provides good outcomes. Read the rest of this entry » More thoughts on the nasty party abolishing NICE.Filed Under (Creating public value, NICE) by Paul on 02-11-2010Yesterday’s post laid out three different ways in which the story on NICE could go. There still hasn’t been a definitive statement from the Government, but the statement from the DH yesterday does lead us all to believe that they are going to abolish NICE’s duty to decide on drugs’ value for money. Read the rest of this entry » Patients’ charities argue for better care – with better value for money – for NHS patientsFiled Under (Charities, Creating public value, Reform of the NHS) by Paul on 16-09-2010Thursday 16 September marks an event that will, in the long term, become one of the most important in the NHS. This is not a White Paper or a speech by the NHS Chief Executive but I think, in the next few years, it will change the terms of trade that make the NHS tick. Read the rest of this entry » The White Paper – Liberating the NHS and the independent sectorFiled Under (Creating public value, Health Policy, NHS Providers, Reform of the NHS, Third Sector, White Paper) by Paul on 23-07-2010If there is one group that should have received the White Paper with unalloyed pleasure it is the private sector health care companies who are trying to sell their services into the NHS. Read the rest of this entry » Most of the policy announcements made by the new Secretary of State have so far been made in front of hospitals that he is either ‘saving ‘or ‘reopening’. I have written on another web site how the preservation of hospitals “in aspic” represents one part of our society that the modern Conservative Party wants to “hold still” but why, given the amount of change they are pouring into the NHS system through the use of markets, this wish will probably fail. Regular readers of the blog will have come across the way in which I have explored the difference between policy and politics in the Conservative stance on NHS change over recent months and in the first few days of the new Government. Policy argues for a fundamental change brought about by the development of markets within the NHS. More incentives must be given to GPs as commissioners to drive change throughout the system. There must be a policy of “any willing provider” and the NHS must get used to empowered patients with much better information flowing around the system. |
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