Health Matters | Paul Corrigan's blog

Last Friday I spoke at a conference organised by the Migrant Rights Network on the subject of migrant access to health care. I was asked to run a session on the role that the new clinical commissioning groups have in improving that access.

My argument was based partly on how the Health and Social Care Bill is framed at the moment – that is a duty of the clinical commissioning group to the population covered by their geographical boundaries, and not just their registered population. In many parts of the country this duty must lead CCGs to seek out the hard to reach groups in their localities to ensure that the CCG is commissioning care for them and not just for a part of their population. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, September 15^th, we are publishing, through the think tank Reform, a pamphlet about the necessity to convert the work of NHS hospitals into a much more sustainable set of business models. These changes will be difficult for both those inside the NHS and for those outside. However not facing up to the need for these changes will build into the NHS much greater inefficiencies, and outcomes that fail to reach the level of safety that we have come to expect. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the constant conversations that the current Secretary of State had with the leadership of doctors’ organisations over the six years of his apprenticeship as shadow secretary of state concerned how much they hated waiting times targets.

From 2001 onwards they had railed ineffectually against a Government that won the 2001 and 2005 elections partially on the promise to reduce maximum waiting times for NHS patients. The capability and capacity of the NHS to reduce maximum waiting times was one of the core public reform narratives that brought about change in the NHS over that period. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many things that Ara Darzi got right in his 2008 report was the importance of care planning for people with long term conditions. The crucial issue if you have a long term condition is the very specific way in which the disease interacts with you and your life. Having asthma or depression affects you in different ways from me. Your body has different lungs for coping with asthma and might also react to depression in a different way.  And your mind will deal with the stresses of both conditions in a different way from mine. Your life, your friends and your family will give and take different things from you. Of course given the millions suffering from these conditions, there are patterns but each sufferer also needs to be understood as an individual – differing from patient to patient. Read the rest of this entry »

There is quite rightly a great deal of discussion about the public’s need to be active in the prevention of diseases that could ruin or even shorten their lives. It is of course much more sensible to, for example, lose weight before you get type 2 diabetes; or start an exercise programme before you get very depressed. But for many the motivation to do something to prevent the onset of something bad in the future is just not high enough. People don’t believe that it will happen, and given how hard it is to change their behaviour, don’t bother. Read the rest of this entry »

I am running through the four different groups that the Government have set up to organise listening during their 2 month gap.

As I did with the previous listening group, the way in which I would like to frame this policy discussion is controversial. Read the rest of this entry »

Luckily this blog does not have to engage too deeply with the politics surrounding the Coalition Government’s policy on public expenditure cuts. That means the efficacy or otherwise of last Saturday’s TUC march and the Labour Opposition’s policy on the cuts is not a core issue for us. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking at the date I realise that some may think that this post is an April Fool. It isn’t. I have a strong commitment to the NHS and believe that its basic principle of health care paid for out of national taxation with equal access of all free at the point of need will only thrive if the mechanics of NHS health care delivery are reformed. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to measure the improvement of the NHS against improvements in health outcomes it will be necessary to collect the data that show what those outcomes are.

One of the few consistencies of approach to which the new Government has adhered in its NHS reforms has been an emphasis on encouraging health services to judge their success or failure against the health outcomes that different services produce. Read the rest of this entry »

It was interesting that following the Government Public Health White Paper over the weekend of 3/4 December, two newspapers had articles attacking the theory of behaviour change that was behind it. They were attacking it because it advocated persuading people to change their health behaviour – rather than tougher interventions which remove choices from people. One headline read “Nudge or fudge? Public health fears as Lansley retreats from regulation”. Independent 4^th December 2010 Read the rest of this entry »