Health Matters | Paul Corrigan's blog

This week I spoke to a meeting of international CEOs from various countries and different parts of their respective health services. They wanted to know how the reforms were going and what the prospects are for the NHS. Read the rest of this entry »

In July the Government published its response to its initial reforms about public health. Whilst their original reforms had failed to excite as much public interest as their plans for GP commissioning, they did contain some very radical changes to the relationship between the Department of Health and public health.

Rather oddly, at a national level the public health reforms went in the opposite direction to those proposed for the NHS. Whereas the stated aim of the NHS reforms was to remove the Secretary of State’s accountability for the NHS (something that the 2011 reforms of their 2010 reforms changed radically), their original reforms of the Department’s relationship to public health abolished the independence of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and brought their powers under the direct control of the Secretary of State. Read the rest of this entry »

Today sees the publication of the Government’s Open Public Services White Paper. First discussed last autumn it was considered possible it might appear by Christmas 2010, and then spring 2011, but has finally made it on July 11 2011. Read the rest of this entry »

Governments – all governments – produce hundreds of reports every year. This is partly because they all set up hundreds of reviews that all – at one time or another -have to report their findings. So it’s tempting to see the Dilnot report as just another report from just another review.

This would be a mistake. The reality of an ageing society is now all around us and will create more and more stresses on our social and economic reality. From previous posts on this blog and from the NHS itself we already know that Long Term Conditions will in the future cost the NHS an increasing amount of resource every year primarily because of the ever increasing number of people who live to be older than 85. We know that this increase in demand for health care from much older people is going to force the NHS to radically change the way in which the whole service delivers health care for people with Long Term Conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Armies and governments can get used to retreating. In becoming expert at doing so they may forget that they are giving ground all the time, and when reviewing their week’s work, think it good – because they retreated well.

When the strategy is to give ground, the tactics are to do it well. Read the rest of this entry »

New depths of confusion.

On May 16^th 2011 (I add the year because it would have been a great idea for him to have made the first half of this speech in 2010, at the beginning of this process, rather than in 2011 towards the end of it) the Government’s NHS reforms hit new depths of uncertainty. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been to a couple of meetings about the Big Society and have generally left none the wiser. But a recent breakfast meeting at the Kings Fund was good…

The three speakers at this all had something interesting, important and above all concrete to say about how the NHS might relate to the Big Society. And each of them in very different ways had a big sweep of history in their view. Read the rest of this entry »

Conservative policy documents for several years leading up to the election had pledged to “remove politics from the day-to-day running of the NHS” and to “end political micro-management”

This language was repeated in the Manifesto and has been repeated since then in both speeches and in the White Paper itself. Read the rest of this entry »

A little while ago I argued for the third sector developing a new business model for the delivery of NHS services. Last week ACEVO published my pamphlet on this subject coincident with my speaking at their 14^th July conference. Read the rest of this entry »

I learned yesterday (30/06/2010) that there will be a further Government white or green paper on public health – due out in September. Whilst the July White Paper on the NHS will be talking about the spending of £100 billion of public money on NHS commissioning of health care, it can probably be written with just a nod in the direction of other Government Departments. But this public health paper could end up being more important BOTH for what is left of the Department for Health and other Government Departments.
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