Everyone loves a good jigsaw. But for policymakers trying to solve the UK productivity puzzle, it might feel like someone has hidden the picture on the front of the box, and several of the pieces have...
Over twenty years ago, my first job at the Department of Health was setting up the NHS Health Technology Assessment programme. At the same time, another programme was coming into being – the Cochrane ...
A night on-call in a radiology department is a microcosm of the direction of travel of medical practice. Pathways are flashed in front of the duty radiologist – ‘if you follow the flowchart the patien...
I had the good fortune to visit Denmark earlier this month to talk at a seminar for leaders from the health regions in Denmark. It’s a time of great change for the Danish in their approach to health c...
I have pondered over this question many times. If I was in charge what would I do, what would I say, what would I want to achieve? During the last three decades working in the NHS (currently as Associ...
I used to play squash. I largely played with my family, and I thought I was pretty good. Three days into university, I happily agreed to a game with a fellow fresher. After 30 minutes of forlornly cha...
I first heard of Kaiser Permanente in 1997. Alan Milburn, the then health minister, had asked officials to look into the approaches Kaiser Permanente used to deliver health care. Finding out who (or w...
When Andrew Lansley proudly published Liberating the NHS on 9 July 2010, he had many reasons to be cheerful. It was sunny. The NHS plans he’d long talked about were moving towards reality. Being in a ...
Secretaries of State are either ‘glaziers or window breakers’. Such was one of the more printable conclusions by one of 10 former Secretaries of State for Health interviewed in a rollicking read by Ni...
Whom did Margaret Thatcher encourage to 'cut the throat' of health reform? And which Secretary of State told the head of Monitor to 'piss off'? Passions run high when it comes to the NHS and our healt...
