National Health Service (NHS) Blogs This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The Match: A testament to the genius of central planning
My father who was a junior doctor in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) in the seventies would have been grateful for the match scheme, an algorithm that places medical students in residency programs in the U.S. The training in the NHS was unstructured. Physicians carved their own training by joining a patchwork of hospital positions in disparate places. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 12, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Dr. Saurabh Jha Tags: Education Residency Source Type: blogs

Fourth Time is the (Anti)Charm? - UK NICE Highlights "Uncertainties in the Evidence Base" About Sovaldi
As we have discussed, (here, here and here), while anger continues to build about the $1000/ pill price sought by Gilead for its new antiviral drug for hepatitis C, Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), almost all public discussion still treats the drug as miraculous. However, my reading of some key trials, and reviews by three groups of evidence-based medicine experts, suggested that the evidence supporting the drug is actually weak and unclear, and hardly suggests it is miraculous.NICE Weighs In Now, as first noted by the indomitable Ed Silverman in his revived PharmaLot blog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - June 20, 2014 Category: Health Management Tags: anechoic effect clinical trials evidence-based medicine executive compensation Gilead health care prices manipulating clinical research Sovaldi Source Type: blogs

Stop Expecting Antibiotics to Be Handed Out Routinely: Here’s Why
For years, my colleagues on the Prepared Patient site have preached the importance of being an advocate for your own care. And they’ve noted that at times it is necessary to push back against doctors’ recommendations if a suggested treatment does not seem right. I just returned from a visit to the U.K., which drove home the importance of that advice. Coming down with a common cold gave me a chance to experience differences in how British and American doctors approach the nasty symptoms of an all-too-common medical problem. Let’s face it. Most of us have been given too many antibiotics for sore throats, co...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - June 16, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Access Consumer Health Care Policy Source Type: blogs

National Health Service pension scheme: actuarial valuation at 31st March 2012
Department of Health (DH) - The valuation was carried out as at 31st March 2012. It specifies the employer contribution rate that is payable from 1st April 2015 to 31st March 2019. It also sets out the employer cost cap, which will be used in future valuations to assess whether the cost of the scheme remains within set limits. Report DH news (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - June 9, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Workforce and employment Source Type: blogs

Are we picking on VA hospitals too much?
How long do you think we’ll have to wait? Ugly stories about waiting lists and poor care in VA facilities are coming out in the press. The VA’s head, Eric Shinseki has been run out of town. And investigations are underway into what’s going on and how to fix it. The Wall Street Journal (Veterans Affairs Hospitals Vary Widely in Patient Care) used the VA’s internal data to compare the worst VA hospital (Phoenix) with the best (Boston) and to compare both with other VA hospitals that earn five stars. There are dramatic differences in areas like bloodstream infections and pneumonia rates and significant...
Source: Health Business Blog - June 4, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: David Williams Tags: International Policy and politics Research VA Source Type: blogs

Power to the people: the mutual future of our National Health Service
This report calls for radical overhaul of the UK health service tackling the lifestyle and long-term conditions that it estimates will cause a £19 billion deficit in the NHS. It argues for a move away from acute care in hospitals and integrated care based in the community delivered through health mutuals. Report Press release (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - May 19, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Changing configuration of health services Integrated care Source Type: blogs

Power to the people: the mutual future of our National Health Service
This report argues that moving towards an integrated system of healthcare provision would make it possible to offer whole-person, holistic care to patients. It highlights the role mutuals could play in integrating public, private and third sector bodies to both improve patient outcomes and plug any funding gaps. Report ResPublica - press release (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - May 8, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Integrated care NHS finances and productivity Source Type: blogs

Does Strong Marijuana Cause Addiction?
Strong pot matters, but maybe not the way we think. Colorado, Washington, and some 20 additional states have now made various provisions for legal transactions involving marijuana. And since time immemorial, there has been an illegal market for marijuana. But try getting your hands on some marijuana straightforwardly, through appropriate channels, for purposes of medical research, and, well, most researchers have just said forget it. Because in the U.S., a bizarre system of drug classification has led to the ludicrous situation of a virtual government monopoly on cannabis for experimental purposes. Can’t researchers just...
Source: Addiction Inbox - March 24, 2014 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs

Beer and bingo budget
You can say what you like about politicians…but deep, deep down, they’re all self-serving, money-grubbing, knee-jerking, U-turning bustards. It seems that here in Brit Land we have a particularly peculiar penchant for those that are also dullards and bores. But, at least, come budget time, they get their priorities right in terms of voter retention: no extra tax and beer nor bingo. And we get a new pound coin that looks ironically like the old threepenny bit we had until decimalisation. You know that era of endless food rationing, world wars, abject poverty, no national health service, no antibiotics nor vaccin...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - March 19, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs

Novartis and Roche fined over 180 mn euros by anti-trust
Italy's Antitrust authority said Wednesday that it had fined Swiss pharmaceutical companies Novartis and Roche a total of over 180 million euros for alleged collusion to manipulate the market in Italy."The two companies made an illegal agreement to hamper the spread of the use of a very cheap pharmaceutical, (Roche's) Avastin, in the treatment of the most widespread eye pathology among the elderly and other serious eye diseases, to favour a much more expensive product, (Novartis's) Lucentis, artificially differentiating the two products," read an Antitrust statement. It added that this had cost the Italian national health ...
Source: PharmaGossip - March 5, 2014 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program
The National Health Service Corps opened their 2013 Loan Repayment Program application cycle. The program offers primary care medical, dental, mental and behavioral health providers the opportunity to have their student loans repaid while serving in communities with limited access to care. Urban Indian Health programs are noted as approved sites. Application Deadline: March 20, 2014 More information is available online: http://1.usa.gov/1fuzYLu (Source: BHIC)
Source: BHIC - January 29, 2014 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Gail Kouame Tags: Minority Health Concerns Rural Scholarships and Grants Source Type: blogs

Productivity of the English National Health Service from 2004/5: updated to 2011/12
This report finds that productivity growth in 2010/11 – 2011/12 was around 2.13% to 2.38% depending on the choice of mixed or indirect input index used. Over the whole time series we find that quality adjusted output has increased by 40%. Inputs have increased by 28% using the mixed input measure and by 26% using the indirect measure, leading to a total factor productivity growth over the entire period of 10% and 11% respectively. Report CHE - publications (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - January 17, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: NHS finances and productivity Source Type: blogs

Health-Care Systems
By Quinn Phillips In the United States, chances are that when you look for a job, you will consider not just your potential salary, work environment, and duties, but one other crucial factor: benefits. In this country, the mark of a "good" job has long been that it offers health insurance (and usually other benefits, such as a pension or retirement plan, or dental insurance). While Americans tend to view employer-provided health coverage as an innate part of our health-care system, in most other rich countries no such system exists. So how did this system develop in the United States, and what are the alternatives, as prac...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - December 25, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Quinn Phillips Source Type: blogs

Bibliotherapy: Do You Really Need a Doctor or Government to Tell You to Read?
In an article that notes there are over 100,000 self-help books (I think the actual number is much larger, since Amazon lists over 285,000 in-print self-help books), apparently Leah Price is enamored at the thought of a doctor “prescribing” reading. And a government agency — the UK’s National Health Service — endorsing the idea. The idea of a “prescription” for a book is as ridiculous as the idea that you need to be told to shower regularly to remove the stink. Reading to understand something better is a basic skill nearly everyone should have learned in grade school. That’...
Source: World of Psychology - December 23, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Tags: Books Disorders General Mental Health and Wellness Policy and Advocacy Professional Psychology Treatment Bibliotherapy Clay Tucker-Ladd Health Care Leah Price Mental Health Professional Reading A Book Reading Works Self Help Source Type: blogs

Import from The Sceptered Isle?
Last Friday (Dec 20) David Prior, the chairman of the NHS Care Quality Commission, said NHS quality and patient service are “wholly unsatisfactory.” Among other things, Prior emphasized that NHS can no longer be treated as a “national religion” in which service reached the brink of crisis because it was “too powerful” to be criticised. He said parts of the NHS were “out of control” because honest debate about the weaknesses of the health service was not tolerated.On the other hand, Paul Krugman asserts that when Americans hear stories about failures within NHS, we should know t...
Source: InsureBlog - December 23, 2013 Category: Medical Lawyers and Insurers Source Type: blogs