Blog

To deliver high-quality, compassionate care one, often overlooked, part of the equation is how to identify, recruit and retain the current and future senior leaders needed to take on this leadership challenge.

While many policy-makers focus on organisational structures, it is clear that successful implementation of the NHS five year forward view will hinge on getting the staffing right.

In terms of collectively redesigning services to improve patient care, is the most caring form of leadership to allow staff the space to explore and err, as long as certain safeguards are in place?

The growing problems in the NHS and social care cannot be solved by the Better Care Fund or any of the other short-term solutions on offer. Nothing less than a fundamental reform of the funding of health and social care services and citizens’ entitlements to publicly funded support is required to address these problems.

I agreed with much of what Simon Stevens said at the Age UK For Later Life conference until he stated that he would be ‘disappointed’ if care homes still existed within the next 50 years. I didn’t get the chance to challenge him but I want to do it now.

‘We need clinical commissioning groups to become accountable care organisations’ – that’s what Jeremy Hunt said recently in parliament. But what does this really mean and will it work in practice? Rachael Addicott gives her analysis.

In his new blog, Chris Ham discusses the recommendations of his review of staff engagement in the NHS. The review found compelling evidence that NHS organisations with high levels of staff engagement – where staff are strongly committed to their work and involved in decision-making – deliver better quality care.

There has been a call for the most expensive assets in health care – the doctors – to step up and engage in management and leadership. We use the right words when writing about medical engagement but how do we move from rhetoric to reality and more importantly why should doctors embrace this responsibility?

Unless NHS leaders are prepared to change, reform from within will remain a distant dream, says Chris Ham.

Leadership in NHS organisations needs to be collective and distributed rather than located in a few individuals found at the top of these organisations. Involving doctors, nurses and other clinicians in leadership roles is essential, says Chris Ham.

In the past couple of weeks, ‘co-commissioning’ has emerged as the latest solution to the problems in primary care. But will it give patients, communities and clinicians ‘more clout’ in deciding how local services are developed, at a time when NHS finances are severely strained?

Dominic Stenning is a member of the experts by experience group for the Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care in England. He spoke at the launch of the interim report, giving a frank and compelling patient perspective on the health, mental health and social care system.

The post-war settlement that created the current divide between health and social care must be replaced. If we duck the hard choices laid out by the Barker commission, then services will progressively deteriorate with patients, users and carers the real losers.

One year ago today, clinical commissioning groups formally took on their statutory responsibility for £65 billion of the NHS budget. So how do individuals in CCGs feel about engagement now?

Although all the political parties agree about the importance of integrated care as an end, willing the means to achieve it is another matter, says Richard Humphries.

In her new data blog, Yang Tian draws on previously unpublished results from the most recent British Social Attitudes survey to see what the public think about who should pay for social care services.