Blog

Anna Moore reflects on how medical leaders can help to develop new models of care and integrate services around the needs of patients.

David Oliver considers the role allied health professionals will have in meeting the challenges facing our health and social care systems and in delivering the new care models outlines in the NHS five year forward view.

Ahead of the Spending Review, Richard Humphries and John Appleby look at the data to examine the likely fall in social care spending.

With financial pressures at unmanageable levels, increasing demands and great uncertainty, staff are exposed to the violence of a perfect and continuous storm.

Healthwatch England's recent report, Safely home, described in harrowing detail the personal stories of patients who felt that their discharge from hospital was unsupported. It also described patients marooned in acute beds unable to move on. So how can older people's care be improved?

Are conflicts of interest affecting the services patients receive? Or is this inherent feature of clinical commissioning being managed appropriately through common-sense decision-making?

Amid growing concern that most NHS providers are sliding into deficit, arguably we should be even more worried about social care providers, says Richard Humphries.

Chris Ham gives his assessment of the new government’s health policy.

Vijaya Nath looks at one of the challenges facing NHS leaders, how to get the workforce, particularly clinicians, working in new ways more closely aligned to the changing nature of care.

The government’s decision to breach an explicit manifesto commitment by delaying reforms to social care funding until 2020 again demonstrates the apparent inability of successive governments to make headway on this issue.

Ruth Robertson's blog argues that we need to shift the debate on productivity to focus on delivering better value care for patients.

Care homes have operated in the shadows of public and political awareness for too long, with policy attention focused on reactions to service failure rather than the promotion of good care.

If promised spending increases do not materialise soon, and ministers insist on the NHS regaining control of its finances, then urgent action will be needed, says Chris Ham.

Leadership isn’t about how you look, it’s about how you behave and what you do – in other words, an attitude not an appearance, says Mandip Kaur.

Chris Ham argues that providers need to work together to form local systems of care, with leadership provided by the most experienced managers and clinicians in the NHS.

There is, of course, and always will be, a debate about just what the pay for top public sector posts should be. But that debate should not start with, let alone end at, the Prime Minister's salary, says Nick Timmins.

Developing leadership that is ‘fit for purpose’ is often cited as the most common workforce challenge facing all sectors – and the health service needs to take this challenge seriously, says Sarah Massie.

While NHS funding is perhaps at the top of most people’s concerns on health, it is the (admittedly intertwined) approach to workforce that will determine the government’s legacy, says Richard Murray.

Enhanced care in care homes is one of the new care models set out in the NHS five year forward view. This is good news, as it's high time this issue was brought to the fore, for a number of reasons.

Former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. When it comes to social care issues in the current election campaign, most UK politicians are struggling with even basic literacy.