Good coverage for the first NHS Atlas of variation

The NHS Atlas of variation in healthcare was launched at the NHS Medical Directors conference on 25th Nov.  with the health minister Lord Howe quoted as  “Making this information available…

Monday November 29th, 2010

Challenges in Australian policy processes for disinvestment from existing, ineffective health care practices

Disinvestment from ineffective or inappropriately applied practices is a growing priority for health care systems for reasons of improved quality of care and sustainability of resource allocation. In this paper…

Monday November 15th, 2010

In healthcare, geography is destiny: an introduction to the problem of unwarranted variation

Jack Wennberg, the father of the Dartmouth Atlas and inspiration for the Right Care NHS Atlas of Variation, has just published “Tracking Medicine: A researcher’s quest to understand healthcare“.  The…

Friday November 12th, 2010

The End of the Quality Improvement Movement – Long Live Improving Value

Robert H. Brook, MD, ScD, writing in JAMA, argues that “after  40 years of academic analysis of quality improvement in healthcare, it is unclear what the movement has accomplished“. Right…

Monday November 8th, 2010

What is meant by value in healthcare?

I now have eleven examples of the meaning in use of the term ‘value;’ at least of the economic meaning of the term because there is also a moral meaning…

Monday November 1st, 2010

Call for consortia to crack down on ‘unwarranted’ GP variation

Pulse reports that GP consortia should publish data on individual GPs’ clinical decisions in order to ramp up standards in their colleagues’ performance, says the NHS Alliance. In its response…

Monday November 1st, 2010

PCTs differ widely over antibiotics prescribing

The HSJ reports NHS Business Services Authority data on prescribing in 2008/09 and 2009/2010. NHS Milton Keynes prescribed 0.83 doses of antibacterial drugs per head of weighted population, compared with…

Monday November 1st, 2010

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