A forum on healthcare policy and professional issues, by Glasgow-based GP and FT Weekend columnist Margaret McCartney
From the category archives:
So the big idea was that people who were off work due to illness might be able to do some work, perhaps not their regular work, or perhaps people returning to work while recovering from illness might be better having a graduated return.
Rather than simply signing people off work while ill and then back to [...]
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I can’t understand the blame being apportioned in press coverage over NICE’s decision not to fund Avastin, or bevacizumab, for the treatment of advanced bowel cancer. Many patients groups are laying the blame with NICE. Is this fair?
The important bit to me is ‘cost effectiveness’. It isn’t about either cost or effectiveness alone. While Roche [...]
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The latest on AstraZeneca, who are having to pay 198 million US dollars to patients who have developed diabetes on the anti psychotic drug quetiapine is only one bit of a long story. The challenge being made is that the weight gain and tendency to diabetes for some patients was known by AstraZeneca but not acknowledged fully on the [...]
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The idea that the UK is a bad place to get treated as cancer seems to have been accepted as truth by certain sections of the media. It just isn’t : I’ve been trying to say so for a while with no success whatsoever. Anyway this editorial in the BMJ looks at the reliablity of [...]
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..is not being adequately met. Here’s an article just out in the BMJ about the situation.
This is one situation which I do think would be helped by public pressure….
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Professor Field, outgoing chair of the college I spend a small fortune to be a member of, the Royal College of GPs, has been on the radio rather a lot today. The news is: he scribed a cross article for the Observer, saying that
“…too many of us neglect our health and this is leading to [...]
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Just read the CQC report on Take Care Now, the organisation run by a majority of GPs, and which employed a German doctor who killed a patient.
Why does the coalition think that more will be better?
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I think not. I’ve spent a bit of time reading the new White Paper and associated fluff, I conclude that there are possibly two good things in it. I’ll get to them.
But, oh, the jargon! And the rest of it! What on earth does ‘equity and excellence: liberating the NHS’ actually mean? I’m really tired, [...]
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If you are pregnant, NICE want you to given a carbon monoxide test. This test is to see if you smoke. But look at the flowchart on page 11- you are to have this test even if you say you don’t smoke, and even if you say you do.
I don’t think this is conducive to [...]
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This answer in Hansard seems to suggest that medical records will continue to be uploaded to the NHS Spine unless one opts-out – which does not seem to be consistent with election campaign pledges. Opting out is not the best way to obtain consent, and the need for these records seems to be based in [...]
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