A new Audit Commission report published today assesses progress in improving data quality – especially performance data – in the NHS. It reports on-going problems with embedding a culture of good data quality into NHS organisations. Continue reading “Quality Performance Data – for the NHS and everyone else too?”
Tag: NHS
Damned Targets?
“On Tuesday, the Healthcare Commission report revealed that between 2005 and 2008 there were 400 excess deaths at [Stafford] hospital – although it was impossible to say whether these had all been caused by bad care. The report said there were deficiencies at “virtually every stage” of emergency care and managers pursued targets to the detriment of patient care.” Report on BBC website (emphasis added).
The story of undoubted and appalling failure at an English hospital is being widely blamed in the media, by opposition politicians, doctors leaders and some academics, on the so-called ‘target culture’ in public services. But the truth is rather more complicated and harder to explain. Continue reading “Damned Targets?”
Rate your doctor on-line? – another Whitehall-centric initiative
Even when the Government claims to be ’empowering patients’ it manages to do it in a Whitehall-centric way. Continue reading “Rate your doctor on-line? – another Whitehall-centric initiative”
Colin Talbot - my blog 